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Training and educational practice of secondary school teachers in Lubango, Angola* * English version by José González-Monteagudo. Contact: monteagu@us.es

Abstract

This research aimed to describe and understand the educational and curricular practices of teachers of moral and civic education in secondary schools in the city of Lubango, Angola. The reason for the investigation lies in the fact that there are no studies that make reference to this theme in the context of Angola. This is a case study research, based on qualitative and interpretive approaches, which studies a real situation in its everyday context. It was carried out in secondary schools and had an intentional sample of 17 participants. The in-depth interview technique and content analysis were used to collect, process and interpret the data produced in the research process. The results show that educational practice is deficient and makes use of traditional teaching and the transmissive model, and it is carried out by teachers who, for the most part, do not have initial training, because the admission criteria only value academic qualifications. The continuous training they receive does not reflect the real difficulties faced by teachers and the work carried out by the school administration in monitoring school activities is little known. For good educational practice to exist, it is essential to invest in the specific training of teachers, in the internal and external evaluation of schools, in order to build more school infrastructure, equip it and give it good management in the face of the current challenges of education.

Teacher training; Educational practice; Teaching and learning models; Secondary schools; Moral and civic education

Resumo

Esta pesquisa visou a descrever e a compreender as práticas educativas e curriculares dos professores de educação moral e cívica, em escolas secundárias da cidade do Lubango, Angola. A razão da investigação reside no fato de não existirem trabalhos que fazem referência à essa temática no contexto de Angola. Esta é uma pesquisa de estudo de caso de natureza qualitativa, caráter descritivo e interpretativo, que estuda uma situação real em seu contexto cotidiano. A mesma foi realizada em escolas do ensino secundário e contou com a amostra intencional de 17 participantes. Para recolhimento, tratamento e interpretação da informação, foram utilizadas a técnica de entrevista em profundidade e a análise de conteúdo. Os resultados demonstram que a prática educativa é deficiente e faz recurso ao ensino tradicional e modelo transmissivo, sendo realizada por docentes que, na sua maioria, não têm a formação inicial, porque os critérios de admissão valorizam apenas as habilitações literárias. A formação contínua de que beneficiam não reflete as reais dificuldades dos docentes e é pouco notório o trabalho prestado pela administração escolar no acompanhamento das atividades escolares. Para existir boa prática educativa é fundamental investir na formação específica dos professores, na avaliação interna e externa das escolas, a fim de construírem-se mais infraestruturas escolares, apetrechá-las e atribuí-las uma boa gestão face aos desafios atuais da educação.

Formação de professores; Prática educativa; Modelos de ensino-aprendizagem; Escolas secundárias

Introduction

Angola is a country located in southern Africa, with an area of 1,246,700 square kilometers and an estimated population of 26 million inhabitants, 52% of them are women. It has 42 years of independence and 15 years of peace. It is a plurilingual country, where Portuguese is considered the official language, and there are other national languages, such as: Umbundu, Kimbundu, Kikongo, Nyaneka, Oshikwanyama, Fyote, Cokwe, Ngangela and others. The index of poverty is evaluated in 58,8% of the rural population, against 18,5% of the urban population.

The context of peace that Angola has experienced since 2002 has made a positive contribution to taking steps towards implementing the new educational reform, based on Law No 13/01, approved on 31 December 2001, aimed to improve the quality of the educational process. This fact allowed the continuous framing in the curricular plan of the educational system of more disciplines in the teaching-learning process, such as the discipline of moral and civic education, whose purpose is the formation of the person and training for citizenship, as key content of curriculum in secondary schools (ANGOLA, 2001).

Good educational practice by teachers can help students learn, build and appreciate values that make them more responsible, free and equal in rights. Such a practice will contribute significantly to good coexistence and learning, in view of the characteristics of today’s information society and of diversity, which is part of the globalised world. Angola is a country that has suffered many conflicts over the last decades. Therefore, there is a need to improve interpersonal relations and facilitate coexistence, peace and tolerance, within cultural diversity. This is why there was a need to introduce, in the curriculum, a new discipline called moral and civic education.

Educational reform is important for the teaching and learning process, because it aims to innovate and adapt teaching according to social, economic and scientific development. On this basis, in Angola, value education is now seen as a cross-cutting issue, since, in the light of the educational reform, the discipline is mandatory and is charged with making actual the challenge of enhancing both understanding and peaceful social spaces.

This study aimed to describe the training and educational practices carried out by secondary school teachers, starting from the experiences of the main actors in the educational process. This study may be of interest because it contributes to a more assertive view of the educational reality of teachers in their daily lives, in order to inspire innovation, training and appropriate teaching practice that contributes to improving the performance in the classroom and, consequently, the quality of teaching based on the cultural diversity of students. In this sense, Muñoz (2009)MUÑOZ, Juan. La formación del profesorado de educación secundaria: contenidos y aprendizajes docentes. Revista de Educación, Madrid, n. 350, p. 79-103, 2009. argues that research on teaching practice to improve the quality of the teaching-learning process should occupy a central place in the concern of teachers to promote hugh quality teaching and better guide learning.

