Maria Palmira Alves

Perceptions of Teaching in Students and in Teachers’ Point of View: Implications on Students’ Learning Skills in Higher Education

The purpose of this article is to identify the educational perceptions of students and teachers in portuguese Higher Education. 20 hours of lessons were analyzed during a curricular unit of a course of a Higher Education Institution. The information was recorded on a descriptive grid for classroom observation and also obtained from interviews, of a semi-structured nature to the teacher and focus group to five of the students. We used content analysis with input from webQDA software. According to the results, teachers and students have different perceptions of how teaching is managed. A strategic orientation of student-centred teaching requires the promotion of a variety of learning environments, flexibility, capacity of valuing students’ participation, including tasks and activities that develop cognitive skills of higher level. These results show that, in similar contexts, the teacher-centred teaching, correlated with the interaction among students, can be a learning improvement strategy.

Desenvolvimento de competências de autocontrolo no estudo acompanhado: uma intervenção na área curricular de Estudo Acompanhado numa turma do 9.º ano

The article focuses on an intervention at the level of the development of selfcontrol competencies within supervised study with 9th grade pupils. Its main goals are to evaluate the impact of the intervention on the self-control and to identify the characteristics of the tasks that were more and less valued by the pupils. The teacher of Supervised Study carried out the intervention with her 9th graders during 10 sessions of 90 minutes each. The intervention was evaluated through two questionnaires, one administered to the pupils and the other one to the teachers of curriculum subjects. An interview was also conducted with the pupils. Findings show significant gains by the pupils in all competences of selfcontrol that were trained. The tasks preferred by them were the ones performed in group involving didactic games, competition among groups and research or games, to the detriment of those that involved many written records and the ones they considered to be repetitive and non-practical. Key words: supervised study, study competences, self-control, intervention.