This article describes an intervention aimed at fostering reflective thinking in order to investigate its impact in the learning process and competences development of two groups of second-year students on the Early Childhood Education Degree at the University of Barcelona. The design of the study was based on experimental parameters which we characterise here as quasi-experimental with a quasi-control group. The apparatuses used were narrative approaches as vehicles for reflection on students' own activities. A self-administered questionnaire (with closed and open written responses) assessed the effects of the intervention. The resulting data were analysed with triangulated statistical techniques (lexicometry and bivariate statistics). Our findings confirm that reflective thinking through narratives is valuable for the meaningful understanding of knowledge and its reinterpretation from the standpoint of students' self-regulation of their own learning.

Reflective thinking is a key skill for constructing meaning in university. Its development requires appropriate learning contexts which can function as spaces for reflection, along with approaches, conditions and methods which can boost students’ training in thinking, framed within their process of knowledge construction and their development of competencies and professional skills. This paper reports the development and testing of a questionnaire on the value of the learning contexts designed to foster reflective thinking. To ensure validity, the constructs measured were derived from the extensive literature on conditions for planning learning and teaching activities for reflective thinking based on narrative-based methods. The instrument was validated with a sample of students (n = 375) from five universities. The results obtained from the estimation of a 10–factor model offer appropriate goodness of fit and parsimony with acceptable and consistent indices of reliability. The results contribute to the evidence supporting the reliability and validity of the questionnaire and confirm the value of the model’s components for devising higher education teaching activities to promote a reflective thinking process.

con variable criterio a partir de un conjunto grande de datos, principalmente con variables categóricas. Este análisis se inscribe entre las técnicas comúnmente conocidas como minería de datos o data mining, encargadas de analizar las relaciones o asociaciones entre todas las variables de una base de datos. El trabajo describe paso a paso cómo aplicar esta técnica estadística con el apoyo del software SPAD-un paquete estadístico empleado para realizar análisis de tipo multivariante-y aporta un ejemplo de cómo se aplica. Se trata de una técnica de la escuela de estadística francesa que, pese a ser poco conocida, proporciona un análisis de clasificación altamente interesante cuando se trabaja con grandes cantidades de datos-algo cada vez más recurrente en investigación educativa y más típico de los análisis secundarios que se llevan a cabo en nuestro campo.