Methodology

This investigation used the case study methodology that, according to Denzin and Lincoln (2013)DENZIN, Norman; LINCOLN, Yvonna. Las estratégias de investigación cualitativa. Tradução de Verónica de Iraola; Servanda de Hagen. 1. ed. Barcelona: Gedisa, 2013., is an active learning method, which starts from the description of a real situation in order to study this reality in its daily context. The method focuses on understanding the perception and opinion of people involved in research about the training and educational practice of teachers. The method is based on qualitative approach, because it generally avoids numbers and deals with interpretations of social reality (FLICK, 2013FLICK, Uwe. Métodos qualitativos na investigação científica. Lisboa: Monitor, 2013.).

Sampling is not probabilistic, and used the intentional sample, because of the fact of selecting participants who have the notion of the object of study, consisting of 17 participants, among them teachers, principals of secondary schools and school managers. In order for participants to join the project, we had to negotiate with them due to the implications of the research. Yáñez (2010)YÁÑEZ, Julián. The practice of innovation in education and our knowledge about it. Revista de Currículum y Formación del Profesorado, Granada, v. 14, n. 1, p. 1-5, 2010. warns that the relationship between teachers and researchers is not fluid. When one does not negotiate access to the field, incongruity results with different logic and misunderstanding.

Thus, it was crucial to safeguard the identity of participants by assigning them fictitious names, which contributed to good collaboration to the research. According to Banks (2010)BANKS, Marcus. Los datos visuales en investigación cualitativa. Madrid: Morata, 2010., there are other ways to ensure or protect identity in the case studies. It is necessary to know that the anonymity and identity of the participants can be ensured in the publications by the use of pseudonyms for people, institutions and places.

After the design and approval of the instruments, an in-depth interview was conducted with the aim of understanding the reality of the educational practice carried out in secondary schools. Thus, following the contribution of Goetz and Lecompte (2010)GOETZ, Judith; LECOMPTE, Margaret. Etnografía y diseño cualitativo en investigación educativa. Madrid: Morata, 2010., the data from the interviews were recorded and then transcribed. The written content was then presented to the participants, to ensure the reliability and validity of the data. However, Olabuénaga (2012)OLABUÉNAGA, José. Metodología de la investigación cualitativa. 5 ed. Bilbao: Deusto, 2012. points out that the data do not speak for themselves, thus we should make people talk, draw inferences and meanings.

For the analysis, treatment and interpretation of information, we used the technique of content analysis, whose objective is to classify, codify, analyse the content and build significant categories. Thus, it was essential to thoroughly investigate the content of the statements, organising and transforming the narratives resulting from the interviews into more significant categories of analysis (SIMONS, 2011SIMONS, Helen. El estudio de caso: teoría y práctica. Madrid: Morata, 2011.).

In Flick’s view (2015), the qualitative information in the case study is not closely associated with the generalisation of results. In order to make the statistical generalization under study with interviews, it should be based on a representative sample of the population in order to quantify the results. However, as an unrepresentative sample was used, Kvale (2011)KVALE, Steinar. Las entrevistas en investigación cualitativa. Madrid: Morata, 2011. recommends analytical generalization, as it provides knowledge of a study that can be used as a guide to what could happen in another case, depending on the similarity and difference between them.

Educational context in Lubango

During the colonial period in Angola, few Portuguese lived because it was considered a land of exile. To reverse the situation, Portugal created the conditions to attract Portuguese families to live in that territory, implementing education in 1845. Norton de Matos, the Portuguese leader, thought that teaching would help civilize the indigenous people, learning to speak, read and write Portuguese, doing the four arithmetic operations, giving them knowledge of the Angolan currency and some knowledge about hygiene. It was forbidden to speak other languages (LIBERATO, 2014LIBERATO, Ermelinda. Avanços e retrocessos da educação em Angola. Revista Brasileira de Educação, Rio de Janeiro, v. 19, n. 59, p. 1003-1031, 2014.).

In 1978, Angola adopted its education system, characterized essentially by greater opportunity for access to education and further studies, the expansion of free education and the permanent improvement of teaching staff. Research conducted in Africa on education, according to Sacco, Ferreira and Koller (2016), reports that armed conflicts have negatively influenced the education system in countries where there has been war. So Angola has not been an exception to this statement.

