Betina da Silva Lopes

So Much More than Just a List: Exploring the Nature of Critical Questioning in Undergraduate Sciences.

Background: Critical thinking is one of the very highest orders of cognitive abilities and a key competency in higher education. Asking questions is an important component of rich learning experiences, structurally embedded in the operations of critical thinking. Our clear sense is that critical thinking and, within that, critical questioning, is heavily context dependent, in the sense that is applied, used by critical learners in a contextualised way. Purpose: Our research deals with enhancing science undergraduates’ critical questioning. We are interested in understanding and describing the nature and development of students’ critical questioning. The purpose is to conceptualise critical questioning as a competency, into three domains – knowledge, skills and attitudes/dispositions. We have no interest in a taxonomic category of context-free question-types called ‘critical questions’. In contrast, our view is that ‘being a critical questioner’ trades heavily on context. Sources of evidence: Four cases are considered as illuminative of the dimensions of science undergraduates’ critical questioning. Data were collected in natural learning environments through non-participant observation, audio-taping teacher-students interactions and semi-structured interviews. Students’ written material resulting from diverse learning tasks was also collected. Main argument: Our supposition is that one vehicle for achieving university students as critical thinkers is to enable them not just to ask critical questions, but to be critical questioners. We relate critical questioning to three domains: (1) context, (2) competency and (3) delivery, and propose a model based on illuminating examples of the in-classroom action. Conclusions: The dimensions of the competency-context-delivery model provide a framework for describing successful student critical questioning, showing that students’ capacity to be critical can be developed. It is possible, in our view, to generate critical questioners by means of promoting a true spirit of critical inquiry. The model also gives important insights into the design of teaching, learning and assessment contexts, where critical questioning could be promoted.

The million-dollar question: can internships boost employment?

Higher education institutions are increasingly concerned with the professional insertion of graduates in the labour market and with the design of institutional mechanisms to facilitate students’ transition from higher education to work, particularly given the context of scarcity of financial resources and the rise of graduate unemployment. This issue has been addressed, inter alia, through the creation of study programmes with internships. Despite the public discourse encouraging the use of such strategies, there is a general consensus regarding the absence of empirical studies on the professional value of these strategies. This article aims to assess two interrelated questions: the extent to which measures of graduate unemployment rate tend to decrease after the introduction of internships in Portuguese study programmes; and the extent to which this effect applies to the different institutions that comprise the Portuguese tertiary education landscape. It also seeks to contribute to the debate on the relevance of the structure and nature of internships, which are factors frequently neglected in the literature.

Learning transitions of three doctoral students in a Portuguese higher education institution facilitated by the use of ICT

The growing complexity of the information society and the Bologna Declaration contributed to renewed understandings of teaching, learning and research. This paper reports the learning transitions of three doctoral students with different backgrounds working together in the context of a first year module integrated in the curriculum of a Portuguese doctoral programme. This auto-ethnoraphic research aims to discuss the collaborative learning process in which the doctoral students were deeply involved throughout and beyond the semester module. A qualitative content analysis of five types of documents produced by the group was conducted. The data analysis scheme was developed considering the characteristics of an active and independent high quality researcher, although some dimensions emerged from the corpora. The outputs of this study might be relevant for the facilitation of the learning transitions of PhD students to early career researchers, thus supporting fine tunings of research training strategies implemented in doctoral programmes.