Strategic Management of Distance Education Systems in Brazil and Portugal: about the educational flexibility

ABSTRACT:

This paper presents reflections on the principles of educational flexibility and their impact on the quality of teaching-learning proposals for Distance Education (DE). In this research, the Horizon Group ( Grupo Horizonte - Research and Study Group on Innovation in Education, Technologies and Languages) analyzes the space, time and curriculum organization , conceived as the founding elements of flexibility. Being qualiquantitative, the research adopted semi-structured interviews and virtual questionnaires to collect data. A comparative matrix was structured to analyze DE experiences in Brazil and Portugal in order to identify successful flexibility strategies in Portugal that could enrich Brazilian DE. We observed that the Portuguese and Brazilian DE experiences are still seeking greater malleability in the pedagogical model and both are searching for more knowledge on pedagogical flexibility: where (space), when (time) and how(curricular organization) teaching and learning takes place in cyberculture.

Keywords :
Educational flexibility; Space; Time; Curriculum; Digital technologies