Este estudo pretendeu: identificar plataformas e tecnologias digitais (PTD) mais utilizadas em atividades escolares; verificar efeitos da pandemia, devida à COVID-19, no seu uso; sistematizar vantagens ou contributos e problemas/dificuldades encontrados. Dados de questionários respondidos por 1753 professores e 2041 alunos de escolas públicas portuguesas revelaram o aumento da frequência de uso das PTD, para fins e objetivos idênticos à pré-pandemia. Ambos os grupos consideraram que as PTD promovem práticas educativas inovadoras, sendo o acesso à internet e a falta de conhecimentos nesta área um obstáculo. Durante a quarentena, os professores referiram sobretudo a falta de comunicação com alunos e a desigualdade social e os alunos a dificuldade de compreensão das matérias e a falta de contacto com colegas e professores. Conclui-se ser necessário investir no acesso generalizado à internet e às PTD e no desenvolvimento de competências digitais de professores e alunos, por forma a diminuir as desigualdades sociais.

Teachers and researchers, in accordance with the main Portuguese curriculum documents in the area of Physical and Natural Sciences, agree that the development of scientific literacy is an integral part of basic education and report that the teaching of these skills is taking place in schools. However, few scientific literacy assessment instruments are available to assess students’ proficiency in using these skills. In this article, we describe the design and processes for gathering validity evidence for the development of the Avaliação da Literacia Científica Essencial (ALCE) instrument. The ALCE assesses scientific literacy skills of students at the end of the 3rd cycle of Basic Education, in the cognitive domains of understanding; analysing and evaluating phenomena; problems and everyday situations involving content knowledge and skills developed in the subjects of Natural Sciences and Physical Chemistry. Our validity argument, which includes the gathering of evidence based on the content and internal structure of the instrument and is grounded in the current literature on the validation of assessment instruments, supports the use of the instrument for the assessment of students’ scientific literacy level at the end of the 3rd cycle of Basic Education. The ALCE may be a useful tool to identify possible gaps between the teaching objectives and the students’ scientific literacy proficiency and reflect on the methodologies, lesson plans and strategies used in the classroom in order to change them to better develop the students’ scientific literacy.

RESUMO O estudo analisa as vantagens e as dificuldades encontradas por professores e alunos quanto ao uso de uma seleção de nove plataformas e tecnologias digitais em atividades escolares e verifica se a situação decorrente da quarentena devida à covid-19 gerou outros problemas no uso dessas plataformas e tecnologias digitais. Foram aplicados questionários a 105 alunos e 45 professores de cinco agrupamentos de escolas de Portugal. Os resultados revelaram que professores e alunos concordaram com as vantagens e os contributos da utilização das plataformas e tecnologias digitais. Quanto às dificuldades, os professores assinalaram que a obsolescência e a insuficiência do parque informático e o acesso à internet apresentaram-se como os principais problemas encontrados ao utilizar as plataformas e tecnologias digitais. Já os alunos indicaram como principal dificuldade o acesso à internet. Durante a pandemia, os professores relataram dificuldades mais associadas aos aspetos sociais, pedagógicos e técnicos, enquanto os alunos relacionaram-nas mais com questões pessoais.

In a period strongly marked by constraints and abrupt societal changes, school leaders had to manage the pandemic crisis, guide changes, and find new solutions to respond to the demands of increasingly digitalised schools. Taking this situation into consideration, a study was carried out with the aim of identifying the main challenges faced by school leaders in Portugal related to the teaching and learning processes, platforms and other digital technologies (PDT) used, and lessons learned for a post-pandemic future. From the methodological point of view, a questionnaire with closed questions on digital technologies and open questions on the COVID-19 pandemic issue was submitted to Portuguese school leaders in the period between November 2020 and March 2021. The results, based on a descriptive statistical analysis of the closed questions and the content analysis of the open answers of 145 school leaders, point to aspects related to lack of training, lack of resources, widening inequalities and communication issues. The PDT are the same as used before, mainly office applications, and spaces for storing and sharing school information; however, these PDT were used more frequently. These findings imply the need to invest in continuous training for leaders in how to manage crises and how to optimise the use of PDT in schools; and to capitalise on internal and external partnerships in collaborative efforts and networking to overcome the lack of resources, social needs and inequalities. The lessons learned during the process of finding and evaluating solutions can contribute to improving school management processes in crisis situations.

The study aimed to analyze scientific literacy assessment instruments. In this sense, a systematic literature review was carried out in the B-On, SciELO, Scholar Google, and RCAAP databases to identify studies using scientific literacy assessment instruments. The selection criteria included articles published between 1990 and 2020 in Portuguese, English, or Spanish, which developed and/or used scientific literacy assessment instruments. Articles that did not address scientific literacy in the title or abstract did not cite instruments and results of assessing students' scientific literacy, reviews, case studies, and articles that assessed specific subjects or subjects were excluded. Thirteen scientific literacy assessment instruments were identified. Most of the studies were conducted in Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States, predominating with Secondary School students. Higher Education students were the ones with the most positive results. The most evaluated dimensions of scientific literacy were related to different scientific literacy skills. The respondents’ classifications were obtained through the descriptive frequencies of responses to the items, with no standardization in the categorization processes of the results. Our findings led us to conclude that caution is required when comparing the results of the studies, since many instruments were applied at educational levels and in contexts different from those for which they were developed.

The diversity of students reaching higher education, the skills required of the 21st-century citizen, the Bologna Declaration, and the pressure exerted by international organizations impose a pedagogical reconfiguration of teaching, learning, and assessment through the recognition of the pedagogical dimension as a component of teacher professional development. We present the results of a study conducted at a university in Portugal with the following objectives: identifying conceptions and practices of pedagogical assessment and determining the influence of pedagogical training on these conceptions and practices. An online questionnaire (pre- and post-test) was administered to 31 teachers who had taken part in a training course on pedagogical assessment. It was found that: nearly half of the teachers experience difficulties in pedagogical assessment, with fairness being the main issue; the most commonly used instruments are written tests, research assignments, and reports; around two-thirds of teachers change the way they assess students, with the nature of the curricular units being the most influential factor in this decision; and there has been a change in the concept of assessment, in which the strict idea of testing, measuring, and classifying students’ knowledge has been replaced by the gathering of information for decision-making about the teaching and learning process.