Repositório RCAAP

Current analysis discusses and reflects on the tension points between the professor as researcher and the researcher as professor within the university professorship and also analyzes the dilemmas of the complex situation in the professionalization of teaching in higher education. Partial results of current qualitative, hermeneutic and exploratory research show the need for a continuous re-professionalization process involving the professors’ professional, personal and institutional development.   

Current paper rethinks the history of Sociology as a school discipline, by reconstituting its trajectory marked by absences and presences in the school curriculum, and by reflecting on the reasons for its intermittence, with other arguments as yet not developed by researchers in this field. Research has been developed in two parts: a) the first part analyzed the presence of Sociology in the curriculum of the first half of the twentieth century, investigating the process of its introduction and withdrawal; b) the second part focuses on the process of its gradual reintroduction in basic education through an analysis of the meanings attributed to it and to institutional progress and impasses that marked its advance.  

Discussions on university teaching, teaching initiation and the necessary teacher support during the initial phase of their career are provided. The above mentioned discussions foregrounded a study by a research-formation collaborative Group. Sharing participants in the Group were involved in reflections on their professional practice to (trans)form themselves in the process. The text focused on a Group member, a fledging female professional in university teaching, and the support provided by co-trainers during this difficult phase in her career. Support comprised the provision of conditions for dialogues with the teacher, prompting her to understand the reasons that underlay their practice. Different strategies were used, esp the ‘formation letters’. The above contributed towards the production of an autobiographical narrative in which the professor reflected on her formation process as a professor. The reflective narratives on the teacher’s life, produced within the Group’s mediation and shared with its members, constituted important formation themes not merely for the teacher but also for those who interacted with her in the collaborative Group.   

The procedures and results achieved with the use of literary texts in the English language classes in Padre Anchieta School, Parana State, Brazil, are reported in this article. The literary composition chosen was Macbeth, by the English writer William Shakespeare, and the target public was the students from the tenth grade of high school. During the development of the project besides reading Macbeth, the students were exposed to the biography of the author, some summary of his works and watched films. This work culminated with the rereading of the composition in form of plays and videos. 

School records from the Italian colonies in Curitiba PR Brazil are analyzed as a source of representational forms of childhood. The categories that ordained childhood within the ethnic and school community perspective are identified through the schools´ attendance rolls. The requirement to maintain school records was in fact an administrative tool to transform schooling and teaching into an institution. The practice in schools in immigrants´ colonies provided children’s names, classified the different profiles of children who attended school and measured the regularity of their teaching and learning achievements. Attendance rolls were a legal instrument which showed the school´s capacity to ordain childhood by schooling the social subjects and transforming them into schooled subjects. 

Current paper analyzes an important teaching instrument, at university level, produced during the First Brazilian Republic, called History of Brazil (1900) by João Ribeiro, a professor at the Pedro II College. The functions undertaken by the compendium within educational relationships and through the characteristics of its didactic contents are discussed. The Triple Alliance War (1864-1870) theme is chosen as an example. Scholars on João Ribeiro and his works acknowledge the originality of his theses and the renewal he brought about in Historiographical studies and in Didactics. Although his concepts on history are innovatory, the validity of his ideas on Didactic should be questioned. Results show the compendium failed to surpass the previous ones with regard to objectification and simplification of the teaching task.   

The concept of a group of universities being better qualified than others has always existed within the stratification of higher education systems. Whereas at the top of the higher education hierarchy are first class universities, or rather, universities with the highest prestige and reputation, the institutions that provide democratic and universal access to higher education may be found at lower levels. Current essay argues that higher education reputation is being defined increasingly by national and international ranking systems. It also provides a history of the establishment and development of ranking instruments for higher education and highlights the transition towards a production of university reputation. Whereas in the past reputation was evaluated through a process of prestige accumulation and tradition, without the confirmation of any foregrounding data, this process is currently quantified and systematized by the introduction of tools to measure the institutions’ performance. The ensuing discussion also identifies the implications of the ranking system and identifies myths produced by these instruments that broadcast and compare university performance. 

