The mechanisms of academic distinction of the best students, such as the Honours Boards of Excellence and Value, emerge in Portuguese state schools as important institutional management strategies for promoting the school image and attracting the best students. This is what the authors propose to discuss, and that they identify as being a new form…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

Parent participation in school management has been promoted as a strategy for holding schools accountable for education quality and outcomes. However, the evidence has proven inconclusive and limited in explaining mechanisms to affect student achievement. By using public school student data derived from the Programme for International Student…

Ibero-America is a land of untapped potential. The region is young, facing a unique demographic opportunity. This demographic bonus opens a window of opportunity for inclusive growth in the region, with equitable and high-quality education being a potential driver of domestic growth to support future progress. The social and economic progress of…

This book provides a platform for international scholars to share evidence for effective practices in integrated STEM education and contributes to the theoretical and practical knowledge gained from the diversity of approaches. Many publications on STEM education focus on one or two of the separate STEM disciplines without considering the…

Between the 1980s and 2007, Portugal used to have one-stage (5-year period) initial teacher education (ITE) programs. In 2007 and consistent with the Bologna process guidelines, Portuguese teacher education moved toward a two-stage model, which includes a 3-year undergraduate program of subject matter that leads to a "licenciatura" (or…

The study followed students in their 10th year of schooling that entered a new secondary education school in order to examine their perceptions of their previous schools' work and of its relationship with the difficulties they experience when in the transition. The analysis of 155 completed questionnaires of previous students of nine basic…

This study aims to examine to what extent the field of competence regarding curriculum knowledge is concordant with the other sub-competency fields of teaching. These fields are field knowledge, pedagogic competence in field teaching, use of information and communication technologies in teaching, student behaviours and class management,…

The provision of workplace-based experiences (internships) is an important component of the training program for students attending vocational education courses. The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between internship quality and students vocational development, considering students' vocational profiles, in a sample of 346…

This country review offers an independent analysis of major issues facing the use of school resources in Portugal from an international perspective. It provides a description of national policies, an analysis of strengths and challenges and options for possible future approaches. The analysis focuses on the process of decentralisation of school…

The study analyses the extent to which the sociological message transmitted by the teachers' pedagogic practice recontextualizes the official pedagogic discourse of the natural sciences curriculum for a Portuguese middle school. Theoretically, the study is based on theories of psychology (e.g. Vygotsky), epistemology (e.g. Ziman) and sociology,…

High rates of failure in secondary level science classes are a problem worldwide. Effective teaching and efficient management of schools requires information as to the causes of failure. One approach to acquiring this information is to improve our understanding of what the students themselves perceive as the causes and antecedents of school…