Graduated in Primary Education with a major in Foreign Language: English, having completed the Master in Applied Research in Education and currently enrolled in the PhD in Transdisciplinary Research in Education at the University of Valladolid, I have acquired skills that allow me to design and implement teaching-learning situations in many contexts, as well as to develop research in the educational field.
My past as a Physics student at the University of the Cumberlands -a university based in Kentucky, USA- allowed me to develop a mathematical competence that I am currently using to try to improve education in that area. In this way, my Final Degree project consisted in the planning and delivery of a series of sessions in which mathematical magic was used in the bilingual classroom, framed in a context of non-formal education with students between 10 and 15 years old at risk of social exclusion.
Currently, my research work is focused on the study of mathematical anxiety, an emotion that affects both students and teachers and that has a negative influence on the teaching-learning processes related to this area. My contributions to this area include a bibliometric analysis -which studies research on this emotion in general- and a meta-analysis of interventions to reduce this anxiety in teachers in initial training, both included in my Master’s thesis.
The results of my teaching and research efforts have been presented in different congresses, where I have tried to raise awareness of the importance of taking into account emotional aspects linked to the affective domain in the teaching of mathematics.
Continuing, in addition to my research work in the improvement of mathematics education, I have also carried out an intense teaching work in the area of Didactics of Mathematics at the University of Valladolid. Despite my youth, I have had the opportunity to teach three of the four subjects related to mathematics in the Degree in Primary Education, which reflects my commitment and versatility in the field of university teaching.
To conclude, my efforts in the academic field have been recognized with different distinctions: being a member of Alpha Lambda Delta, an honor society based in the USA; having received several awards, such as the Extraordinary End of Master’s Degree Award and the Excellence Award for Master’s Degree students from the University of Valladolid; and having obtained the Collaboration Grant in research tasks from the Ministry of Education.