TY - GEN
T1 - Is Portuguese higher education developing students capacities for innovation?
T2 - 13th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship
AU - Dias, D.
AU - Soares, D.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - The political and social discourse about innovation becomes dominant in our economy and society, which impacts also on educational and labour market systems. Particularly for Higher Education, boosting knowledge and innovation appears as a strategic mission, calling for innovative research, innovative pedagogies, and innovative organizational structures. Similarly, fostering students' abilities to innovate appears as a vector of this strategic mission. Based on this framework, this study intends to explore if, effectively, innovation (or the capacity to innovate) appears as an expected learning outcome to the achieved by students at the end of their qualification. Using a qualitative approach, the contend of learning outcomes proposed in all programs submitted to quality accreditation in Portugal (since 2009) was analyzed. In general, results indicate that innovation is fairly mentioned (about 35,8% of the programs mentioned it at least once). From a total of 39742 segments coded, innovation is mentioned 1704 times, which correspond to 4,3%. A cross comparison between academic degrees revealed that innovation is particularly relevant for PhD degrees and integrated masters. Significant differences are found according to disciplinary areas. Environmental sciences, art and design programs, engineering and computer sciences clearly emphasize innovation as an expected skill to be achieved by their students. Some implications to practice need to be debated, confronting these results with literature insights.
AB - The political and social discourse about innovation becomes dominant in our economy and society, which impacts also on educational and labour market systems. Particularly for Higher Education, boosting knowledge and innovation appears as a strategic mission, calling for innovative research, innovative pedagogies, and innovative organizational structures. Similarly, fostering students' abilities to innovate appears as a vector of this strategic mission. Based on this framework, this study intends to explore if, effectively, innovation (or the capacity to innovate) appears as an expected learning outcome to the achieved by students at the end of their qualification. Using a qualitative approach, the contend of learning outcomes proposed in all programs submitted to quality accreditation in Portugal (since 2009) was analyzed. In general, results indicate that innovation is fairly mentioned (about 35,8% of the programs mentioned it at least once). From a total of 39742 segments coded, innovation is mentioned 1704 times, which correspond to 4,3%. A cross comparison between academic degrees revealed that innovation is particularly relevant for PhD degrees and integrated masters. Significant differences are found according to disciplinary areas. Environmental sciences, art and design programs, engineering and computer sciences clearly emphasize innovation as an expected skill to be achieved by their students. Some implications to practice need to be debated, confronting these results with literature insights.
KW - Competences
KW - Higher education
KW - Innovation
KW - Learning outcomes
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85055448361&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 20491050
T3 - Proceedings of the European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ECIE
SP - 235
EP - 239
BT - Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ECIE 2018
A2 - Costa, Carlos
A2 - Au-Yong-Oliveira, Manuel
A2 - Amorim, Marlene Paula Castro
Y2 - 20 September 2018 through 21 September 2018
ER -
