Community School of São Miguel de Machede: A decade of Learning

the Community School of São Miguel de Machede exists since 1998. A model of Community Education has been developed in this decade of existence, which not being confined to the frequent profiles of the most common approaches in Adult Education, has been the result of a process of symbiosis between a practice that normally precedes the conceptualization and a thought which has always expressed the concern of interpreting and enrich that practice. Setting on a model of learning based on the PADéCA – Program of Helping the Development of the Capacity to Learn, proposed by Berbaum (1988), the Community School of São Miguel de Machede has been developing several activities centred on a fundamental concern: to create easy and qualified accesses, in this community (council of Evora), so that the respective members can learn to exercise their principal rights of citizenship, in the territory where they live and in a circumstance of equality of opportunities in relation to the remaining fellow countrymen. Being a project with a decade of life, it is now possible to speak of a history full of stories and learning experiences, which occurred as a result of a rich interaction between the initial thoughts and impulses of the theoretical approaches and a reality full of unexpectedness, mutability and humanity resulting from the complexity that a living community presents, with a history and a present, but not always with clear and positive idea about the respective future.

Concepções e abordagens – duas dimensões do aprender no Ensino Superior

A existência de relação entre as formas de conceptualizar a aprendizagem em geral (concepções de aprendizagem) e as formas de experienciar a aprendizagem em tarefas específicas (abordagens à aprendizagem) tem sido estabelecida pela literatura no domínio dos modelos SAL (Students Approaches to Learning). Neste estudo realizado com 920 estudantes do ensino superior procurou-se identificar as concepções e as abordagens à aprendizagem recorrendo ao COLI ( Conceptions of Learning Inventory) e ao ASI-r (Approaches to Study Inventory-revisto) adaptados para a população estudantil portuguesa. Os resultados indicaram correlações positivas entre as concepções e as abordagens à aprendizagem e, também, que os estudantes, de um modo geral, apresentam concepções mais profundas de aprendizagem adoptando, em simultâneo, abordagens profundas, superficiais e estratégicas. Encontram-se diferenças significativas ao nível da área científica, dos cursos, do ano de frequência e do género.