Cristina Mesquita

Entrepreneurship in Higher Education as a Horizontal Competence

The definition of entrepreneurship usually leads us through business and profit-maximizing techniques and attitudes, usually characterizing individuals and company makers. Recently, the use of the term social entrepreneurship has also been gaining popularity, to describe the entrepreneurial activities with the goal of creating social value (Abu-Saifan, Technol Innov Manag Rev: 22–27, 2012; Shane and Venkataraman, Acad Manag Rev 25: 217–226, 2000). Entrepreneurial activity, in its broad definition, is associated to several factors, both external, such as the economy, employability, market opportunities, and internal, such as the personality characteristics of individuals (Zhao, Seibert, and Lumpkin 2010). In fact, specific traits, such as leadership, optimism, perseverance, passion, resilience, creativity, empathy and others, are more easily found in entrepreneurial individuals. Although not usually considered as explicit competences in the curriculum of higher education degrees, these personality traits can be strengthened, and skills can be learned either directly or by specifying horizontal competences in higher education programmes. The training intentionality of higher education institutions is described in the curricular unit forms, which constitute the study plan of current educational programmes. These are rigorously focused on vertical competences, associated to the scientific area of the programme, but they also include horizontal skills, that contribute to empower the student with a broader set of knowledge and abilities. The teaching and learning methodologies, the content of the curricular units and the learning outcomes all describe the training process, which can be analysed to get an overall idea of the intentionality of entrepreneurship training in current educational degrees.

Pedagogical innovation in higher education: teachers’ perceptions

The regulation changes we have been witnessing in Portugal in the last 5 or 6 years have been introducing new degrees, new diplomas and new audiences in higher education. The Technological Specialization Courses where created in this context, providing a more vocational and technical post-secondary training.

Holistic Learning Evidences in the Supervised Teaching Practice Reports

The curricular unit of Supervised Teaching Practice (STP), of the Master programme in Pre-School Teacher Education and of the Master programme in Pre-school and Primary School Teacher Education, is organized in two main phases: the teaching practice in the adequate education levels, and the development of a final report. The final report is a document each student writes and that reflects the course of the training, the critical and reflexive attitude assumed in response to the challenges that were faced, and the processes and performance of the professional routine experiences. The document should also include a research component concerning the teaching action developed by the student. The final report is, thus, an instrument that allows multiple dimensions of analysis. The work described in this chapter resulted from the study of 62 reports, developed between 2012 and 2015, with the objective of analysing the type of teaching-learning experiences, the content areas and the pedagogical approach developed by students. A quantitative and qualitative approach was followed, using text mining to complement the analysis, due to the large quantity of text. This was complemented with content analysis to interpret the resulting data. The results reveal that students describe and analyse teaching-learning experiences in different content areas, valuing differentiated pedagogical strategies and that the reflective processes are centred in the description of the practicum, without revealing a substantial critical thinking. The final report, regardless of the weaknesses, is a valuable instrument in the training process, because it allows the development of reflection and research tools about the education practice, essential for the professional development of future teachers.

Developing Sustainability Awareness in Higher Education

Sustainable development is, currently, a major concern by most of the world’s nations. Since the report Our Future, by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, the pattern of resources usage has been driven by the concern of meeting the “needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This definition established the basis for the holistic and joint preservation of the natural world, considering economic, social and environmental factors. According to the United Nations, education is fundamental for achieving sustainable development. Beyond education for environment protection, the consumers’ and the producers’ attitudes has to change towards social awareness in a long term. Higher education institutions have the responsibility, and even gain from it, to implement projects and practices that foster sustainable development as well as contribute to the development of sustainability thinking among their students. The development of these competences should also be part of the curriculum of higher education degrees, which describe the training intentionality in the curricular unit forms. These are rigorously focused around the scientific area of the program, but they also include transversal skills, that contribute to empower the student with a broader set of knowledge and abilities. This study analyses three dimensions of sustainability: the teaching curricula, the scientific production and the policies and attitudes regarding the infrastructures. The first, because of their large quantity, are analyzed through the textual content of the curricular unit forms, using text mining tools and techniques, to get an overall idea of the intentional development of sustainability thinking in a higher education institution. The second uses the same approach to assess the areas and orientation of the scientific production, available in the institutional repository. Finally, the infrastructures component, which includes energy efficiency and waste management, is analyzed through the assessment of the policies and projects implemented in this area. Although there are sustainability concerns in the institution, mainly associated to the scientific and specific component of each area, there is no holistic and transversal strategy, with a balance between the economic, social and environmental spheres of sustainability. There are still challenges that higher education institutions must face, to stimulate the sustainability awareness among their students.

First Contact with the Word of Work: The Competence Built in the Teaching Practices

This document describes a study, performed with students during the teaching practice in the course of preschool education. It analyses the competences that they believe to have built through the contact with the professional context. Data is acquired from their portfolios, since they protrude the competences built during the practice activities and the most interesting aspects to analyse. The study puts in evidence that teaching practice enhances professional competences construction, although the outlines of this construction vary according to the educational action model and the supervision model.

Data Model and Smartphone App in an Observational Research Social Network

Children observation is a time consuming and complex process that involves time and knowledge. However, when performed adequately, it is fundamental for both child and professionals development, allowing a sound basis for reflection and action around learning experiences and teaching environments. Following specific guidelines and programs can help the teachers reduce inherent subjectivity. The EEL/DQP was developed to evaluate and improve quality in preschool education. This program is enhanced by using a rigorous observation process of children and adults. In this paper we propose an unified data model to structure the information from the thirteen steps of the EEL/DQP. Moreover, we also describe a smartphone application to assist the observer, recording notes, sound, photos and video.