Desempeño escrito de estudiantes de programas de formación inicial docente: ¿Cómo es la calidad del proceso de escritura de sus ensayos?

Writing is a fundamental competence for the development of learning in teacher training, however, according to the evidence, the performance of Chilean students is insufficient. Therefore the aim of the research was to asses the writing process of an essay of students of initial training programs of the Chilean regions of Araucanía and Los Ríos. With regard to academic writing, the concept of Academic Literacy was addressed, for the development of writing process through the curriculum, as it is an epistemic tool. In relation to the methodology, this was quantitative and included the participation of a representative sample of Elementary Education students of four universities of the mentioned regions (n = 205), to whom a validated written evaluation of a short essay was applied. The essays were revised through analytic rubric composed of ten dimensions and four levels of performance, whose procedure included the double evaluation of the texts and the calibration of the evaluators. Finally, it was found that the students showed low performance in general, especially in spelling, counterarguments and intertextuality. It was also found that the performance of the students did not have a significant progress during the four years of their training.