Under the protocol that the Polytechnic of Porto has signed with the Brazilian Ministry of Education, the Centre for Investigation and Intervention in Reading (CiiL) - the R&D centre of the Polytechnic of Porto - is providing a course for primary schools teachers from that country.
The public presentation of this course, named "Science Based Literacy" (ABC), took place on April 28th, in a virtual way, and had as participants the Minister of Education of Brazil, the President of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level Personnel (CAPES) and the Secretary of State for Literacy of Brazil.
The course started on 11 January 2021 and has an expected duration of 160 hours, in MEC's Virtual Learning Environment (Avamec). Videos, reading materials and study strategies designed according to the principles of gamification and open resources make up the course plan.
Ana Sucena, Ana Filipa Silva, Maria José Mata, and Cristina Garrido, researchers at the CiiL, view with natural enthusiasm the fact that a programme designed and tested in a national context is now crossing the Atlantic. "The objective of promoting success from the beginning of learning to read is based on the unequivocal knowledge that many paths of learning difficulties can be avoided if the child experiences success at the beginning of the learning process", they state, assuring us that they expect this training "to be a contribution to the action in the field of educators and teachers, in the decisive task of education for each individual and for Humanity (to which we aspire)".
The ABC course is the first action of the partnership, which will also include in-person training for Brazilian education professionals, and proposes an international level qualification for literacy professionals, combining theory and practice. The initiative is part of the Tempo de Aprender, a school literacy program, and was made possible through international cooperation between Capes, the MEC's Literacy Secretariat, the University of Porto (UP), the Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO) and the Open University of Portugal (UAb).
The partnership foresees, in addition to distance learning, taking literacy teachers to Portugal in 2021 and 2022. This year, the course was converted to virtual modality given the social isolation imposed by the new coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19).
