Carolina Carvalho

Teachers’ Understanding of Averages

The concept of average has been a part of the curriculum for well over 100 years. Consequently, research on students’ understanding of average has been one of widest areas explored in mathematics and statistics education research; however, research focused on teachers is still very scarce. In this chapter, research related to school students’ understanding is first described and then research dealing with teachers’ understanding or professional knowledge is analysed. Some final implications for research on the training of teachers are provided.

Identity Construction through Schooling: Listening to Students' Voices

One of the main problems faced by several educational systems around the world is educational exclusion. Portugal is no exception. It is recognized that those who drop out of education are at risk of social exclusion, with reduced opportunities to participate in society. In order to understand this, the authors reconceptualized the school as a community of practice, where students not only appropriate academic knowledge, but also new ways of being and perceiving themselves and others, and school practice itself. This article aims to better understand educational exclusion from the perspective of at-risk students. How do their constructed positional identities originate ways of being, relating and acting in relation to school agents and practices? The authors developed four focus group interviews with students presenting high rates of truancy and failure. Against their expectations, several students showed intent of pursuing their own path within the school system and saw themselves as capable of changing the conditions of failure in order to succeed in school.

CURSOS DE EDUCAÇAO E FORMAÇÃO: UMA OPORTUNIDADE PARA QUESTIONAR PRÁTICAS DE SALA DE AULA E RECONSTRUIR IDENTIDADES ESCOLARES

Este estudo tem como objectivo conhecer o impacto de activi- dades investigativas em aulas de Fisica e Quimica na reconstrucao de identidades escolares. Estudaram-se tres turmas do ensino secundario de um curso de Educacao e Formacao. Participaram 28 alunos, com historias pesadas de insucesso escolar, aos quais se fez uma entrevista em grupo focado. Recorreu-se a um metodo de analise de conteudo. Os dados suge rem um percurso, inicial, feito de insucessos, assente em identidades esco lares negativas, que nao sendo passiveis de ser re-avaliadas ou restauradas, geram vontade de abandonar a escola. Para alem disso sugerem que novas experiencias pedagogicas e curriculares podem facilitar a reconstrucao dessas identidades e a emergencia de novas formas de se relacionar com a escola e com o saber escolar.

Compreendendo a aprendizagem da linguagem científica na formação de professores de ciências

After the contextualization of the Portuguese curricular basic school science reform an innovative didactic work proposal to be applied in the classroom by science teachers are presented – “design-based research”. With this approach we intend to answer to the teachers and researchers problems like the implementation of research-oriented practice and to decrease the gap between educational research and teacher practice. The above-mentioned approach integrates the scientific language teaching, crucial for scientific literacy and scientific culture. The teachers’ training, as a challenge to solve those problems is a privileged field for analysis. Key-words: design-based research; curricular reform in Portugal; Didactics of science teaching; scientific language; training of science teachers.

Teachers’ Feedback and Educational Self of Institutionalized Youngsters: A Possible Dialog?

This chapter review a research developed in Portugal with institutionalized youngsters. The main objective is to explore the youngsters’ voices focusing on their school trajectories, on their teachers’ feedback perception, and their future aspirations reflected in their vocational choices. We argue that their vocational choices are underpinned by a complex interrelationships between social and individual experiences which flows in an educational self.