RCAAP Repository

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. 

Current article is the product of the experience of the authors who have lived for more than eight years with indigenous students enrolled in undergraduate and post-graduate stricto sensu courses, as well as of the results of research on Brazilian indigenous peoples done by the authors. Methodology comprises action research, an important method of dialogue, exchange and de-colonial knowledge production. Contrary to what the authors have supposedly taught indigenous students, current paper presents lessons that the authors are learning and which constitutes them as educators / researchers. These lessons comprise a) the production and strengthening of the identity stance against economic inequality; b) questioning of theories and the construction of new significances; c) the resistance by the ethical indigenous community against the advance of neoliberal individualistic society. Living and conducting research with indigenous people teaches the paths towards de-colonialization and intercultural pedagogy and epistemology. 

Insights on factors in the conceptual sphere that ascribe meanings to the concepts of historical consciousness and representations are provided. The trajectories of the concepts are highlighted by various factors in the historical field. The concept of historical consciousness was mainly observed in the works of Jörn Rüsen, whereas the concept of representations appeared mostly in theoretical discussions by Roger Chartier. The comparison between the authors is underscored by arguments put forward by Friedrich Nietzsche on his critique of the idea of conscience. A brief discussion will ensue on the adhesion to the category of historical consciousness in debates within the teaching of History inBrazilsince 2000.

Qualification rules for female secretaries are analyzed within the context of the education for professions in the 1960s and 1970s, featuring two Brazilian handbooks, namely, Manual da secretária moderna [Handbook for the modern female secretary], by Helena Montezuma, and Você, secretária: um manual para o desenvolvimento profissional, [You, female secretary: Handbook for professional development], by Neris Bertocco and Angela Schneider Loyola. Discussions are undertaken on the manner the educational discourse for working as a female secretary occurred. Relationships are investigated between female education and the conforming, moralizing and modeling performance in work, coupled to the construction of the profession´s culture with new significations for the 1970s. Results showed a type of education accompanied by the persistence of tradition on the feminine roles, with great difficulties for rupturing the shackles of female conditions in society.  

Editorial da Revista Acta Scientiarum. Education

Sportive, militaristic, disciplinarian, uncritical... these adjectives are used to describe negatively traditional Physical Education. The above brought forth immediate interest in checking whether such criticism was well founded and triggered a brief discussion on the possibility of using traditional elements in current school Physical Education. Accordingly, research in the history of Physical Education inBrazilto justify such criticism was endeavored. Further, Didactics was analyzed to foreground traditional Pedagogy and apply the concept to Physical Education so that it could also be called traditional. Certain criticism for such traditionalism was investigated to determine whether it was correctly well founded. Finally, a conclusion was reached that if certain criticism was traditional, other types were ambiguous. There is actually an important conceptual confusion when the term traditional is used in Physical Education. It may be suggested that traditional Physical Education still has a place in current Physical Education in the school. 

The theory of professions according to Max Weber (1864-1920), who conceives bureaucratization as a necessity and as an expression of the modern State, is analyzed. The process of teaching professionalization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is focused. Current paper deals with three aspects: 1st – profession, craft, occupation: etymology, conceptualization and contexts; 2nd – Max Weber: biography and his theory on professions in the modern world; 3rd – Is there a Weberian understanding on the teaching profession? Professions developed throughout the 19th century and Weber’s theory arose in the early 20th century. Current investigation on the teaching profession focuses on the relationships between teaching and the historic and educational aspects which the teaching profession took during the 20th century as a result of the rational objectivity developed by the State. His reflections about professions reveal that professional groups are formed by political, economic, and social strategies, with special emphasis on the role of the State as a regulator for homogeneity and regularity in political and administrative terms.

In the wake of the publication of María Victoría Peralta´s important work on the establishment of pre-school education in Chile and Bolivia in mid-19th century, current analysis describes briefly the political-educational situation in Chile in that historical moment. The controversy between the secular education of the teaching state of that time and the Catholic education, representing the liberty of teaching, is emphasized. The above is similar to the debate which is occurring in Chile nowadays, or rather, between public education and private education.

Current article briefly discusses issues related to the devaluation of teaching (and consequent crisis in teachers´ education programs in Brazil) and to some government initiatives including Higher Education Institutions and Public Policies, to valorize the teaching profession and overcome crises. Based on the Program for Teaching Education, organized by a University of the Greater São Paulo, Brazil, and on the author’s experience in PIBID (Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação à Docência – Institutional Scholarship for New Teachers), the essay provides the positive impacts, contradictions and some considerations on its implementation foregrounded on the written record of teachers´ testimonials on the Program. 

Interviews by school authorities from five public primary schools inSão Paulo,São Paulo State,Brazilwere analyzed. The contents of the interviews by school principals and pedagogical coordinators investigated (1) the manner they understood bullying, especially with regard to their determinations; (2) their proposals for combating the problem; (3) the relationship between their understanding of the phenomenon and the suggestions against it. Results showed that the authorities that perceived the social determination on school violence had the best structured suggestions against the phenomenon, with regard to its understanding by students and teachers. On the other hand, others, foregrounded on a more reductionist stance which made difficult the perception of bulling within the school milieu, suggested activities which were not relevant to the factors that produced it and thus not efficacious in their attacking the phenomenon. 

Homilies, a hybrid genre of Literature, dated from the 2nd century and extensively used in the 4th and 5th centuries, were one of the main tools employed by the ecclesiastical elite to convert the urban population at the end of Antiquity. It was only by the Late Antiquity that homilies were largely used to broadcast the Gospel precepts before a growing audience. Since the Church could not count on schools to stabilize the newly converts from Paganism and Judaism, the Christian leaders developed proselytism and missionary actions based on an excellent use of rhetoric by means of skillful preachers. The author discusses how homilies contributed towards the spiritual formation of Christians, with special reference to the rules that regulated the usage of the body in the church by laypeople, in contrast to the modalities of bodily exposure in the polis. John Chrysostom's pastoral work and the special case of Antioch in the last decades of the 4th century will be investigated. 

The Order of Preachers, which emerged in the early decades of the thirteenth century, was engaged throughout the period in the formation of a model characterized by studies as its main basis. The process was characterized by clashes within and outside the Order, specifically comprising practices related to education and study. Current investigation demonstrates how censorship directed to the very thing that gave legitimacy to the Order and to scholarship reinforced its identity. Certain instrumental concepts, such as the notions of identity and censorship and the ideas on freedom and power, were investigated. Content analysis was undertaken by crossing official documents and the minutes of the General and Provincial Chapters so that the relationship between the several instances of power within the Dominican order could be understood. The contextualization of these documents within a broader intellectual scenario, especially within the university milieu of the 13th century, could be established. Results showed that censorship worked as an identity tool even though what was censored and the intensity of censorship varied according to a greater or lesser need for institutionalization and consequently the demarcation of the Order of Preachers´ identity. 

In the Roman-Germanic kingdoms from the sixth century onwards, Bishops’s activities were mainly concentrated on the preservation and expansion of the Christian faith and the reorganization of ecclesiastical institutions. Among several initiatives, a huge material investment, comprising monastic rules, sermons, Mirrors for princes and hagiographies, was undertaken. In the Visigoth kingdom, Isidore of Seville is acknowledged as the man who enhanced his participation within the process of ecclesiastical restructuring, with great attention towards the moral and intellectual qualifications of the clergy. Thus, current essay deals with the main allusions to ecclesiastical authorities in De Ecclesiasticis Officiis and Sententiarum libri tres within the vast work produced by the Spaniard, coupled to their relationship with the idealized model of a bishop.