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One-minute oral reading fluency (ORF) tests are widely used, but concerns have been raised regarding whether readers are able to maintain their performance if asked to read for a larger period. The main goals of this study were to investigate whether students are able to maintain their ORF performance in a three-minute task and whether scores measured at one and at three minutes are equally good predictors of the performance in a standardized reading comprehension measure. The sample was composed of 159 Portuguese primary school students (grades 2-4). The results suggested that the number of words read correctly (WRC) declined across reading time and that three-minute mean score underestimated fluency in all grade levels compared to a one-minute reading score. The WRC measured either at one minute or using a three-minute average score was an equal predictor of reading comprehension in all grades. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Horizontes de Linguística Aplicada is the property of Revista Horizontes de Linguistica Aplicada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Creativity has become an essential curriculum competence, playing a pivotal role in the successful response to the ever‐changing demands of contemporary society. Yet, its complex, dynamic, and multifaceted nature seem conflicted with the predominant quantitative and easy‐to‐replicate curricular goals, resulting in potential incongruence between educational aims, pedagogical activities, and students' creativity development. Aiming to contribute to this debate, we designed a qualitative study, based on a documentary analysis of the Portuguese preschool and basic education‐intended curricula (legislation, legal norms, guidelines, programs, opinions, and recommendations). From an initial set of 194 documents, 20 complied with our selection criteria. Key findings underline the difficulties in outlining a clear and comprehensive definition of creativity as a distinctive dimension of psychological development, with consequences in how creativity‐focused pedagogical activities are applied within the classroom. Although recent educational reforms have attempted to overcome these limitations, they appear restricted to arts and sports subjects. Our results highlight the need to develop curricula anchored in an approach to creativity as a unique opportunity for psychological development. By intentionally promoting creativity in the curriculum, students' sense of agency, identity, self‐knowledge, and determination can be engaged, ultimately enhancing the underlying complexity of their socio‐cognitive emotional structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing has a leading role in learning and, although elementary-school curricula emphasize the development of this complex skill, many students still struggle with their writing performance. This study aimed to assess the efficacy and social validity of CriaTivo, a curriculum-based intervention developed following a Response to Intervention model to promote self-regulation of the writing process (i.e., planning, monitoring, revising) applied to the written composition of narrative texts across third and fourth grades. Two hundred eighty-one Portuguese students (55% boys, M = 8.58 years, SD = 0.79) and their teachers participated in the study. A mixed-methods research design was used, and data was collected at two points in time. Regarding the intervention's efficacy, results were promising, depicting improvements at posttest in students' planning and monitoring skills, as also in their writing quality. The findings also supported the intervention's social validity for both students and teachers. Despite requiring further research, CriaTivo appears to be a promising curriculum-based intervention which responds to the previously identified research and practice needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the motivations of both heritage and non-heritage students of Portuguese at two universities in Rhode Island where Portuguese-speaking migrant communities have settled and their language has strong visibility. Attention is drawn to motivation since it is known to be a significant factor in the development of linguistic proficiency. The results of this study underscore a difference in students' motivation for studying Portuguese between heritage and non-heritage language learners. Findings also suggest that heritage speakers of Portuguese recognize the importance of the language to communicate daily with family and relatives. In contrast, non-heritage learners of Portuguese perceive the Linguistic Landscape as an authentic space to practice and facilitate their learning. Furthermore, non-heritage learners value the language and are motivated to learn Portuguese in order to communicate with the community and understand its culture. Finally, in light of our conclusions, we seek to contribute and extend our research of students' motivation to other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluate the student’s satisfaction in Physical Education (PE) classes can contribute to help teachers in developing strategies to better planning and get students more motivated. The aim of this study is to describe what students’ value most and why in a PE class. It was used a qualitative and descriptive approach of the critical incidents in a PE classroom interviewing 278 Portuguese students. The results reveal in the satisfaction striking moments, playing and compete, getting individually and collective success in a satisfactory class climate. The less welcome striking moments were a mixture of playing, compete and failure. The warmup and negative class climate also were reported as not very gratifying. The fun moments reported were personal realization, pleasure and sharing. The teacher appreciation reveals pedagogical interactions, specific knowledge and personal conduct. The students like PE classes. Planning by the PE teacher should maximize opportunities of enjoyable situations by the students, in order to improve their motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of information technologies, more and more information retrieval tools, containing a wide variety of information, can be found. Internet resources, universal and specialized search engines, virtual libraries are becoming the main information retrieval tools for students. The article introduces an exploratory (pilot) research aiming to find out the differences of information retrieval between Lithuanian and Portuguese students. Šiauliai State College offers a unique study programme Information Management, having a signed contract of a double diploma with Porto (Portugal) Polytechnic Institute Porto Accounting and Business School (ISCAP). 