At the time of independence, most the Angolan population was illiterate, in the order of 85%. Thus, according to Helena (2014)HELENA, Rebeca. O ensino da história em Angola entre 1960 e 2012: evolução, formação de professores e cooperação internacional. 2014. Tese (Doutorado em História e Arqueologia) – Universidade do Porto, Lisboa, 2014., the government had to face several challenges due to the lack of teachers and the fact that leadership in the education sector is exercised by untrained leaders. Against this backdrop, the government had to rely on support from other countries to help, due to the massive extension of schools and the weak infrastructure network, without systematic and efficient school materials, programmes and curricula.

For Adra (2016)ADRA. Educação no orçamento geral do Estado. Luanda: Adra, 2016. Disponível em: <http://www.adra-angola.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Analise-ADRA_OGE-2016_Educacao.pdf>. Acesso em: 10 dez. 2016.
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, the number of pupils enrolled at all levels of education has now increased from 2.2 million in 2001 to 8 million in 2014. However, there are still strong asymmetries in their access, with 22% of school-age children outside the education system, both in urban and rural areas. This high number is due to the lack of schools, since the colonizer built schools in urban centres. In this context, children living in poor families have much lower levels of school participation, particularly in rural areas. Thus, the sector’s challenges were confirmed by the 2014 Census, which showed that the illiteracy rate remains high and stable in the country, estimated at 34%, with illiteracy rates of about 60% in rural areas.

Teacher training in Angola

The training of teachers in Lubango is an area of the education system that deserves special attention, since one of the main bottlenecks in the current education system, implemented since 1978, is the quality and quantity of the teaching staff. According to Molina (2012)MOLINA, Odiel. El profesor ante la formación de valores. Aspectos teóricos y prácticos. Revista TESI, Salamanca, v. 13, n. 3, p. 240-267, 2012., teacher training requires that the approach to complexity recovers a series of indispensable aspects in the construction of approaches that involve solving problems, explaining, arguing, collecting information and developing a strategy to solve a given problem in the various social contexts.

Currently, as Maria (2015)MARIA, Flores. Teacher learning and learning from teaching. Teachers and Teaching, London, v. 21, n. 1, p. 1-3, 2015. argues, the learning of teachers and the challenge of putting their knowledge into practice for the benefit of student growth have been the main problems associated with the constant need for professional development of the teacher in a broader sense, to contribute to the evolution of the school and quality of teaching.

We know that training teachers is related to the policies that each country implements in the field of educational development. In this perspective, the work of Kamus and Souza (2016) reflects the need to involve teachers as political subjects of the training, as it constitutes a challenge for the improvement of the quality of basic education. Thus, this formation was reserved to the Angolan State, but, due to the demand for education, it contributed to the opening up of private sector institutions. However, the worsening of teachers’ working conditions and the poor quality of the programs have stimulated debate among specialists, in order to explore new policies to improve working conditions, carry out curricular reforms and innovate programs for the teachers’ training process.

For Rodriguez, Armengol and Menezes (2017), it is generally part of the objectives of training proposals the possibility of transferring learning to professional practice in order to match the academic world with the world of work. On this basis, in order to carry out a complete training, as explained by Traibas (2008)TRAIBAS, Gemma. El nuevo perfil profesional del profesorado de secundaria. Revista Educación XXI, Madrid, n. 11, p. 183-209, 2008., it is necessary to have an interconnection between the knowledge related to the disciplinary, methodological, didactic and psychopedagogical areas. This interconnection between knowledge is what strongly contributes to the inseparable and interdependent relationship between theory and practice.

The structure of the Angolan education system, approved in 1977 and implemented in 1978, includes normal secondary education and primary teacher training, lasting four years. Other intermediate teacher training is called Teacher Overcoming Challenges and Accelerated Training, aimed to prepare teachers to work in primary education in a short time or in less than four years. Primary school teacher training centres (Magisterios) are institutions dedicated to the training of secondary level teachers to perform functions in primary schools and the 1st cycle of secondary education (ANGOLA, 2004ANGOLA. Ministério da educação. Currículo da formação de professores do 1º ciclo do ensino secundário. 1. ed. Luanda: Inide, 2004.).

Characterization of teacher training

The structure of the schools does not include the training of teachers for all subjects that correspond to the curriculum of the 1st cycle of secondary education. Many teachers, for example, of moral and civic education, visual and plastic education, physical education and labour education, are recruited without having the initial training. In many cases, no specific courses or seminars are held in the respective areas before they begin teaching. The results are many difficulties in the management of the formative process, which thus leads to a less desired output profile, if we compare the results and objectives defined by the Ministry of education (ANGOLA, 2014ANGOLA. Ministério da educação. Relatório de monitorização sobre educação para todos-exame nacional 2015 da educação para todos. Luanda: Inide, 2014.).

