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A movement of educational change has been developed in Portugal, aiming at giving the schools a larger autonomy in curricular decisions. In reconceiving the view about the curriculum, the concept of “competence” plays a central role while the process of innovation constitutes a major aspect. This movement is described and analysed, in particular by discussing the notion of competence and the characteristics of the process of curriculum development. A special focus is on the way in which mathematical competence for all may be interpreted and how it is related to developments in mathematics education. The analysis of obstacles emerging in a large-scale educational change may be relevant for discussion in an international context and offers some suggestions for future research and debate. 1. New trends in the Portuguese educational system The evolution and recent developments of the Portuguese educational system in the last two decades, as well as the related perspectives on the curriculum, and on the mathematics curriculum in particular, raise some issues that might be of general interest for reflection and discussion. 1.1. The context: some contradictory aspects In 1974, when we could finally restore the democracy after 48 years of a dictatorship, the extension of compulsory education up to 6 years of school – instead of the old and traditional primary school of 4 years – was a recent fact. This hardly reflected the reality in the poorest regions of the country. Illiteracy was very high among adult population. It was only in 1986 that a new general law for education fixed compulsory school attendance for all 6-15 year olds (that is, a “basic school” of nine years). In fact, we had to wait almost for the end of the twentieth century to see practically all our children and youngsters of those ages in our classrooms. At the same time, it was only after 1995 that pre-school education became a new reality, finally involving in 2000 the large majority of children of the 3-5 age level. As a result of its rapid and original development, in particular due to the fact that its basis was partly designed during a sort of “revolutionary” period, this educational system has some characteristics that may be seen as contradictory. On the one hand, we have a number of very “advanced” laws and regulations. In our system, there is a comprehensive and “inclusive” basic school of nine years for all, similar to the Scandinavian traditional organisation, and a secondary education of three years, with different branches (general, vocational, professional) all of them giving equal access to further studies. Since 1997 teachers of all school segments, from pre-school to university, must have the same academic degree at the beginning of their profession. Moreover, all teachers may use, from time to time, a sabbatical year or they can apply to a bursary in order to develop projects or to do a postgraduate course. In the second and third cycles of basic education (10-15 year olds), teachers work a maximum of 22 and a minimum of 14 class periods of 50 minutes per week, according to their age. On the other hand, all this was conceived and implemented on a tradition of a centralised and rigid school system, which was affected by lack of resources in many schools – a problem that has taken us many years to overcome. It was only in the nineties that a new law to increase the administrative autonomy of schools was adopted. Dominant public views about the curriculum tend to see it as a set of disciplines with “programmes” indicating for each subject what (and how) must be “covered” each school year. This process is actually mediated by the power of the textbooks – even if those programmes are aligned with modern international trends in most disciplines. Although there are no national exams except at the end of the secondary school, assessment is dominated by traditional written tests. Although there is an official logic of evaluating students progress throughout each cycle, the old “principle” of deciding that the student must repeat the same school year if he/she does not succeed in two or three disciplines still guides the way how many people think and act, both outside and inside the school.
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