Learn and teach: pedagogical principles

The use of digital portfolios presents itself as an important tool to promote the autonomy, interactivity and integration of various elements, presenting itself as a stimulus for self-evaluation, peer review and evaluation of teachers but also includes demand for continuous improvement of the quality of teaching and learning.

Following this assumption, one must take into account that by using this tool for pedagogical work with students, one presents to you a new perspective of learning, which aims at a systematic analysis of its performance and allows them to record the process of acquiring new knowledge and reflection on them.

It is a task that requires to be clarified and negotiated with students at the beginning of the school year so that all variables are discussed together, and the student knows exactly the objectives and criteria for evaluation of this work.

The portfolio articulates itself several aspects that must be considered:


 * Practice education (focusing on student and the teaching-learning process);
 * Professional development (construction of knowledge, using representations, images, beliefs);
 * Curriculum (articulation of learning and skills - both inside and outside the school).

The portfolio should seek "respect the uniqueness of each student, their contexts and conditions of life, their cultures, their knowledge and" no knowledge "and, above all, the belief and confidence (evident through encouraging feedback) on their chances to overcome, for it can count on the help of sympathetic Other. " © 2008, Idalia Sa-Chaves

In this context, the teacher has a role as facilitator, because monitors the work of the student, knows it, understands it and can intervene in time in the process of training, feedback through timely, appropriate and positive.

According to the vision presented, the portfolio is characterized by:


 * A personnel process/product
 * Authentic and natural
 * Shared (with the teacher and possibly with the group)
 * Reflect what the students already know and what we still do not know
 * Highlighting the cultures, languages, the experiences and reflections of the author
 * Is open to new doubts and questions
 * Pro-active in looking for alternatives
 * Open for processing (as a possibility for change, innovation and transformation of knowledge, people, of situations, communities).

In addition to the skills and knowledge acquired, the portfolio should also record the errors, reflecting on them and found the attempts to tackle them. Only then the student's portfolio will describe the process of awareness and, consequently, progressive development and continued through sustained learning.

Under this reflective process, the portfolio is a "product" in the form of a final document, namely "an organized collection of productions on the experiences of training and the work of forming over a certain time, which can highlight the personal process of self-reflection, learning and development (personal and professional). " © 2008, Idalia Sa-Chaves

Each portfolio is unique, because it has a unique structure, designed in the light of the objectives; notes experiences (description/argument/reflection) and the theories that justify it; draws on several sources of information, records the growth and change in knowledge and student's learning throughout life in an authentic document.

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