RCAAP Repository

No summary/description provided

The formulation of local policy instruments for Education (Cartas Educativas and Planos Estratégicos Educativos Municipais) has been strengthened by the participation of local Education actors, throughout several stages of the process. This engagement promotes the formulation of guiding documents for Education policies and planning deemed meaningful by the local community, who validates and seizes those documents. However, the Covid-19 pandemic, through its travel and gathering restrictions, constrained the implementation of these participatory projects as previously executed. Grounded on empirical experiences concerning the formulation of local policy instruments for Education, this paper depicts the transition of those participatory processes to digital venues, while examining the opportunities and challenges arising from this shift forced by the pandemic context. The new priorities regarding Education policy will unavoidably be addressed, since they gain a new role and meaning within the vision for schools and, more broadly, Education, thus influencing the insights and perceptions shared by local actors and stakeholders within participatory processes.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought out the very important role of schooling, and it showed the need to overcome organizational and pedagogical impasses. This text focuses on one of them – pedagogical assessment – and materializes one of the moments of an investigation-reflection-action project on representations and teaching practices. Indeed, it presents a theoretical foundation and a conceptual clarification. The first part presents a reflection on the current technological and societal change – an uncertain and liquid universe – and develops a theoretical and conceptual frame on the organizational and pedagogical dynamics necessary for the current processes of schooling, in a new paradigm – from knowledge for action to knowledge for understanding – in order to argue for the use of domains in knowledge organization. In the second part, realizing what in the first is presented, we defend the need to elaborate, in schools, Assessment Frames that clarify to the whole community the practices of pedagogical assessment of learning, based on true evaluation criteria, through which students’ grades are assigned. It ends with a proposal for meta-evaluation of the Assessment Frames.

No summary/description provided

No summary/description provided

No summary/description provided

No summary/description provided

No summary/description provided

The unprecedented experience of the COVID pandemic and the response to this emergency has tested our education systems, but it has also represented an opportunity to learn and, in an age of uncertainty, to provide contextualised educational responses in each school. We look at some of the challenges (leadership, equity and participation) that school leaders have faced, which have tested the school, lessons learned and agendas for the future.

No summary/description provided

No summary/description provided

The undeniable changes caused by the success of the smartphone, as the result of the technological progress and a hyper-connected society, inevitably generate new challenges for the educational system, the schools, the teachers and the students. In this sense, this research addresses its adoption and use inside and outside the classroom, analysing its contribution to a more innovative school, attentive to the real world. Thus, teachers’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of using them will be presented. Data were collected through a focus group followed by content analysis.  The results indicate that the use of the smartphone is a motivating factor for students, contributes to the consolidation and improvement of learning, and requires commitment, persistence, well-defined rules and a period of training and habituation for students. Teachers need time to search, discover and experience the myriad of apps that emerge daily and that are available for effective use inside and outside the classroom.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had severe and unprecedented consequences in multiple facets of education. Schools, teachers, students and their families were affected and the negative impacts will last for years. The aim of this paper is to identify and explain the sources and consequences of teachers’ job stress and burnout during the pandemic as well as job and life satisfaction. Three sources of stress are emphasised: time allocation changes and workload; the behaviour of students; and the technostress. The empirical research is based on an original online survey applied to middle and high school teachers in Portugal. Information from four time references is collected: before pandemic; first school closure in 2020 (16th Mar – 16th Sep); second school in 2021 (15th Jan – 5th Apr)); at the time of the survey (June-July 2021) The data obtained include characteristics and changes about: teachers and their households; job satisfaction, stress and burnout; life satisfaction; working time and teaching roles; work-life balance; teachings goals, methods, and outcomes; work stressors; working conditions for telework; expectations for teaching year 2021/2020 about job and teaching methods. The results show that teachers’ job stress increased during pandemic and the behaviour and performance of students is it main driver. The difficulties to conciliate work time and personal time are also predictors of teachers’ job stress. Signs of increasing burnout exist.

