Ver o nevoeiro e instituir outra luz

: ensaio de iluminação, inovação pedagógica e melhoria das aprendizagens

Abstract

In recent decades, successive reforms have generated controversy in terms of their transformational power concerning educational processes and outcomes. The present study departs from the “Fog” (3), a metaphor that implies the uncertainty and possibility of change present in the current Portuguese educational system and that teaching practices may dare to break through, by adopting strategies that promote a visible learning(4) in all students, with energy to impact changes at the organizational level. Based on a tendentially qualitative epistemology, the research that is described corresponds to a case study with characteristics of investigation by action, focusing on the design and development of an intervention programme in the school context (Visible Learning Project - PAV), in a school located in the city area of Porto, during the 2016/2017 school year. PAV proposes an innovative didactic model, supported by active methodologies, which commend the (re)thinking of the learning and teaching strategies that sustain them. The multiplicity of data collection techniques (document analysis, semi-structured interviews/focus groups, questionnaire surveys, scales and structured and unstructured observation of classes) around educational agents (top and intermediate leadership, 10 Biology and Geology teachers and 267 students of the 10th grade) and PAV dynamics, along with the outline of an ecological model of analysis, are meant to favour a holistic view upon the possible relationship between innovation in teaching processes and the improvement of the quality of learning. The data collected and analysed during the present study allowed us to conclude that the monopoly of the dialogued exposition in Biology and Geology, at a pre-PAV moment, gave rise to a marked diversification of teaching, learning and evaluation strategies, during PAV; the mostly individual work of the students in the classroom was replaced by a variable geometry of group interactions; pre-PAV inconsistencies, especially regarding the ways of working between students, pedagogical differentiation and curricular articulation practices and assessment were transposed by the widespread assumption on the part of different educational agents (leaders, teachers and students), that PAV favourably impacts the personal, emotional, social and academic learning of students, despite the lack of consensus in terms of its influence on the results of written tests and national examinations. Traces of curricular and pedagogical innovation of PAV give it a major importance when establishing new situations that build knowledge; moreover, such traces have brought about effective contributions to a higher quality of learning, as well as repercussions at the organisational level, because its logics of action served as an inspirational source for other projects focused on students' learning, which emerge from the professional knowledge of teachers as leaders of pedagogical innovation processes.

Date of Award	30 Mar 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ilídia Cabral (Supervisor)