10 Portuguese and 10 Lithuanian students participated in the research. The online questionnaire was forwarded to the students of ISCAP Porto Accounting and Business School and to the second year students of the study programme of Information Management at Šiauliai State College. The research revealed that the respondents Lithuanian students look for scientific papers and books, whereas Portuguese students search for basic information and scientific papers. All the respondents of the survey identified Google Scholar as the most important search engine for scientific information retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses evidence of and challenges to the development of inclusive education in Portugal, which is built on three pillars: access to, participation in, and achievement in education for all children and young people. It presents an overview of the present policy framework, followed by an analysis of available statistical data on Portuguese students with disabilities in mainstream schools. The article also discusses significant achievements at the policy and practice levels, namely the attempt to align curriculum and pedagogy and the presence of almost 100% of students with disabilities in mainstream schools. It also considers challenges, such as the issue of monitoring achievement (both at the student and system level) and investments in the system and in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies on the access to public higher education in Portugal have analysed the students' migration flows. Those studies, in general, do not consider the micro-level migration decisions of students. This study analyses the students' migration flows by fields of study or programmes, grades, social background and region of origin for a small Portuguese public university located in the hinterland, in a second-tier city. Local candidates with higher grades, tend to leave and enrol outside in a larger city. This migration flow induces a social downgrading in the region of origin. There are however counter flows of students coming from the outside to the region and that is why the university accommodates a very large segment of mobile students; this can have a high potential for the university and the city as attracting students from all over the country may change the social environment and create innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the counseling needs of students attending Portuguese higher education. Specifically, a convenience sample of 375 students was surveyed online with the Survey of Student Needs. Descriptive results indicated that "overcoming procrastination", "job search strategies" and "time management skills" were their main concerns. Inferential results indicated differences according to personal and academic information and present living conditions, particularly in regard to personal counseling needs. Also, a linear regression analysis found that gender, academic satisfaction and satisfaction with current living conditions had a predictive effect on counseling needs, and that students had a preference for individual counseling. Conclusions are drawn about the importance of developing interventions targeting specific clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) is a widely used measure of body shape concerns that was originally designed for use with women but has more recently been used with boys and men. The latter use may be problematic, given that no previous study has demonstrated sex invariance for BSQ scores. To determine the extent to which BSQ scores are sex invariant, we asked Portuguese-speaking women (n = 1,613) and men (n = 871) to complete the full BSQ (34 items). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a hypothesized 32-item model of BSQ scores and shorter versions had acceptable fit indices in women and men, separately. However, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis showed that these BSQ model scores had configural but not metric, scalar, or strict sex invariance. Differential item analysis indicated significant item-functioning differences on 19 of the 32 retained BSQ items. Thus, BSQ scores are not sex invariant, making problematic the results of previous studies that have compared latent BSQ scores across sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cadernos de Pesquisa is the property of Fundacao Carlos Chagas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction and aims: Improved sensitivity and efficiency of detection and quantification of carriage of Neisseria meningitidis (Nm) in young people is important for evaluation of the impact of vaccines upon transmission and associated population-wide effects. Saliva collection is quick, non-invasive and facilitates frequent sampling, but has been reported to yield low sensitivity by culture. We re-evaluated this approach in a follow-up cross sectional study using direct and culture-amplified PCR. Material/Methods: In April 2016 we collected paired oropharyngeal swabs (OPS) and saliva samples from 1005 healthy students in Portugal into STGG broth and stored them at -80°C until DNA extraction and batched qPCR analysis. Samples were also cultured on GC agar plates for 72h and PCR done on DNA extracts from overall growth. Nm isolates were also sought from