Pupils’ voices about curricular structure and work after entering upper secondary education: echoes of the dichotomy between academic and vocational courses

• Autor(a) principal: Torres, Ana Cristina
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34632/investigacaoeducacional.2017.3437

The educative diversification and expansion of upper secondary education, coupled with the enlargement of compulsory schooling, has brought new challenges to curriculum development in schools. In spite of the growth of a consistent body of literature to support greater emphasis on the pupils’ voices in curricular practices, in Portugal, such emphasis only happened in the past year in an unprecedented macro level initiative, while at a micro level there are only few reports of experiences where such voices gain power in curricular decisions. This article reports a study of pupils’ voices at the entrance of upper secondary education with the main objective of describing their first impressions on the curricular structure and work of their courses, relating their perspectives with the different demands in the modalities of general/scientific-humanistic and vocational courses. Crossing data from six focus groups and a questionnaire, it was possible to verify that the pupils’ voices about the curricular structure and work of their courses echoes the persistent dichotomy between the curricular requirements of general/scientific-humanistic course and those of vocational courses, supporting the importance of implementing reforms that increase the coherence and flexibility of educational action in upper secondary education and give greater parity to the different educative pathways.