The curriculum is a social and cultural artefact that involves a stage of conception and a stage of reconstruction, this last done by teachers, developed in context in such a way that students, in their different needs, characteristics and interests, might reach an ensemble of systematic knowledge common to all. A theorization of the curriculum, concerning all social, cultural, power hegemonic factors and inequalities of access, should be attentive to the identity and difference played in that path, in that curriculum understood as currere, which shapes the student person along the way. The massification of education brought to school a wide diversity of students, that contrasted with an organization – that has survived since the constitution of modern school in the XVIII e XIX centuries – centralized around the pattern of class and of a pedagogy of transmission that tends to treat all as if they were only one, generating a curriculum differentiation, yet stratifying, which is necessary to replace by a differentiated form, but also inclusive, of ascending to common curriculum a wide diversity of students. Today, this diversity grows in our schools with a wide range of cultural, social, ethnic, racial, and religious groups and other minorities, which deserve the attention of a school for all, attentive to the student’s needs, characteristics (mainly cultural) and interests. The multicultural education arises as a response to this diversity. Under this scenario, this study wants to know in which measure the management and the curricular development made by three teachers of a school characterized by a wide diversity of students take into account, at the level of conception as well as at the level of practice, the student’s various needs and characteristics and how the professional and organizational cultures as well as its conception facing differentiation and multicultural education influence that management and development. In short, before a diversity context, the goal consisted in understanding to which extend teachers articulate or not, at the micro level, and which reasons they present to that, a curriculum differentiation with a multicultural education, in order to make learning more effective to everyone. In that sense, we developed a study of ethnographic type, recurring to class observation of three participants and to semi directive interviews to deepen conceptions, besides the resorting to a field journal and to documental analysis, to data that we submitted to content analysis, with the construction of analysis categories assisted by specialized software. The discussion and analysis of the data allowed us to understand that although the participants conceive instruction and teach in a homogeneous logic, they showed potential to the level of a more differentiated instruction as well as to the level of a multicultural education, even if is minimum, but as happens in other schools it is in a prone phase to qualitative changes. With the participants help, we noticed a strong influence of an organization of structured instruction under the assumptions of a paradigm of homogeneity and a professional culture that is still attached to the pedagogy of transmission, along with few collaborative work and professional development. This, however, is required by a pedagogic context that demands differentiation and multicultural education. We stated that the current context may be seized as an opportunity to evolve through the strengthening of the professional knowledge.
| Date of Award | 4 Sept 2014 |
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| Original language | Portuguese |
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| Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
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| Supervisor | Maria do Céu Roldão (Supervisor) |
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