a selection of 50 samples. qPCR amplification targets were superoxide dismutase sodC and capsular locus/genogroup-specific genes (B, C, W, X and Y) and, for cultured isolates only, porA. Cycle threshold values of ≤36 were considered positive. Results: 556 tests (460 samples, 363 subjects, 36.1%) were positive for Nm (sodC) and 65 (45, 36, 3.6%) for MenB. More salivas were positive by direct sodC qPCR (211, 21.0%) than OPS (126, 12.5%) but fewer were positive by culture-amplified qPCR (94 vs. 125). For both sample types, many that were negative on direct qPCR came positive on culture-amplification and Nm was consistently isolated from salivas in which culture amplified the PCR signal. Using both methods on both samples yielded 36.1% Nm and 5.5% encapsulated Nm carriage rates while direct qPCR on OPS alone detected 12.5% and 2.2%. Conclusions: Detectable MenB carriage rates (2.9%) were lower than 4 years earlier (6.8%) in this population (p = 0.0003). Viable meningococci were often present in saliva. Although evidence of encapsulated Nm was less frequent in saliva than OPS, collection is more acceptable to subjects allowing more frequent sampling. Use of culture-amplification increases detection sensitivity in both sample types, especially when combined with direct PCR. Combining these samples and/or methodologies could greatly enhance the power of carriage studies to detect the impact of vaccines upon carriage and transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daily life is indelibly marked by the media, which create (or help to create) different forms of leisure, entertainment and work. Reading, analysing, decoding, understanding and interpreting the media and the content they convey, as well as creating and producing messages, are today fundamental competences required to deal with and manage the flows of communication and information that reach us through various media and platforms. The following study involved administering an online questionnaire to a sample of 679 Portuguese students, mostly between the ages of 17 and 18. The aim was to characterize their media access and use in their final year of compulsory education, to determine their knowledge of the media, as well as their analysis, interpretation and production competences, which were placed on a three-level scale of media literacy. Findings suggest that knowledge is at a basic level, in most cases at the lowest level of the scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic expectations are an important variable in the explanation of adaptation and academic success in higher education. This paper uses latent profile analysis as a person-centered statistical approach to classify students into groups of similar types of expectations for higher education, at the beginning of the first year in university. Participants were 2,478 first-year Portuguese students. Based on the scores of seven dimensions of expectations, we identified six classes of students. Most students (84%) presented moderate levels of expectations, while 8% and 4%, respectively, reported very high and low expectations. One class represented a group of students (4%) with high expectations for the quality of education and for political engagement and citizenship and lower expectations for social interaction and attending to social pressures. Male and older students showed more positive expectations. Students from privileged family backgrounds are more likely to present higher expectations for political engagement and citizenship experiences, and lower expectations for social interaction and leisure and attending to social pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to present a study on the use of narratives (legends) in the teaching of History, seeking to highlight the potential of this pedagogical resource in the process of construction of historical knowledge and to investigate how this resource enhances the development of historical thinking in Portuguese students of 2nd year of schooling (6-7 years). The narratives (legends) produced by the students were subjected to an analysis of inductive content and categorized by levels of progression of ideas. The results showed that this type of resource can influence the structuring of students' historical thinking, as well as enhance their imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Meta: Avaliação is the property of Revista Meta: Avaliacao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Lusofona de Educacao is the property of Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, CEIEF and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Current research on achievement goals acknowledges that students can manifest different goal patterns. This study aimed to adapt and validate a self-report scale to assess the goal orientations of Portuguese students. A total of 2675 (age range 9–24 years) Portuguese students completed the Goal Orientations Scale (GOS). Through a cross-validation procedure, confirmatory factor analysis and descriptive statistics supports the existence of four different goal orientations: task, self-enhancing, self-defeating and avoidance orientations. The reliability and the internal validity estimates confirm that the GOS is an adequate instrument in assessing student goal orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bullying is a public health problem and this integrative review's aim was to assess the relationship between family context and the occurrence of such a phenomenon. Its original contribution is to broadly address this type of violence. The SPIDER strategy was used to develop the study, which was guided by the question: what is the role of the family in the development, perpetuation and prevention of bullying? The following databases were searched: PsycInfo and Lilacs, and the SciELO Virtual Library using the descriptors 1. bullying and family; 2. bullying and parents, and their correlates in Portuguese and Spanish. The studies' methodological quality was assessed according to level of evidence. A total of 