No summary/description provided

No summary/description provided

Created through the publication of the Decree-Law No. 75/2008, of 2nd April, the General Council is presented as a challenge. The democratization of strategic direction of schools, understood as educational communities, emerges as one of the rhetorical vectors declared by the central administration, giving account of a legislative action that intends to institute a shared governance, vertically between the central administration and the schools, and horizontally between the members that integrate them. In order to understand how the intentionality revealed in the legislator’s words is acted out by Us, who live in the different school organizations, we have carried out a research that adopted as study subjects the members of the General Council of two grouping schools in the same municipality. We used the case study methodology, combining several research techniques: document analysis, semi-structured interviews and observation. The data collected pointed to two key ideas: the perception, revealed by the study subjects, that the General Council as a strategic action organ has no relevant influence on the definition of the school guidelines and the perception that the school organization is an ecosystem where the teachers dominate. Therefore, the legislator’s intention to horizontally promote a shared governance seems to be confined to the realm of words, having no effective echo in the Us that inhabit schools, thus compromising the intended democratization. It is pertinent to reflect on this mismatch between the guidelines for action and action itself, remembering that between the Us and words, to paraphrase Mário Cesariny, there are Elsinore walls, a place of imagination and fantasy, but also a space for reflection and creativity.

The aim of this research is to analyse the impact of introducing the use of technology in the classroom in higher education in the Mozambican context. The research was carried out in two classes of the 3rd year of the Degree in Computer Science at the Faculty of Economics and Management of the Catholic University of Mozambique. TPACK conceptual model served as the main reference for the design of activities carried out in the discipline. The course took place in a pedagogical model which uses active methodologies, the inverted classroom, with online activities on the Moodle platform and face to face. In this perspective, some web 2.0 applications and tools were introduced, such as Kahoot, Padlet, Google sheet, Whatsapp and Youtube. It is assumed a mixed methodology research based on a case study. Data was gathered through an online questionnaire and observation of student activities. The data were analysed using the content analysis and descriptive statistics. The results show that most students were able to use the selected technologies, the preferred ones being Kahoot, Padlet, Moodle and Youtube. According to respondents, the technologies used were in accordance with the objectives of the course and provided active learning, improving interaction and assimilation of contents, which is in alignment to the different learning styles. The study concluded that there is a great pedagogical relevance in the use of technologies in the classroom. Furthermore, we observe that one of the main critical factors identified in the integration of technology is the low quality of the internet connection in the institution.

The current educational policies claim inclusion as a guiding principle, on the assumption that all children and young people have the capacity for learning and educational development, and it is the responsibility of school to guarantee each one access to the support they need to develop their potential of learning and development. This orientation implies the focus of the school’s action on the curriculum and on learning, whose operationalization implies different rationales, puts paradoxical challenges to the structures of pedagogical and curriculum management and is at the basis of various processes of coordination of teaching work and of different interactions between teachers. Our study aims to identify professional interactions carried out within the disciplinary group, to  distinguish  those aimed at curriculum management and to improve professional performance, to recognize leadership practices and to understand the conditions  that enable the disciplinary group  to assert itself as a community of professional practice. In this qualitative study, we used the analysis of documents produced in the school and within the Mathematics disciplinary group of an elementary and secondary school in the district of Porto in the school years 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 and the auscultation of its teachers through an inquiry and a focus group. This communication identifies levels and structures of school management and strategic action plan, distinguishes administrative functions performed within the disciplinary group and discusses the relationship established there between tradition and innovation, and situates the collegial work of teachers between what has already been instituted and the collective institution of the new measures.

On February 8, 2021, students returned to online learning, in the home environment, after a 15-day vacation ahead of schedule. In this study we wanted to know how they were experiencing this period of isolation at home and how they evaluated 7 key areas in this remote learning experience: the teaching strategies used by teachers; the pedagogical relationship; relevance, adequacy and fairness of the evaluation; collaboration with colleagues; the environment experienced at home; the predominant feelings; the richness of learning. In this paper we will only analyse the  experienced and declared  feelings. An open questionnaire was administered through an electronic platform and with the consent and mediation of the principals, data were collected from 4 schools (2 belonging to private and cooperative education in the Lisbon region and two public state schools from the northern region) in a total of 614 students from the 9th and 10th years. Data collection took place in February 2021. The results reveal that the students report  mostly  negative feelings (sadness, longing, loneliness), with hope and joy standing out, nevertheless, in a list of 10 feelings. There are no significant differences between schools. These data indicate that students experience contradictory and paradoxical feelings, making it necessary to heal the wounds incurred through a pedagogy of listening, care and proximity in order to reconstruct injured bonds.

In this essay the demographic and economic aspects of Tondela between the middle of the 16th century and the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th~century are examined. The study of demographic aspects rests on the analysis of Registos Paroquiais and of Censos da População since 1864 and the economic evolution from various historical sources: Memórias Paroquiais, Registos Paroquiais, Relatórios da Junta Distrital de Viseu, and Inquéritos Industriais . The development of agriculture in its varieties – cultivation of cereals, vegetables, vineyards, and cattle raising – and the flowering of commerce, the arts, as well as industrial and handicraft activities are thus addressed.