The issue on the right to education in the Constitution of the state ofParana,Brazil, in 1892, is debated. Priority was given to discussions on the education issue by parliamentary representatives due to the fact that primary education was placed under the tutelage of each state. The economic, political, social and cultural conditions that triggered the development of the propositions on Education are also determined in current research. Public education was treated with extreme care by the Constituents, although the final text received only a single article by which gratuity was underscored. There was a hearty interest among the population with regard to the provision of primary schools and the need to regulate their supply by the State Constitution, so that education, among other issues, became an object of parliamentary debate. 

The pedagogical and conceptual bases of the teachers´ formation program in Literacy and Language (Pro-literacy) for the early years of elementary education are problematized. The reduction in schooling knowledge to basic abilities found in the current evaluation reference for literacy and initial schooling of the ‘Provinha Brasil’ is also investigated. Results show that the reduction of the educational process to the teaching of Mathematics and Portuguese in the first years of fundamental education leads towards curriculum degradation. The reduction of literacy and language knowledge to reading is against the children’s right of expression and fails to promote the quality development of schooling in Brazil.   

Current discussion deals with an understanding of childhood asan analytical category that visualizes the child within early childhood education and elementary education to provide reflections and challenges for the school in its endeavor to organize time and space as from the concept of childhood. The understanding of childhood will be undertaken from the three-fold axis of time, experience and invention. The essay will show how the concept of childhood should address early childhood education to primary education and investigate a type of early childhood education that would implement and not prevent the exercise of childhood.   

Current essay intends to be a sharing for a greater knowledge about the situation of school libraries in Brazil, more specifically in Caxias do Sul, Estado do Rio Grande do Sul and in Portugal. The description of the situation of school libraries in Caxias do Sul, Estado do Rio Grande do Sul and in Portugal reveals that, although with different settings, there is still a long way to go before schools and the educational community envisage this segment as the nerve center of the school.   

Relationships between the challenges of Basic Education, especially those related to contemporary school, and the research-linked educational challenges are investigated, based on theoretical reflections on the employment of research in the classroom as an educational principle. The arguments are foregrounded on the analysis of aspects associated to the genesis of education and school crises. Current paper focuses on the importance of the teachers’ reflective practice and on their constitution as researchers-teachers for the implementation of the language game provided by classroom research, taking into consideration Freire’s dialogue. It underlines the active teaching methodologies that try to bridge the communication gap between school cultures and children’s and young people’s cultures, linked to everyday life dilemmas and with experience-built knowledge.   

Current assay is motivated by the fast evolution that society has been undergoing during the 20th and 21st centuries and its effects on universities. The being of the university is analyzed from a social, historical and philosophic point of view, coupled to the demands that the 21st century make on higher institutions. Foregrounded on several documents (among which may be mentioned ‘The Magna Carta of European Universities’ and the ‘Salamanca Declaration’, signed by the Rectors of the oldest universities in Spain and South America) and disregarding the differences between public and private universities (common aims should be sought when the aim is the development of peoples), certain principles (given as objectives in the text) are proposed and justified as basic for the satisfactory development of all peoples. A summary of the main aims proposed are provided as a conclusion.   

The contribution of clothes in the fabrications of subjectivities and gender identities is analyzed by examining the picture patterns of toys and games. Current study transformed into an investigated object the picture patterns of clothes from Zig-Zig-Zaa, Malwee, for 4-6 year-old boys and girls to demonstrate the representations created and circulated by the designs, colors and textures in children´s toys and games for males and females. The analytic study revealed the role of modeling in the design of children's subjectivities and the formation of gender identities. The theoretical, methodological and historiographical contributions are based on Gender Studies coupled to education and cultural pedagogies. The main line of thought foregrounded how pictures on toys and games produce and reproduce representations that attribute pink to girls and blue to boys.

