Contribution of scientific journals to the construction of teacher training policies in Portugal

Abstract

Scientific journals are an instrument for disseminating the progress of knowledge to the academic community and to society. In this sense, the results collected in these publications have to be transferred to society through a dialogue between experts, politicians and society. Based on the importance of scientific journals on the dissemination of educational issues, the aim of this paper is to verify whether these journals have published articles specifically on policies and practices of teacher training and development at the Basic and Secondary Education levels in Portugal over the period 2011-2021. In order to achieve this objective, a mixed methodology was chosen based on a sample of 672 articles collected from the only two journals with an impact in the field of Educational Sciences in Portugal. These were Revista Portuguesa de Educação and Revista Lusófona de Educação. From the analysis carried out, it was possible to confirm the scarcity of publications focusing on the subject under study, which translates into 46 articles (6.8%). In the Revista Portuguesa de Educação there is a greater diversity of topics, covering both teacher training and teacher development, while the Revista Lusófona de Educação includes studies oriented towards teacher training. In this line, it is concluded that there is still a need for more studies focused on teachers at these educational levels, reaching their application to educational institutions at the same time that stable working mechanisms are developed to transfer this knowledge and guide educational policies.

Keywords: Education policy, teacher training, teacher development, scientific journals, knowledge transfer.