Rethinking Polycentric Structures in the Postcolonial Church: Dangers of “Drone Missiology” or Afghanization of Christianity

In this brief essay I shall obviously draw from my reflections which I shared over the past three decades and to which I have provided some bibliographical references. It is clear from them that I had several opportunities to share my views beyond the Anglo-Saxon world, and some of them in events organized by K. Koschorke himself in the German academic circles as Munich-Freising Conferences. It is important that we do not get misled by words. We also need clarity of the concepts involved. Koschorke’s emphasis on “ploycentric structures” requires to be discussed and analysed critically to sort out its geographic components and its political-cultural implications, in order to be clear where lie the priorities. Without such exercise we will run the risk of hiding behind the ambiguity of words and concepts. My gut feelings make me believe that “polycentric structures” is just what the West needs in the postcolonial era to replace the control it has lost with decolonization.

Museums and quality, from the concept of the museum that carries out functions to the museum that provides services

Quality management Self-evaluation of the organisation Citizens/customers satisfaction Impact on society evaluation Key performance evaluation Good practices comparison (Benchmarking) Continuous improvement In professional environments, when quality assessment of museums is discussed, one immediately thinks of the honourableness of the directors and curators, the erudition and specialisation of knowledge, the diversity of the gathered material and study of the collections, the collections conservation methods and environmental control, the regularity and notoriety of the exhibitions and artists, the building’s architecture and site, the recreation of environments, the museographic equipment design. We admit that the roles and attributes listed above can contribute to the definition of a specificity of museological good practice within a hierarchised functional perspective (the museum functions) and for the classification of museums according to a scale, validated between peers, based on “installed” appreciation criteria, enforced from above downwards, according to the “prestige” of the products and of those who conceive them, but that say nothing about the effective satisfaction of the citizen/customers and the real impact on society. There is a lack of evaluation instruments that would give us a return of all that the museum is and represents in contemporary society, focused on being and on the relation with the other, in detriment of the ostentatious possession and of the doing in order to meet one’s duties. But it is only possible to evaluate something by measurement and comparison, on the basis of well defined criteria, from a common grid, implicating all of the actors in the self-evaluation, in the definition of the aims to fulfil and in the obtaining of results.

A formação inicial dos Professores do Ensino Primário no Portugal do Século XX (1942-2000). Do modelo maternal ao modelo profissional

Pensamos com este nosso trabalho de investigação contribuir para o estudo da formação inicial dos professores do ensino primário/professores do 1º ciclo do ensino básico (1942-2000), tomando como eixo a evolução dos conceitos educação, professor, aprendizagem, sintetizados no modelo maternal, em que a professora governava a sua classe como a mãe a sua família e no modelo profissional que faz do professor um expert e insiste na sua competência, quer a nível dos saberes, quer a nível das técnicas pedagógicas. Escolhemos como referente inicial do nosso estudo o ano de 1942, data em que, pelo decreto-lei nº 32 243 de 5 de Setembro de 1942, são reabertas as Escolas do Magistério Primário em Lisboa, Porto, Coimbra e Braga. Escolhemos como referente final do nosso estudo o ano de 2000, fecho de século e milénio que, na formação inicial de professores, inseriu os primeiros professores do 1º ciclo do ensino básico com licenciatura (decreto-lei nº 115, de 19 de Setembro de 1997). No percurso da formação inicial dos professores do Ensino Primário, da reabertura das Escolas do Magistério Primário (1942), à instituição das Escolas Superiores de Educação (1986), à promulgação do Estatuto da Carreira Docente (1990), à exigência do grau de licenciatura na formação inicial dos professores do 1º ciclo (1997) questionamos: - Que conceitos de educação, professor e aprendizagem estão presentes na formação inicial realizada em Escolas do Magistério Primário e Escolas Superiores de Educação? - Que transformações sofrem estes conceitos com a adopção de novos modelos de formação inicial experimentados a partir da Revolução Portuguesa de 25 de Abril de 1974?