Current Changes in Portuguese School System (original) (raw)
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Hrvatski geografski glasnik/Croatian Geographical Bulletin
In Portugal, the Currículo Nacional do Ensino Básico [National Curriculum for Primary Education] was published in 2001. This document reorganises primary level education from a curricular point of view. It is a key reference document for curricular management in Portuguese schools and outlines guidelines for the whole set of educational experiences as well as the core and specific skills that students are to develop in each subject or subject area. Since the implementation of this curriculum reorganisation, working documents have been produced by the Geography Department of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, reflecting the interpretation of documents issued by the Ministry of Education and providing guidelines regarding teacher training in this subject area. These documents were shared among students, future teachers and also trainee supervisors during training sessions. Centred on issues concerning the National Curriculum for Primary Education and Curriculum Guidelines for Geography, this paper aims to present not only the reasons that led the authors of the Geography Curriculum to provide certain options, but also the (re) interpretations made by Geography teachers who graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto as regards the fulfilment of the prescribed curriculum at national level, that is, in their professional teaching practice.
Research on Geography Teaching and Teacher Education in Portugal
ROMANIAN REVIEW OF GEOGRAPHICAL EDUCATION, 2015
This article aims to contribute to the debate on the significance of geographical education as part of the development of a society in which information and communication technologies have made profound changes. It starts with the discussion on how Geography is taught at international scale, and then addresses the intersection between research produced in the reports on the introduction to professional practice and related study plans, concerning the 2 nd cycle of the teaching of History and Geography, in force since 2010 in Portugal. Based on the outcomes of the discussion, we will consider the research trends and whether or not they are suited to the latest recommendations on geographical education, in particular the training of Geography teachers, according to the assessed proposals which were submitted following the new law regulating the training of Geography teachers in Portugal. Among the main outcomes, we highlighted the diversity of topics addressed in the internship reports and the growing attention to new technologies in the cycle of studies under analysis, which suggests the adequacy of the future Masters in the Teaching of Geography at the University of Porto (starting in 2015/16) to the European recommendations on these matters.
2015
In Portugal, geography teacher training followed a process of ‘universitisation’ that enhanced its academic dimension and weakened the importance of professional training. Training became focused on outcomes, more than on processes, and its effects were increasingly disappointing as regards changing teachers’ practices. Although such problems are not confined to geography teacher training, in the case of geography they seem to be particularly pertinent, since they contribute to widen the gap between academic and school geography. The paper intends to address two questions: (1) how did the ‘universitisation’ of teacher training affect teachers’ involvement as regards the overall training process?; (2) how to explain the marginal results obtained by training as regards changing teachers’ practices? From the data collected for this research through the content analysis of primary documents, databases and the results presented by various field researches, it seems possible to identify t...
Becoming a Teacher in Portugal - Pre-Service Teacher's Training: a Review
The article contextualizes the training of teachers in Portugal, taking as references, first to change social policy in Portugal before the fall of the dictatorship and, at this juncture, the trend between the Reform Veiga Simão (1973) and Law on the Education System (1986). Attempts to show that the creation of Higher Education and the Polytechnic School of Education (ESEs), on the eve of the 80, in conjunction with the movement of some innovative universities, broke with the traditional models of organization of teacher training in Portugal. Considers that the establishment of the Polytechnic Higher Education has a break from the monolithic model of teacher training through, inter alia, of their curriculum, trained the staff of ESEs teachers and young people themselves, approached them in schools which, in fact, working teachers; boosted educational research, made available to the school community human and material resources essential to the development of the educational process and implemented a broad framework for provision of training and expertise and then if desired, but had not been reached. Finally, describes the current framework for initial training of teachers, driven by recent amendments to the Law on the Education System and as governed by the instruments) - the degree to be awarded degrees by the Universities and Polytechnics and b) - the legal regime of professional qualification for teaching in pre-school education and school education.
Educational Policies and the Quality of Teaching: Perceptions of Portuguese Teachers
The educational and curricular policies of the last two decades reflect attention to the quality of teaching by associating it with educational success, the improvement of student learning and the professional development of teachers. In this article we present some of the results of an investigation carried out with Portuguese teachers from the first cycle of basic education, who had, as their main objective, the understanding of the impact of educational and curricular policies on the development and identity of teachers, as well on the quality of teaching. We took as references various legal documents, especially the new Statute for a Teaching Career (STC) and the Evaluation of Teacher Performance (ETP) and other programs implemented by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. This longitudinal study was carried out over three years and it adopted a methodology of both a qualitative and quantitative nature, which permitted us to understand the perceptions of teachers of the first cycle of basic education using: 1) written and oral biographical narratives; 2) discussion groups formed specially for the purpose; and 3) replies from 249 questionnaires returned by teachers of this cycle. In this text we will report the results of analyzing the replies from the questionnaires and the statistical analysis made with the Chi-squared Test and the T-Test, which corroborate other studies carried out, particularly at an international level and which reveal that the teachers felt that the educational policies interfered negatively with their work, thus provoking: a weakening of their professional relationships, interaction with their peers and their collaborative work, as well as professional demotivation and disinvestment with a resulting negative impact on the quality of their teaching.
