Culturas organizacionais e liderança nas escolas

: a direcção por valores em estudo de caso

Abstract

The democratization of societies and education in the twentieth century has resulted in the massification of education at various levels of the school system. In higher education this reality manifests itself through the presence of an increasingly growing and heterogeneous public and a university that is unsuitable to accompany students with different socioeconomic, cultural and academic profiles, with different learning rates, and many of them with school paths marked by school failure. The present investigation aimed to analyze the determinants of school failure and success in the 1st year of engineering courses according to the perception of teachers and students from higher education institutions in Angola. A mixed method was used. Thus, a questionnaire on school success and failure applied to 23 teachers from various engineering courses (91% men and 9% women) and 491 students (76% men and 24% women) from the 1st year of engineering. To generate qualitative information and favor data triangulation, 10 teachers (70% men and 30% women) who taught in the 1st year of engineering courses were also interviewed, especially teachers who taught curricular units with high rates of school failure, and 6 focus groups were organized with 64 students (63% men and 37% women) who were repeat students of one or more curricular units of the 1st year of engineering courses in Angola. The factors of school failure and success in the 1st year of engineering identified by teachers and students are related to teachers, students, the educational institution and educational policies. The results of this study point to significant disagreements between teachers and students on the factors of school failure in the 1st year of engineering courses, with teachers tending to externalize the causes of school failure, attributing a large part of the responsibility to students. The students seem to identify as responsible for the school failure the two actors of the teaching-learning process, the student and the teacher. According to the perceptions of teachers and students, the causes of school failure in the sphere of teachers are related to ineffective teaching strategies, summative assessment, the distance between the teacher and the students, the inflexibility curriculum and teacher training deficit; in the students' sphere, the causes of failure are related to previous academic performance, lack of intrinsic motivation, low student involvement, transition and adaptation to higher education and the social and economic difficulties of students; in the sphere of the educational institution and educational policies, we have a lack of vision of leadership, curricular imbalances, the language of instruction, the mismatch between the course attended in higher education and the student's vocational project and overcrowding of classes. As for the school success factors of students in the 1st year of engineering courses, the data point to an approximation of perceptions between teachers and students. In the sphere of teachers, the factors of school success are related to the fact that they have teachers who can inspire students and the pedagogical skills of teachers; in the sphere of students, the factors of school success are related to a greater involvement of the student (regardless of the basis he may have at the beginning of the higher education course), intrinsic motivation, maturity, vocational orientation and the ability to reason logically. However, a previous academic preparation consistent and linked to the area or course of higher education seems to have a great influence on students' learning and academic performance in the 1st year of engineering courses; in the sphere of the educational institution and educational policies, the promotion of school success requires greater attention to curriculum flexibility (pedagogical differentiation), tutoring, teacher training and social support. The implications of these results for educational practices were analyzed and discussed and suggested avenues for reflection for future research in promoting school success in the first year of higher education.

Date of Award	31 Jul 2020
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Joaquim Azevedo (Supervisor) & Luísa Mota Ribeiro (Co-Supervisor)