Doctoral education has been subject to research and analysis by researchers in the last fifty years. Nevertheless, doctoral supervision still a private issue among supervisor and PhD student; if the relationship between them goes wrong, a shadow undermines the doctoral research, hindering student support of others, which may result in attrition and dropout. Breaking this situation, transforming the “private place” in a “public matter”, requires a profound reflection about the doctoral education aim, institutions goals, institution policy, but also a supervisor and PhD students’ perspectives (careers, goals, development, financial support). It is necessary to know, where we want to go, to outline a path to achieve the goals. During the last three years, doctoral supervision has been studied at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL). A qualitative case study method was used. This was the first study (a pilot study) that covered all the nine UNL schools, is intended to identify the supervision practices, but also captures a glimpse of doctoral students’ life in the academy, their difficulties, their thoughts and feelings related to doctoral education. The documentary analysis, concerning the institution rules related to doctoral education, was the study first step (already published). The second was the implementation of a survey with closed and open questions to allowed students to express their opinion regarding doctoral education, especially doctoral supervision. During three months, a survey, centred in doctoral supervision, applied online in all schools. This paper aims to describe what was found and what was unexpected in the context of a young university.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) play an important role in the global economy through technological innovation, creation, and problem-solving in this century. But it is difficult to capture students’ attention to it, and the loss of students in the STEM field hinders society's development, and Portugal is no exception. The students feel that this field is difficult, they feel disappointed as the academic outcomes are more difficult to obtain in the upper secondary, and they easily give up on this area and/or choose other fields. To mesmerize students in the science area and reinforce their positive emotions a project was elaborated based on flipped classrooms with a laboratory station model and started in September 2021. A study case was designed to perceive the impact of the laboratory station methodology and flipped classrooms on the motivation of upper-secondary science students. Self-response questionnaires were applied before and after an intervention phase where students had flipped classrooms and laboratory stations, experimental classes, during one school year. This research concludes that this teaching methodology allows students to maintain motivation throughout the school year. The teacher´s attitudes regarding school, learning and teaching processes, influence students and can trigger positive emotions concerning overcoming school difficulties and barriers they found during their learning journey. It is essential to disseminate these results, as they can help teachers to face the difficulties of engaging students in the learning process in the science field. As the limitation of this study is the small sample (26 students), this study will be replicated with new students in 10th grade and students who were part of this study will continue to be followed as this methodology will continue to be applied in 11grade.
This research presents the efforts, to help students, hindered during the COVID19 pandemic, to learn chemistry. With the pandemic, Portuguese students that enrolled in the 10th grade in September 2021, had lower experience in the experimental work, since practical classes at school were suspended from mars 2019 to September 2021. So, students had difficulties in measuring or working with simple laboratory apparatus. They had difficulties in giving meaning to the experimental procedure, describing an observation, collecting data, analyzing data, and interpreting the results. In this context, it was necessary to have a learning and teaching approach different from the one they had in the last three years, to develop the skills they need. The first proposal was to use “Practical work by laboratory stations but it was not enough in the present context. So, a new learning and teaching project that blended digital tools/platforms and practical work in the laboratory was conceived. This learning and teaching project uses hybrid learning environments, based on practical work by laboratory stations, developed according to the collaborative Peer Instruction approach in a flipped classroom environment. The project's main goals were to develop scientific skills (like planning, collecting data observing and measuring, classifying, quantifying, predicting, controlling variables, interpreting, forming conclusions, and communicating) and increase their motivation to learn Chemistry and Physics. But also study the impact of the flipped classroom with laboratory stations, on motivation, self-regulation of learning, the perception of self-efficacy to self-regulate learning and the perceived instrumentality of the self-regulation process. The study population is the students enrolled in the 10th grade (upper secondary school), in a school near Lisbon. The research project was implemented in two classes: one class were subject to the new approach (one in the 10 grade), and the other maintained the regular practice (the control group). In this paper, the results from the first year will be presented and discussed. The data were collected in two moments, in September 2021 and June 2020. The preliminary results, of this research, show that laboratory classes with the flipped room increase not only the motivation and involvement in the learning process but also, the learning outcomes as students become more involved in the tasks.
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