Acta Scientiae, 2022
Background: The historical analysis of a given curricular production makes it possible to understand how, at a given time, the production of new knowledge occurs, made official in some documents, thus providing references for teaching and teacher education. Objectives: The study intends to answer the following question: How to understand the negative criticisms disseminated by the press to this curricular production, in terms of the elaboration of a new teaching expertise? Design: This study is a research from a historical perspective. This is a documentary research that has as its source material from newspapers from the 1980s. Setting and Participants: The research presents aspects of a curriculum production from the 1980s. Sows the impacts emitted by the newspapers of the time on a curricular production. Data collection and analysis: As an empiric of the research, the articles published in São Paulo newspapers are considered at the time of the elaboration of the proposals. Such a question is justified, therefore, because it makes it possible to explain the process of producing new knowledge for teaching based on the actions of experts. Results: Going through the actions of the experts shows us that it is fundamental to understand the tensions between the fields present behind the scenes of elaboration. From the tensions, knowledge will be theoretically constructed. Conclusions The answer obtained shows the decisive role of the press and the struggles waged for the consolidation of this official curricular document. The curricular documents of a given time govern and provide references for the teaching and training of teachers of that time.
F. M. Reimers (ed.), Audacious Education Purposes, Springer, 2020
By the turn of the century, following the dismal first results in TIMSS and PISA, the Portuguese educational system was at a crossroads. It was clear that students were not attaining minimal levels of proficiency in reading, math, science, and other basic subjects. The system needed a deep reshaping, and so changes were made. By the time the last PISA and TIMSS international large-scale surveys' results were released in 2015, Portugal registered a quantum leap: in PISA, student achievement was above the OECD average and in TIMSS, 4th graders had higher scores in Mathematics than several usually high-performing countries, including Finland. How was this possible? To understand what happened, we need to look at what Portugal has done in the last 10-15 years. Although many different ministers from different ideological standpoints made different reforms, there is a common thread to most changes: they paid increased attention to results. This proved to be a powerful thrust for improvement, backed up by experienced teachers. However, this general thrust assumed many concrete different aspects and promoted different reforms. During the 2011-2015 period, these reforms went further and were very clear, intentional, and explicit: a clear curriculum, increased school autonomy, stu-dents' regular assessment, vocational paths, flexibility. All this helped to prepare youngsters for an active, productive, and responsible life in the twenty-first century.
Curriculum policy in Portugal (1995–2007): global agendas and regional and national reconfigurations
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2010
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(Co-authored) Approaches to curriculum in Portugal: New or old directions?
Proceedings of the European Conference on Curriculum Studies. Future Directions: Uncertainty and Possibility., 2013
The aim of this work is, on the one hand, to characterise how the work Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education, edited by Michael Young in 1971, was received in Portugal; and, on the other hand, to assess the development, within the national context, of one of the “new directions” there entered that focuses on a systematic and critical approach of the curriculum able to demonstrate its historical, social, contingent and arbitrary character. For such purpose, we have set up a documentary corpus covering reviews and articles published between 1971 and 2012 in 19 peer-reviewed scientific journals published by research centres and/or university and polytechnic higher education institutions. The texts were scrutinised taking into consideration the categories of institutional affiliation of the authors, level of analysis, disciplinary/multidisciplinary dimension and topics problematized. The first results of this mapping convey a shy reception of this work of Michael Young in the years that immediately follow its publication; this contrasts with a general interest in the curriculum that seems to gain new strength during the passage into the 21st century, in a process of appropriation that we will analyse under the light of the institutional development and affirmation of the disciplinary fields of sociology and educational sciences and of the processes of nationalisation and transnationalisation that cross issues related to the curriculum.
Education policies, and in particular those related to teacher education, are central to the construction of Europe as a knowledge society and for facing the social and economic challenges that European countries must respond to in this millennium. This article presents an analysis of studies on the evaluation of inservice teacher education conducted in Portugal since 1992. Based on the results of this analysis, the study develops a reflection on the concepts, policies and practices of in-service teacher education, contextualising it within a wider equation related to teachers’ education in Europe. The study consisted of content analyses of scientific articles, research reports, studies of evaluation and legal documents that provide the guidelines for in-service teacher education in Portugal. At the end, a final reflection and some general recommendations for teacher education are presented. There is a focus on the importance of placing in-service teacher education at the centre of educational contexts and on the problems that this causes in teachers’ work, emphasising its importance for social justice in Europe.