In these teacher training institutions, a very general, theoretical and abstract training is carried out, essentially dominated by prescriptive and descriptive approaches. The study conditions offered to pupils are characterised by the excessive number of pupils per class, the lack of laboratories and sports facilities, canteens, bookshops, the lack of school textbooks and standardised and structured programmes. The lack of regular inspection of these schools can contribute to or influence poor quality of the education system (ANGOLA, 2010ANGOLA. Ministério da educação. Relatório da fase de experimentação do ensino primário e do 1º ciclo do ensino secundário. Luanda: Inide, 2010.).

According to Silva Júnior and Gariglio (2014)SILVA JÚNIOR, Geraldo; GARIGLIO, José. Saberes da docência de professores da educação profissional. Revista Brasileira de Educação, Rio de Janeiro, v. 19, n. 59, p. 871-892, 2014., research on teacher training is linked to the professionalization of teaching and teaching, due to the commitment of researchers to clarify the nature of professional knowledge that would serve as a basis for teaching. In this regard, it would help governments to design national curriculum standards for teacher education, as well as the targets to be achieved by initial and continuing education centres.

Teacher training curriculum

For the teachers who are working, some have followed Teacher training for Secondary level, offered by the Ministry of education, as it exposes the Law of Bases nº13/2001, of the Educational System, that determines that the training of teachers of all the secondary education has to be made by Primary school teacher training centres (Magisterios) and Higher Education. In this training, the teacher student does not assume a posture of self-directed learning and independent commitment, since the curriculum used refers to a very compartmentalized and repetitive training (ANGOLA, 2004ANGOLA. Ministério da educação. Currículo da formação de professores do 1º ciclo do ensino secundário. 1. ed. Luanda: Inide, 2004.).

Thus, it is planned that teachers attend initial training in the following specialties: French, English, Portuguese, mathematics and physics, history and geography, biology and chemistry, visual and plastic education and physical education. It is worth noting that the implementation of this curriculum plan is not mandatory at the level of the whole country, since it depends on the conditions of each context, which has the function of implementing the courses in the specialty where there are conditions for this.

Regarding the specificity of this research, the teacher training schools, based in Lubango, do not provide teacher training for the disciplines of visual and plastic education, labour education and moral and civic education.

Teachers in the Angolan context

The definition of teacher, according to the Angolan legislation that regulates the normal training subsystem, considers teachers to be technicians trained in primary and secondary level teacher training schools, who are qualified to carry out teaching activities in primary or secondary schools. Thus, in addition to the definition of teachers, the status of education agents is also clarified: technicians trained in other schools, which are not teacher training, and who teach in primary or secondary schools (ANGOLA, 2011).

In this perspective, the teacher is considered as the one who teaches and organizes practical work and collaborates in research. In the context of Angola, the teacher of moral and civic education, visual and plastic education, and labour education, is the individual recruited to work in the education sector to teach that subject in secondary school. Even if the candidate does not have the initial training, the selection criteria are the candidate’s academic qualifications, with a minimum requirement of 9th grade, regardless of whether it is the result of general or professional training.

Barrón (2015) considers that the teacher is a subject who makes decisions and makes judgments based on his or her beliefs. Decision-making allows for the analysis of the interactive moments experienced during teaching practice with the aim of innovating for the smooth running of the educational process.

Educational practice

In the educational panorama, we can understand the practice as a praxis that implies knowledge to achieve a certain goal, because the practice refers to knowing how to do. Thus, we have educational theory as a formal knowledge existing or produced regarding education and educational practice as the activity of teaching and educating that is developed in schools (ÁLVAREZ, 2012ÁLVAREZ, Carmen. La relación teoría-práctica en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Educativo Siglo XXI, Múrcia, v. 30, n. 2, p. 383-402, 2012.).

For Hernández et al. (2013)HERNÁNDEZ, Claudia et al. Prácticas educativas y creencias de profesores de secundaria pertenecientes a escuelas de diferentes contextos socioeconómicos. Perfiles Educativos, Coyoacán, v. 35, n. 139, p. 1-20, 2013., educational practice, whose fundamental function is to reconstruct and reinvent human existence, consists of a set of social and pedagogical actions, organized in specific times and spaces, which allows teaching and learning. In the work of García, Loredo and Carranza (2008) is patent the action that the teacher develops in class, referring specifically to the process of teaching in an institutional context, considering the school, the student who learns and goes in search of their knowledge, so it presupposes transformations in the process. This is based not only on teaching, but also on learning.

Juan et al. (2015)JUAN, Núñez et al. The relationship between teacher’s autonomy support and students’ autonomy and vitality. Teachers and Teaching, London, v. 21, n. 2, p. 191-202, 2015. state that the analysis of educational practices should be performed through the events that result from the interaction between teachers and students. Since students› behaviour and feelings depend on social factors, such as the teacher›s attitude, the environment it creates in the classroom is an essential element to motivate and develop students› emotions.

