Isabel Faria Alexandre

A mother of three, married for 32 years, 29 of those devoted to teaching, schools and reconciling school and family life with the aim of helping all students learn, she returned to university where she completed a Master's degree in School Administration and Organisation. She was invited to pursue a PhD and embarked on a career in research.

It was necessary to leave the hustle and bustle of the day and the rhythmic ringing of bells to rediscover the school through the lenses of others who look at it through different prisms. The discovery of the potential of each school individually, of its intrinsic value in the construction of each human being drives her continuing on a path of research that we would very much like to see tend towards a gradual intervention in the context, seeking to build paths for improvement.

Current research project: Why do schools (not) learn? The factors that activate and those that hinder organisational learning in schools.
The school's primary mission is to stimulate its students' ability, taste and curiosity to learn. However, faced with the massification of education, schools have struggled to address the numerous challenges of modern times. Despite significant investments by central administration over recent decades to implement reforms aimed at fostering new practices in schools, there is a vast body of literature showing that schools usually resist organisational learning, which leads us to question the effectiveness of this top-down, prescriptive approach. We view it as problematic that some schools within the education system exhibit greater learning capacity than others, as we believe this may exacerbate inequalities within a highly centralized education system. To this end, we set ourselves the basic question of why (don't) schools learn. We want to know the factors that activate organisational learning and those that hinder it. This research aims to generate scientific knowledge capable of assisting schools in their learning processes, thereby contributing to the academic and holistic development of students, the professional and social growth of educators, and the socioeconomic advancement of families.

Research areas: Professional and Organisational Development, Collaborative Teacher Learning, Professional Learning Communities, Leadership for Learning; Teacher Training.