Portuguese rural teachers’ cultural competencies

• Autor(a) principal: Duarte, António
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Mesquita, Filipe Castro
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/62336
• topic: Cultural competencies; Rural culture; Rural education

Considering the cultural specificities of the rural area, cultural competencies of teachers who teach in this context are a critical facto of the quality of rural teaching and learning. This study aimed to assess the degree of mastery, valorisation and necessity of the cultural competencies of rural teachers in Portugal. A questionnaire on teachers' competencies and knowlwdge was given to a sample of rural teachers in Portugal who mostly teach in class with 12 to 14-year-old students. They responded to the questions on a subscale of cultural competencies. Their answers were analysed in terms of trends, variations and differences beween mastery and valorisation of competences. The overall results show that mastery of cultural competencies lies between low and medium (on the scale: none - low - medium - high) and valorisation tends to be significantly higher than mastery, located beween medium and high. The results confirm that cultural competencies are necessary for the rural teachers who answered the questionnaire. The teachers need to develop these skills (considering that report deficient mastery) through a specifically designed training programme.