27 papers published between 2009 and 2013 and written either in English, Spanish or Portuguese were included; the evidence found in the papers mostly ranged from strong to moderate. The analysis revealed most studies had a cross-sectional design and did not report the theoretical framework used. Aspects of the family context, sociodemographic characteristics and domestic violence, were associated with the involvement of students with bullying. Bullying requires intersectorial interventions and further studies are recommended to focus not only on individual characteristics of students but also on their contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Theories of Nuclear Concepts and Threshold Concepts, this paper aims at presenting the results of the cognitive structure of Portuguese students in years 9 (14-15 year-olds) and 12 (17-18 year-olds), concerning the notion of Probability. After having been taught the subject, 344 students were inquired in a first moment, and 325 in a second one. The Pathfinder Associative Networks (PFNETs) thus obtained led to identify the most relevant concepts in the students' conceptual framework, their respective organization and the possible relationship between the Theories of Nuclear Concepts and Threshold Concepts. The results show that both theories are useful tools to organize the teaching practice and a valuable and effective pedagogical framework, which should be taken into account in the teaching and learning processes of Probability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of large-scale international assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have attracted a considerable attention worldwide and are often used by policy-makers to support educational policies. To ensure that the published results represent the actual population, these surveys go through a thorough scrutiny to ensure their validity. One important issue that may affect the results is the occurrence of different participation rates across groups with heterogeneous average student scores. In this study, we illustrate how problems of representativeness of the samples may be corrected by the use of post-stratified weights. We use the case of Portugal, a country where we uncover a meaningful difference between the actual population and the PISA samples in terms of the distribution of students per grade and track of studies. We show that after post-stratification, the temporal evolution of the PISA scores is quite different from the one reported. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is growing evidence that transitions from education to work (and from work to education) can take place several times and occur at different points in an individual’s life cycle. This paper’s overall intention is to contribute to a deeper understanding of higher education graduates’ transitions between education and work shortly after graduation. This contribution draws on the secondary analysis of data collected throughout the employability surveys answered by master’s graduates from two universities (Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Tampere University) in different countries (respectively, Portugal and Finland). Aiming at advancing comparative analysis that enables to illustrate the diversity within Europe in this field, a theoretical framework that comprises societal factors, local constellations of institutional systems (in higher education and in the world of work) and individual agency is outlined. Aspects such as the occupational specificities of the degrees, the institutional reputation of the universities and segmentations of national labour markets are also considered in the analysis. Results suggest many similarities but also significant differences within the transitions experienced by master’s graduates from the two universities, reinforcing the idea that employability is the result of a complex set of factors and variables within a changing inter-relationship of higher education and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by reviewing European language education policies in higher education and relating these to the bottom-up language provision practices currently applied in higher education institutions. The paper then focuses on a case study at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) that sets out to identify students’ social representations concerning: (i) the importance of integrating foreign language courses into their degree/master/PhD programmes and (ii) the languages they consider to be more important in their academic training and the reasons for this. The findings indicate that the vast majority of responding students consider the integration of language courses in the curricula to be relevant from a doubly pragmatic perspective. Firstly, English is seen as a pathway to employability, mobility and the accessibility of knowledge, while other foreign languages (Spanish, French and German) are viewed as ‘differentiating assets’ in the professional marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the developmental trajectories of ability and trait emotional intelligence (EI) in the Portuguese secondary school. Within a three-wave longitudinal design, 395 students ( M = 15.4; SD = .74) completed both the Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire (ESCQ) and the Vocabulary of Emotions Test (VET). Results revealed that EI exhibited different developmental trajectories during late adolescence according to the type of measure used, while students' VET levels evidenced an increase during secondary school, their ESCQ levels remained stable during this period. Moreover, students' gender, verbal indicator, and type of school (public vs. private) have no significant effect on their rate of EI change, whereas students from lower sociocultural and lower professional status backgrounds demonstrated significantly greater increases on the ESCQ and VET compared to higher status adolescents. The results are examined in the context of adolescent