Teaching models

There are several teaching models, among which the traditional one that, for Geijo (2008)GEIJO, Pedro. Estilos de aprendizaje: pautas metodológicas para trabajar en el aula. Revista Complutense de Educación, Madrid, v. 19, n. 1, p. 77-94, 2008., is centred on the transmission and reception of knowledge and the corresponding visions of considering students as a blank page. From this perspective, science is considered as a set of absolute and unquestionable knowledge, that the teacher deposits in the empty head of students. These, in turn, passively internalize and reproduce when required in exercises or exams to measure the level of content acquisition.

The constructivist model, according to Werneck (2006)WERNECK, Vera. Sobre o processo de construção do conhecimento: o papel do ensino e da pesquisa. Ensaio, Rio de Janeiro, v. 14, n. 51, p. 173-196, 2006., maintains that learning would result from a process of individual construction of the subject from his or her internal representations and personal interpretation. This model states that the student should be active in the construction of his or her knowledge and understand each phase of the process, perceive the links that exist between them and incorporate that content as his or her own.

In addition to these styles, the cooperative learning that, in the view of Navarro et al. (2015)NAVARRO, Ignasi et al. Aprendizaje de contenidos académicos y desarrollo de competencias profesionales mediante prácticas didácticas centradas en el trabajo cooperativo y relaciones multidisciplinares. Revista de Investigación Educativa, Murcia, v. 33, n. 1, p. 99-117, 2015., is defined as a form of group work based on the collective construction of knowledge and development of skills that contribute to personal and social learning, in which each member of the group is responsible for his or her learning and that of other members of the group.

School administration and its function

According to Ayala, Molina and Prieto (2012), for educational success to exist, it is necessary that the school administration take relevant measures in order to achieve the objectives. It should articulate deliberations regarding the organisation of schools, curricula and teacher training, taking into account the real possibilities that they can offer for achieving the objectives of teaching. To this end, according to Fernández and Hernández (2013)FERNÁNDEZ, José; HERNÁNDEZ, António. Liderazgo directivo e inclusión educativa Estudio de casos. Perfiles Educativos, Coyoacán, v. 35, n. 142, p. 27-41, 2013., it is essential that the school administration uses a shared and collaborative leadership model, capable of contributing to good educational practices in schools, since it fosters implication, collaboration and democratic participation in the way it acts.

Thus, the quality of teaching, according to Mulford (2006)MULFORD, Bill. Leadership for improving the quality of secondary education: some international developments. Revista de currículum y formación del profesorado, Granada, v. 10, n. 1, p. 1-22, 2006., also depends on the leadership and accountability that teachers use in the workplace. Hence the need to understand the work done by leaders in secondary schools to select and adopt, among the various types of leadership, the one that best contributes to an inclusive education.

According to Ricardo (2012)RICARDO, Ângelo. A natureza política da gestão escolar e as disputas pelo poder na escola. Revista Brasileira de Educação, Rio de Janeiro, v. 17, n. 49, p. 159-174, 2012., the school administration seeks to ensure that its ways of understanding the institution and its objectives prevail over those of other subjects participating in the educational process and lead them to act in accordance with the purposes recommended by the school board. Fernández, Rodríguez and Fernández (2016) state that teaching competence is the integrated set of personal characteristics, knowledge, skills and attitudes that are necessary for an effective performance in the teaching-learning process in various contexts. In order to achieve this goal, there is a need for the school administration to assess the skills of teachers to find arguments that allow them to make pertinent value judgments for the development of curriculum designs and their application in pre-service and in-service teacher training.

In short, the school administration also has the function of controlling or managing the school institution, to ensure the definition and fulfillment of the ideals on which the management process was built, which is a process of seeking, competing, winning and socializing the supervision of this decision control that each school follows during its operation.

Educational context in Lubango

The city of Lubango has a surface area of 3,140 square kilometres and an estimated population of 731,575 inhabitants. According to data from the provincial directorate of education in the province of Huíla, mentioned by the Angop website, the 2016 school year had 850,000 students enrolled in the 1,826 existing schools, with 18,195 teachers, a number still insufficient to meet the demand of students and schools in the region, hence there is a deficit that is estimated at around 3,094 teachers. The municipality of Lubango has 199,514 students, of whom 48,313 are enrolled in 21 first cycle secondary schools, in a process ensured by 7,176 teachers in the municipalities of Arimba, Hoque, Huíla and Quilemba.

The work is carried out in a difficult environment, because there are problems of sanitation in secondary schools, lack of water, energy, textbooks, lack of more classrooms, paper, chalkboard, writing board, among others. Some difficulties have been minimized with the money resulting from the quarterly mandatory payment for co-participation, required from the families of the students. Many of these families, without financial resources, are unhappy with this system of co-participation, because such an initiative is local and did not result from an orientation from the Ministry of Education.

