Dinâmicas de promoção de desenvolvimento profissional docente

: um estudo de visões e práticas em escolas católicas

Abstract

A teacher’s professional development is a long and differenced process that, having in the initial training its first stage, is not the teacher’s sole responsibility but also of the institution he works for, since it is hoped that this development will result in direct benefits for the students and for the school itself, as an organization. In this work, Schools’ Educational Projects and Internal Regulations of a set of Catholic Schools, own by different Religious Congregations and by one diocese, were analysed, as were the answers of the Headmasters to a questionnaire, so as to get to know their views and practices in promoting the professional development of the teachers who work in their schools. The research results show that the studied Catholic Schools favour, as far as professional development is considered, the personal formation of their teachers; that the supervising process, when it exists, is remarkably centred in top managers and is implemented to ensure the compliance with the law which states that all private and cooperative schools have to evaluate their teachers and not to aim the improvement of the professional knowledge and practices of the teachers; that the devices/techniques implemented scarcely involve the observation of lessons and that the supervising process has consequences just in training. These results also show the existent discrepancy between thought and action. It would be important that, in the future, the Catholic schools would face the professional development of teachers with the importance it has and would implement supervising processes which lead to the improvement of the teachers’ performance and of the quality of their educational action, in accordance to their specific cultural framework.

Date of Award	17 Jan 2014
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria do Céu Roldão (Supervisor)