emotional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, the authors present a framework for developing Intercultural Competence (IC) and use Tridimensional Digital Virtual Worlds (3DVW) as environments for developing Intercultural Competence. They developed an artifact, via Design Research, constituted by an educational method using the 3DVW Second Life® as the place for a virtual exchange program between 92 Brazilian and Portuguese master students. The results of the authors' study indicate that the 3DVW can be used for the development of IC because it allows rich experiential and relational/conversational learning opportunities, especially due to the affordances of immersion/sense of presence, social interaction, content production and knowledge sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the Balanced Measure of Psychological Needs Scale (BMPN) fitted a 5-factor structure distinguishing the three need factors of autonomy, competence and relatedness and the two method factors of need satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The current study explores the dimensionality and construct validity of the Portuguese version of the Balanced Measure of Psychological Needs (Sheldon & Hilpert, 2012) in two samples of high school students. We compared the original 5-factor model to three alternative models to assess the ability of each model to represent the factorial organization of the data. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded a good fit for solutions that separately modeled the satisfaction and frustration components of needs. The best-fitting solution of six factors, one per subscale, was supported in both high school samples, and was also shown by multigroup analysis to be invariant across gender. Regression analyses found that basic need satisfaction was related to subjective vitality and satisfaction with life (SWL) and need dissatisfaction predicted anxiety, depression and somatization. The substantive distinction between the satisfaction and frustration components of needs, and implications for educational settings, are discussed. Overall, the Portuguese BMPN appears to be reliable and valid to measure basic need satisfaction and need frustration for Portuguese high school students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main propose of this study is the cross-cultural validation of the Basic Psychological Needs in Physical Education Scale among Portugal and Brazil samples, through the study of measurement model invariance. Participated in this study, two independent samples, one with 616 Portuguese students, of the 2nd and 3rd basic grade of public school, aged between 9 and 18 years old and another with 450 Brazilian students, from 1st, 2nd and 3rd middle grade of public and private school, aged between 14 and 18 years old. The results support the suitability of the model (three factors, each one with four items), showing an adequate fit to the data in each sample (Portugal: χ2 = 203.8, p = .001, df = 51, SRMR = .062, NNFI = .926, CFI = .943, RMSEA = .070, RMSEA 90% IC = .060-.080; Brazil: η2 = 173.7, p = .001, df = 51, SRMR = .052, NNFI = .940, CFI = .954, RMSEA = .073, RMSEA 90% IC = .061-.085), as well valid cross-cultural invariance among Portuguese e Brazilian samples (ΔCFI ≤ .01). Those findings allow us to conclude that scale can be used to measure the basic psychological needs in physical education in Portugal and in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed the psychometric properties and the factor structure of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS)—Portugal HE Form with 406 graduate students and explored the relationship between career adaptability, work experience, extracurricular activities and work transition. The analysis allows us to conclude that CAAS can be a valid and useful measurement for assessing career adaptability in Portuguese graduates. The differential analysis evidenced that participants with student worker status and with work experiences reported displayed higher scores on the subscales of control and curiosity, respectively. No statistical differences emerged regarding experience of extracurricular activities. Also, participants who referred to anticipating difficulties in work transition scored significantly lower on the subscales of control than did their peers who do not anticipate difficulties in such transitions. The obtained results support the importance of considering practical experiences and fostering career adaptability during higher education studies as a way to help graduates manage the transition to professional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on adult writers has shown that writing proceeds through bursts of transcription activity interspersed by long pauses. Yet few studies have examined how these writing behaviors unfold during early and middle childhood. This study traces the progress of bursts, pauses, transcription, and written composition in Portuguese students from Grade 2 to 7 and tests whether bursts and pauses are related to transcription, to writing fluency, and to text quality across grades and two genres (narrative vs. opinion essay). We found that increasingly automaticity of transcription allowed for more efficient composing processes, as reflected in longer bursts, shorter pauses, and greater fluency. Regardless of grade and genre, more automatic transcription contributed to longer bursts, which along with shorter pauses contributed to higher writing fluency and text quality. These results provide useful information on children’s language bursts and pauses, which may support the assessment and further training of their writing skills. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present study investigated male perceptions and personal experiences of ‘unwanted attention’ (UA), as well as possible associations between perceptions and personal experiences of UA. Ninety-one male college students, from five Portuguese universities, were asked to indicate which of a continuum of 47 behaviours represented UA. Although UA, stalking and harassment are rarely addressed in Portugal, male college students shared a clear understanding of what behaviours constituted UA, with the identification of four main categories of UA behaviours: ‘aggressive’, ‘threatening’, ‘classic’ and ‘dysfunctional attachment’. Almost all participants (96%) reported personal experiences of at least one UA behaviour. There was a minimal relationship between perceptions and personal experiences of the individual behaviours. The findings highlight the widespread risk of male victimisation and the need to legitimise male complaints. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Portugal, the massive expansion and diversification of higher education has led to a large and diverse student population. This has impacted on the complexity of the higher education learning environment and has implications for the teaching and learning activities. Thus, the current study examines Portuguese introductory accounting students' motives, expectations and preparedness for higher education. In general, Portuguese students of introductory accounting seem to value a mix of motives relating to intellectual growth, career focus and self-development aspects. The results also suggest that accounting students seem to value the study of accounting more than non-accounting students, yet, they appear to be less prepared to work independently than the rest of the students. In addition, the female students seem to feel more prepared to face higher education requirements and responsibilities than the male students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study aims to gather construct- and criterion-related validity evidence for the Test of Listening Comprehension of Narrative Texts (TLC-n) and the Test of Listening Comprehension of Expository Texts (TLC-e), each composed of a vertically scaled form for Portuguese students from the first to fourth grades of primary school. A sample of 1342 students and a sample of 1168 students participated in the study of the TLC-n and TLC-e forms' dimensionality, respectively. Two hundred and eighty students participated in the criterion-related validity study of the tests. Confirmatory factorial analyses were performed for the study of the test forms' dimensionality. To collect criterion-related validity evidence, Pearson correlations with measures of listening and reading related skills were calculated. Results provide evidence of an acceptable fit for the one-factor solution, for all forms, and statistically significant correlations between the test forms and the external criteria measures. There is evidence for the validity of the test forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflections from the doctoral thesis 'Learning History with a meaning in life: Historical awareness of Brazilian and Portuguese students' are provided. The thesis was presented at the Faculty of Education of the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, in 2011, after a brief period at the Universidade do Minho in Braga, Portugal. The narratives of Brazilian and Portuguese high school students developed through the interpretation of textbooks dealing with the "transfer of the Portuguese royal family to the Portuguese colony of Brazil in 1808" are compared. The material analyzed by theories on Historical Education from German, British, Portuguese and Brazilian authors, provided a typology for meaning-giving historical narratives for the temporal orientation of the groups studied, or rather, on the historical awareness of the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current analysis is a segment in the investigation for the doctoral thesis titled 'The Teaching of History in the First Cycle of Basic Education: The concept of historical time in children and the contexts for their development' (Solé, 2009), undertaken with children of the 1st CBE (6 - 10 years) in a school in the north of Portugal. The study was conducted with two groups, namely, 1st and 2nd years (24 students) and 3rd and 4th years (25 students) throughout two scholastic years. Current investigation lies within the investigation mode of interpretation, predominantly qualitative (Erickson, 1986) and may be considered a longitudinal case study (Yin, 2003) since it describes the learning and understanding process of historical time by children between the 1st and 4th year of two groups during two years. Following typology by Stake (2000), it may be called an instrumental case study since it shows how children develop the concept of time and the difficulties experienced in the process of teaching/learning and to understand how learning occurs through several strategies and procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effects of the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) for opinion essay writing among 380 eighth grade students in six urban middle schools in a major city in Portugal. Fourteen teachers in six urban middle schools in Portugal participated in the present study; 7 of these teachers participated in practice-based professional development (PBPD) in SRSD before implementation, and follow-up support once instruction began. Schools were matched in pairs based on SES and teacher characteristics; a member of each pair was randomly assigned to either: (a) teacher led SRSD instruction for opinion essay writing; or (b) teacher implementation of the schools’ existing curriculum and language program prescriptions for opinion writing. Students in the experimental schools were taught strategies for planning and composing opinion essays once a week in 45 min sessions, over a three-month period. Multilevel modeling for repeated measures indicated SRSD instructed students made statistically greater gains in composition elements than the comparison students immediately after instruction and two months later. Teachers implemented SRSD with fidelity and teachers and students rated the intervention favorably. This study provides initial evidence for replication of the effects of PBPD and SRSD