Results and discussion

In a narrative way, we express the results of the qualitative approach, systematized in several categories, with descriptions of the most significant subjects, which we present in the following categories:

Teaching methods

It is a category that aimed to identify the most prevalent teaching methods during lessons. Thus, it was evident that secondary school teachers continue to use the expository method and the transmissive model, and are justified in these terms:

[...] today, the teacher continues to use the expository method frequently and there is no recourse to new technologies; we need to rethink the classroom. (Tchissingui, interview, teacher, 02/05/2015).

We need to rethink the classroom, curricula, skills, competence... we need to innovate and continue to carry out reforms. It is necessary to be honest and to rethink education to improve and not always evoke war as a justification. (Interview, director 1, 12/10/2015).

We also use the traditional models, we need to follow the dynamics in order to have a good educational development. (Ndala, interview, teacher, 20/04/2015).

Teachers need to learn methodological knowledge in order to carry out meaningful learning. To this end, it is necessary to change methods and to rely in some cases on information and communication technologies which, for Rodríguez (2015), when well used, contribute to transforming and developing competence in various fields of knowledge through practical interactions. Thus, for Maria (2015)MARIA, Flores. Teacher learning and learning from teaching. Teachers and Teaching, London, v. 21, n. 1, p. 1-3, 2015., it is necessary to put knowledge into practice for the transformation or benefit of student growth and contribute to the evolution of the school and the quality of teaching.

Educational practice

This dimension aimed to describe the way in which the educational practice of teachers of moral and civic education is carried out, which was characterized by the participants with the following arguments:

Educational practice is not good, it is essential to make efforts to improve, because there is still an archaic relationship between the teacher and the student, using the methods of transmission of content. Without using the most active methods, there is no use of new technologies. (Director 2, interview, 12/10/2015).

The educational practice is reasonable, there are some factors that are at the basis of these actions and among which we have to highlight: the attitude of both the teacher and the school leadership that do little for educational success. We don’t have many qualified teachers, because we had to go with those who showed up in order not to close the schools. We need competent trainers, sufficient inspectors and supervisors because, in reality, the work that they do in observance of the teaching and non-teaching component of the teachers is not felt. (Responsible 1, interview, 04/11/2015).

It is necessary to improve teachers’ performance during the educational practice and school leadership should play its role in supervising all school activities. According to Maureira, Moforte and González (2014), school leadership and the school climate are factors that generate favourable conditions to achieve good results in educational projects.

Leadership style

It is an indicator that consisted in identifying the flow of interpersonal relationships in the educational process. Thus, in relation to this category, we can also see the predominance of authoritarian leadership over others, as can be perceived in the following expressions: “Here in the classroom, I am in charge, that the bothered people leave, because I did not call anyone to come to school” (Makeyeye, interview, teacher, 08/05/2015). “Those who are uncomfortable with what I’m saying, I ask you to leave class [...] in the classroom, the teachers are in charge.” (Mutango, interview, teacher, 29/04/2015). Or, as the other one says: “wait your turn to be sent outside of the classroom” (Ndinelau, interview, teacher, 20/04/2015).

Authoritarianism predominates, hindering interpersonal relationships during learning. The work of Mulford (2006)MULFORD, Bill. Leadership for improving the quality of secondary education: some international developments. Revista de currículum y formación del profesorado, Granada, v. 10, n. 1, p. 1-22, 2006. states that the success and quality of school activities also depend on the leadership and accountability of teachers in the workplace. Hence the need to understand the leadership implemented by teachers and school principals so that there is good educational practice, dynamic, innovative in the actions to be undertaken, in the methods and strategies of learning that favour collaboration between all those responsible for the process.

Initial teacher training

This category aimed to characterise teacher training. The results show that there are teachers without initial training to teach the subjects with which they currently work and were justified in the following ways:

In fact, most teachers do not have pedagogical aggregation or initial teacher training for this purpose, since they have not been a criterion for becoming teachers. We recognise that many have low levels of education and no good qualifications. But we had to start the studies for the new generation with the teachers we got; it’s better to continue like this than to close the schools for lack of teachers. (Interview, responsible 1, 04/11/2015).

There was no time to train teachers, so most teachers do not have the training needed to teach Civic and Moral Education, because there is no specialisation in the teacher training course that would help to work specifically with this dimension of knowledge. (Nzunzi, interview, teacher, 17/08/2015).

Although there is no official data at national level on teachers without initial training, it is clear in this sample that something is not going well. After all, one is not too concerned about the percentage of teachers without initial training because those responsible consider this element irrelevant to being a teacher. Proof of this is that anyone with the required academic level, with or without initial teacher training, can be a teacher. Therefore, Caloia and Barboza (2014)CALOIA, Francisco; BARBOZA, Jussara. Formação de professores em Angola: o perfil do professor do ensino básico. Revista EccoS, São Paulo, n. 33, p. 125-142, 2014. argue that quality in teacher education can be understood in the sense of that which fits the real needs of teachers, depending on the diversity of evolving social and professional contexts and which has repercussions on the quality of the teaching-learning process.

