The Pedagogical Congresses of Portuguese Secondary Teaching : the participation of female teachers (1927-1928)

This paper was written within the context of the research project “The development of teacher’ associative organizations and unionism (1889-1990)” funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Foundation for Science and Technology). Five important congresses about secondary education were organized in Portugal between 1927 and 1931. These congresses served to claim the rights of teachers and the consolidation of the class, as well as to promote the discussion of scientific and pedagogical problems. In these congresses, the presence of female teachers was residual. However, the few teachers who participated had a significant contribution to the definition of secondary education during the following decades. Among other issues, it contributed to the discussion of female education and to analyze the importance of Biology and Physical Education in high schools. This paper presents the analysis of the minutes of the 1927s and 1928s Congresses. This analysis allowed the assessment of the important role played by a group of teachers to define, at the end of the first third of the 20th century, the future guidelines of Portuguese secondary education. It also reported that these teachers were pioneers who opened the way for the increasing number of teachers in secondary education during the 20th century.

Innovation, talent attraction and retention

The success of an organization isn’t, in most cases, only shown trough their profits. Today the value of a company, with respect to its market value exceeds their financial quality. Intellectual capital is a major share in the value of the company. Managing employees with an emphasis on intellectual capital and talent is an emergency that arises in the path of human resource managers. The definition of intellectual capital and talent, leads us, first, to a high IQ (Intelligence Quotient), good schools and / or university results. But the intellectual capital and talent of an employee must be linked to his ability, to high performance and good results. How to manage, attract and keep these employees in organizations is also something that requires talent. Now, the basic skills of employees aren’t sufficient for competitive companies. There are currently required higher levels of skills, because there are a growing number of activities that involve "knowledge work". Most companies in the world have a great challenge for the coming years: the challenge of scarcity of talent. The most competitive companies will be those that have the most talented employees. In terms of originality, this paper aims to create discussion about the relationship between talent attraction, talent retention and innovation, as drivers of business competitiveness. The research is based on the categorization methodology defined by Yin (2003) as single case study carried out in a company that is specialized in high precision components.The findings presented here show a strong link between talents attraction, talents retention and innovation.