outside of the United States. Limitations, lessons learned, and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation aimed to develop and collect psychometric data for two tests assessing listening comprehension of Portuguese students in primary school: the Test of Listening Comprehension of Narrative Texts (TLC-n) and the Test of Listening Comprehension of Expository Texts (TLC-e). Two studies were conducted. The purpose of study 1 was to construct four test forms for each of the two tests to assess first, second, third and fourth grade students of the primary school. The TLC-n was administered to 1042 students, and the TLC-e was administered to 848 students. The purpose of study 2 was to test the psychometric properties of new items for the TLC-n form for fourth graders, given that the results in study 1 indicated a severe lack of difficult items. The participants were 260 fourth graders. The data were analysed using the Rasch model. Thirty items were selected for each test form. The results provided support for the model assumptions: Unidimensionality and local independence of the items. The reliability coefficients were higher than .70 for all test forms. The TLC-n and the TLC-e present good psychometric properties and represent an important contribution to the learning disabilities assessment field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading comprehension assessments are important for deter-mining which students are performing below the expected levels for their grade's normative group. However, instruments measuring this competen-cy should also be able to assess students' gains in reading comprehension as they move from one grade to the next. In this paper, we present the construction and calibration process of three vertically scaled test forms of an original reading comprehension test to assess second, third and fourth grade students. A sample of 843 students was used. Rasch model analyses were employed during the following three phases of this study: (a) analysis of the items' pool, (b) item selection for the test forms, and (c) test forms' calibration. Results suggest that a one dimension structure underlies the da-ta. Mean-square residuals (infit and outfit) indicated that the data fitted the model. Thirty items were assigned to each test form, by selecting the most adequate items for each grade in terms of difficulty. The reliability coeffi-cients for each test form were high. Limitations and potentiabties of the developed test forms are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The material presented in this article reflects a preliminary study of the presence of foreign, and more specifically Portuguese, artists in the ambit of Spanish academic institutions during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The sample set bears witness to established and fruitful linkages, in the sphere of art education, between the two Crowns of the Iberian Penin - sula, especially starting with the reign of Ferdinand VI (1746-1759). It is rewarding to explore further these undeniably interesting ties of affinity and mutual creative influence, thus far little studied in their complexity. The issue to be addressed, ultimately, is the rather deeprooted ignorance of Spanish matters in the Portuguese context, and of Portuguese matters in the Spanish one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study is to understand the demographic, personal and situational determining factors leading to academic misconduct among undergraduate students by comparatively analyzing the differences among Economics and Business students and other major students. Two thousand four hundred ninety-two undergraduate students from different Portuguese Public Universities answered a questionnaire regarding their propensity to commit academic fraud, 640 of whom were Economics and Business students. Results concluded that Economics and Business students can be distinguished from others regarding the likelihood of copying from the other Major students. Younger students admit more readily to the possibility of cheating than older students. Results indicate a greater probability of acceptance of dishonest practices outside the area of Economics and Management and a greater probability of condemnation of improper practices by students of Economics and Management. This indicates that students of Economics and Management are aware that their behavior is incorrect and unacceptable; peer-pressure and the learning process itself constitute the main justifications provided by Economics and Business students for their fraudulent actions. Implications for this practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the school of nowadays enhances the social and emotional learning of the students? Within a qualitative exploratory study, twelve teachers' discourses were analysed, mainly females (75%), with ages between 32 and 57 years-old (M=44.3; SD=8.95), of which 50% teaches or have taught social and emotional learning courses, aiming to contribute to the understanding of school's role on the promotion of social and emotional skills in the secondary education. Using an open-ended questionnaire, designed specifically to this study, teachers' perceptions about the importance of these areas, the strategies used on their promotion and their perspective about the current curriculum modifications in the Portuguese context were explored. The data analysis was conducted using the NVivo 8.0. In general, although all the participants revealed an implicit recognition of the importance of this area and the investment in curricular and co-curricular strategies to approach it of the students, the social and emotional learning still requires redefinition and valorisation as a particular objective of the school's role in order to become a reality to all students. In that way, social and emotional learning can contribute to promote and anchor the student's cognitive development within a more harmonious global development framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]