The teacher and the continuation of the studies

In this dimension, the reality in which teachers live is described: it is noticeable that they go through many difficulties created by the management team of the school for the student worker, hence the teachers appeal to the common sense of school leaders to give importance to the continuous academic improvement of teachers, as we can verify in these excerpts:

The school management gives poor help to the teacher who is being trained, and sometimes does not even allow teachers to study, even to the point of being saddened by the fact, instead of rejoicing; perhaps they think that teachers will have more knowledge than they do. When they learn that there are teachers to study, they create problems and become more authoritarian. I was only able to study under the influence of someone who stood up for me. (Ndinelau, interview, teacher, 20/04/2015).

Unfortunately, the direction of the school did not help, so I stopped studying because of that; when they realized that we were studying, they received our schedules and exchanged with other teachers who were teaching in the opposite period and who were not studying. They gave us other schedules that, by the way, matched our study schedule. When I tried to complain, the director said I should choose an option between working and studying. So I just dropped out of school and my colleague chose to stop working. (Cassinda, interview, teacher 22/10/2015).

It is crucial that the school administration stops preventing the training of teachers and begins to encourage training, because, according to García and García (2009), teacher training aims to provide professionals not only with technical skills to teach, but also appropriate research skills for the analysis of the consequences of what they are doing in relation to students, school and society, aimed at well-being. However, regarding this dimension, the school principals, justifying their perspective, argued the following:

There is no protection policy as such for the teacher to continue studying. We have simply demanded that there should be more non-university teachers in the schools, because those who study end up being very much absent from the workplace. First it’s work, and if there’s space, you can study. (Interview, director 3, 18/11/2015).

We do not have a facilitating law for teachers to increase their knowledge; allied to the lack of vacancies in these institutions, we rely on the worker - student and not student - worker norm, so as not to harm students, but we have teachers studying at the most varied levels. (Interview, director 2, 18/11/2015).

Teacher Admission Criteria

We seek to identify the profile of teachers admitted to education. In this sense, the results reveal that the criteria for recruiting teachers are problematic, valuing academic rather than professional training, as narrated by the participants in their testimonies:

We looked for those who showed up, but who did not have the academic skills to be able to ensure the teaching process itself... It was necessary for the schools not to close. (Interview, responsible 1, 04/11/2015).

They are admitted from the eighth or twelfth class in front; the law does not specify the type of formation, if it is professional or general, being able, thus, to serve for teacher: the veterinarian, the locksmith or the mason, since it has the training qualifications demanded. (Nhama, interview, teacher, 03/11/2015).

As may be expected, the teaching-learning process may be affected in terms of quality, as the initial training component is indispensable for meaningful learning for learners. On this basis, Larrosa (2010)LARROSA, Faustino. Vocación docente versus profesión docente en las organizaciones educativas. Revista Electrónica Interuniversitaria de Formación del Profesorado, Zaragoza, v. 13, n. 4, p. 43-51, 2010. points out that not all people serve for this profession, hence the need to select teachers with an appropriate profile, competent, able to dedicate themselves to the profession with good ethical performance. Díez (2014)DÍEZ, Enrique. La práctica educativa intercultural en secundaria. Revista de Educación, Madrid, n. 363, p. 12-34, 2014. adds that when teachers are not well prepared to work with diversity, conflicts, disability and frustration can arise, because they do not know how to deal with a heterogeneous reality, hence the need for specific training for teachers.

Planning school activities

This category was based on describing and characterizing the planning activities of teachers in the exercise of their profession. The results reveal that some teachers plan classes, while others improvise:

The coordination meetings or the planning are poorly done (in a short period of two hours maximum), considered insufficient to plan the classes for two weeks or one month. In some cases, teachers bring only the books... They pay little attention to the actual preparation of lessons, so teachers have many difficulties during the lesson and this is due to a lack of commitment. (Interview, director 1, 12/10/2015).

Also during the lesson planning meeting, there is no consultation and overcoming of possible difficulties of teachers on how to approach these issues, as referred to below:

It does not open moments for exchanging experiences, on how to approach certain themes that may offer more difficulties or degree of complexity; it does not plan among teachers who teach the same subject and class, which would facilitate the debate among colleagues. (Mutango, interview, teacher, 29/04/2015).