Teachers’ concepts on the learning assessment of their pupils are characterized. Data were collected in two Portuguese schools, featuring very different results in national exams, through half-structured interviews and a focus group of teachers whose discourses were analyzed by content analysis technique. Analysis showed that teachers´ discourse on learning assessment may be placed within a framework of concepts that may be associated with evaluation meanings such as ‘measure’ and ‘negotiation and construction’ (GUBA; LINCOLN, 1989). When relationships with Méndez’s (2002) typology on learning assessment are established, teachers´ discourses from the two schools provide characteristics which permit the framing of their perceptions within the duality of the concepts ‘alternative assessment’ and ‘traditional assessment’.  

The relevance of systematic study of students´ prior knowledge in the area of mathematics on entering University is highlighted. The theory of learning proposed by Ausubel (1983) and some aspects presented by Lopez (2009) are taken as reference in the paper. They allow the structuring and describe students´ prior knowledge in a systematic way and obtain information beyond the mere knowledge that learners have on the basic contents of Mathematics. For instance, this is true for the information related to their tastes and interests that would enable teachers to adjust teaching strategies to the needs and knowledge of the students. 

Similar to other European countries, special education in Portugal has moved forward and backward. Although established by the Law on the Portuguese Educational System (Law No. 46/86), based on the principles of an inclusive education, it is bounded to the homogenizing logic that characterizes school education in Portugal and in Europe. Consequently and foregrounded on the idea that special education is an integral component of the educational system, it is argued that European policies on special education influence the definition of national educational policies. From the methodological point of view, reports published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and UNESCO on educational issues in general, by the European Agency for the Development of Special Needs Education, in particular, and the relationships on special education launched in Portugal, are investigated. Current analysis concluded that the policies for special education in Portugal follow the European educational order of continuous inclusive education.  

The study assesses the quantity and quality of lecturers for effective implementation of the NCE Physics curriculum in the Federal andStateCollegesof Education inNigeria. The sample was drawn from twoFederalCollegesof Education and twoStateCollegesof Education in all the six geo-political zones inNigeria. 60 lecturers were purposively sampled from 24 colleges of education. The instrument used was Lecturers’ questionnaire (LVENPC). Frequency counts, percentages, charts and chi-square analysis were applied to test the hypothesis. The result indicates that there are no enough lecturers in both Federal and State Colleges of Education and the quality of the lecturers is appropriate, there is no significant difference in the staffing of lecturers’ from Federal and State Colleges of Education on the quantity and quality of human resources for successful implementation of Physics course. It was recommended that sufficient Physics lecturers should be employed to teach Physics in Colleges. Colleges should ensure sufficient provision of human resources in both quantity and quality to enable the objectives of the programme to be fully achieved. 

Current essay identifies and analyzes how research involving the theme Teachers´ Formation has been shaped within the perspective of the History of Education in Work Group 2 (WG 2) of the annual meetings of the National Association of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Education (ANPED). Papers and posters published in the annual meetings over the last ten years (from 2003 to 2012) are analyzed. The methodology involved the identification and analysis of the research papers and posters published in the proceedings of the meetings. A survey of all papers and posters published in the proceedings of WG 2 was undertaken identifying, through a survey on the last decade, those which involved the theme Teachers´ Formation, coupled to the most investigated periods by the researchers who dealt with this specific theme. 

Current article investigates the factors associated to job satisfaction and the strategies that produce and maintain teachers’ well-being. It aims at analyzing how teachers build their happiness at work. The theoretical model of analysis is based on several authors, including Argyle, Csikszentmihalyi, Diener, Warr and Walton. Two data collecting procedures were employed: a questionnaire applied to 250 teachers from state schools, and interviews using the technique of focal groups. The study allowed the identification of the degree of satisfaction of the teachers with multiple aspects of their work, the relation between those aspects and their self-perception of happiness, and the coping strategies used in situations of dissatisfaction and conflict at school. Analyses indicate that teachers’ well-being is the positive result of the cognitive and affective assessment that teachers make of themselves and of the existing conditions for the accomplishment of their labor activities. It is a process that requires effort on the teacher’s part and working conditions that reward such investments.