The “Universitisation” of Geography Teacher Training in Portugal: Reflecting on its Results and Weaknesses

Year 2015, Volume: 5 Issue: 3, 293 - 315, 31.12.2015

Fernando Alexandre Manuela Malheiro Ferreıra

Abstract

In
Portugal, geography teacher training followed a process of ‘universitisation’
that enhanced its academic dimension and weakened the importance of
professional training. Training became focused on outcomes, more than on
processes, and its effects were increasingly disappointing as regards changing
teachers’ practices. Although such problems are not confined to geography
teacher training, in the case of geography they seem to be particularly
pertinent, since they contribute to widen the gap between academic and school
geography. The paper intends to address two questions: (1) how did the
‘universitisation’ of teacher training affect teachers’ involvement as regards
the overall training process?; (2) how to explain the marginal results obtained
by training as regards changing teachers’ practices? From the data collected
for this research through the content analysis of primary documents, databases
and the results presented by various field researches, it seems possible to
identify the main weaknesses that affect geography teacher training: (a) training
programmes fail to narrow the gap between theory and practice; and (b) training
processes are unable to identify and take into account the experiences and the
personal beliefs that shaped student teachers’ knowledge before they enter
training. These justify the design of a new reflective methodology.

Keywords

Teacher education, teachers’ beliefs, teachers’ practices, geography education

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