We know that the planning of activities is indispensable to achieve the objectives, because the programs present the contents and objectives, but do not detail how to work with students on these subjects. In this perspective, the planning of school activities, in the thinking of García-Valcárce; Basilotta; Lópes (2014), requires a more rigorous preparation to work well with groups of colleagues about the strategies and techniques to be implemented during classes, depending on the context in which students are submitted. The lesson plans, according to Elliott (2010)ELLIOTT, John. El estudio de la enseñanza y del aprendizaje: una forma globalizadora de investigación del profesorado. Revista Interuniversitaria de Formación del Profesorado, Zaragoza, v. 68, n. 24, p. 223-242, 2010., help to establish which essential aspects of the subject the students must understand, taking into account their particular difficulties in understanding the phenomena. It is the basis for teaching practice and helps to decide, predict, select, choose, organise, evaluate and reflect on the teaching-learning process before, during and after the action.

The context of secondary schools

We know that the school is an infrastructure that provides appropriate space for the teacher and the student, to work together, in order to make possible access to higher education. However, they are characterised by several facets, as noted by the following participants:

Indoor schools mostly have open-air classrooms, they have less quality than urban schools, because the former, mostly, are open-air, without walls. With classes very close to each other, in some rooms the divisions are made at the base of the naturally existing trees or by divisions made with zinc sheets; some classes work in the tents and others under the trees. (Interview, responsible 2, 04/11/2015).

Schools in urban centres have more material conditions and infrastructure compared to schools in the rural areas, but there are also rooms under trees that are of poorer quality as a result of scarce resources, both material and human. (Interview, director 2, 18/11/2015).

Schools lack acceptable conditions for success and meaningful learning. In order to reverse the situation, in the view of Rivas, Leite and Cortes (2015), the school should be a priority place for the training of students, which responds to all the agents involved in the teaching-learning process. Therefore, Peleato (2010)PELEATO, Irene. Implicaciones educativas del contacto entre culturas. Revista TESI, Salamanca, v. 11, n. 3, p. 302-305, 2010. warns teachers who need a good educational practice, should demand a more equipped, democratic school, with development of programs and strategies that ensure attention to the diversity currently existing in schools.

Teachers’ difficulties

Teachers face difficulties of various kinds, as we can see in the thought expressed by the participants in the following narratives:

We did not have an initial training of teachers; curricular reform was introduced without first training the teacher to do so... the difficulties have to do with the distance that exists between the subjects we teach and those in which we are trained. For example, I’m a teacher of Labour Education and CME, but I’ve graduated in economics and legal sciences... it’s hard to fit in. (Mutango, interview, teacher, 29/04/2015).

We still continue to transmit the contents and concepts, but the experience of the themes addressed during the lesson is a headache. Teachers are concerned with teaching what is right, fair and advised to the student, but the student, when leaving school for home, faces situations opposite to what he or she learned in school [...] I find it difficult to combine theory with practice in the field of moral and civic education and teaching-learning models. (Catumbo, interview, teacher, 14/04/2015).

Faced with this situation, García and García (2009) claim that it is necessary to monitor teachers in their professional development processes and know how they act in class, what they do, how they live their work and describe the characteristics of concrete cases that happen during the class both with the teacher and with the student. Since good practices are not perfect, they need planning to improve the quality of teaching.

Conclusion

The understanding of the educational practice of secondary school teachers in Lubango was made on the basis of reflection on the characteristics it presents. Thus, with regard to the educational practice carried out by teachers of moral and civic education, this is considered deficient, since it mentions the traditional teaching and transmissive model, because the teachers do not use the active methods, nor the information and communication technologies that allow good participation of students during class.

Most teachers do not have the initial training because the educational reform was implemented before the teachers were trained. As a result, it is necessary to train and admit competent teachers to cover the national education network. Teachers need continuous and innovative training because of the difficulties resulting from the educational practice carried out in some secondary schools without favourable conditions. The work done by the school administration, supervision and inspection is not well known, as they do not adequately monitor the school activities carried out by teachers and do not help them to overcome difficulties. However, supervision and inspection are crucial to the success of school activities, so they must function as a team because they contribute to guiding and improving the work that teachers do before, during and after school.

School leaders need training to stop being authoritarian and act as democratic and collaborative managers in the face of school challenges. Hence the need for further readjustments of educational policies to ensure the sustainability of teachers’ educational practice, valuing innovative training, increase the budget for the education sector, in order to make investments in school infrastructures and resources. Therefore, it is essential to implement external and internal evaluations of schools in order to understand their real state and help in the development or updating of educational policy, in order to seek changes to improve the quality of education and its influence on the lives of citizens of Angolan society.

This research does not provide with generalized results due to the selected methodology and sample. Therefore, future research is needed in the educational field. It is necessary to encourage the production of knowledge in the Angolan context, to understand and improve the system of education, management, training and educational practice of teachers, considering the current challenges of the globalizing world and continuously seek international exchange.

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Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    20 May 2019
  • Date of issue
    2019

History

  • Received
    22 Feb 2018
  • Reviewed
    24 Apr 2018
  • Accepted
    13 June 2018
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