Ana Isabel Santos

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of the Azores

This study builds on previous research carried out in 2021 on the self-perception of elementary school teachers in Portugal regarding their digital competences for the pedagogical integration of technologies in educational contexts. In order to verify this perception throughout the country, we extended the research to include teachers from the Auto...

The Incredible Years® Teacher Classroom Management program (IY-TCM) is an evidence-based program with documented effectiveness and positive outcomes for teachers, children and parents. However, most of the research relies on quantitative approaches, with fewer qualitative studies exploring teachers' personal perspectives. The aim of this study is t...

This work arises from the activities developed in the course unit Internship in Informatics Education I, which took place in the 1st semester of the 2022-2023 academic year, focusing, in particular, on the process leading to the elaboration of the portfolio as an active learning strategy, promoting critical, interventional and argumentative reflect...

This paper intends to analyze the implementation of the Festival de Robótica - AZORESminiBOT, a robotics festival for the young which purpose was to create learning experiences that lead to the utilization of robots, promoting coding skills and computational thinking, as well as cooperative problem solving and with the mobilization of knowledge fro...

This paper described the functionalities of a simple robot adopted in the classroom to promote computational thinking (CT) in the context of the project PeCOT—computational thinking with tangible objects. This robot, similar to some commercial educational robots, was developed to be used in primary education classroom contexts (second, third, and f...

This paper seeks to identify the pedagogical resources used by kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers in Azores Islands. Additionally, an investigation will be made into how these resources are mobilized in teachers’ pedagogical practice, with the aim of understanding to what extent digital resources, particularly learning objects, are presen...

Recently, efforts have been made to add programming activities to the curriculum that promote computational thinking and foster 21st-century digital skills. One of the programming modalities is the use of Tangible Programming Languages (TPL), used in activities with 4+ year old children. In this review, we analyze solutions proposed for TPL in diff...

The academic publication takes on an increasingly relevant place to shape, on the one hand, the scholar’s prestige, and on the other, the prestige of the institution to which he or she is attached. In addition, academic publishing is vital for the development of scientific knowledge and the contribution to the community. This paper analyzes several...

The aim of this paper is to analyze how the process of educational transition is perceived by a group of children attending Preschool and Primary School, considering their expectations, fears, and experiences. Methodologically, this exploratory research was based on the collection of information through a conversational interview to 16 children in...

The digitalization of societies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is an unstoppable process. This paper seeks to answer the question: what post-COVID-19 digital competences are needed for a sustainable society? It also aims to analyze the digitalization processes in education for shaping a sustainable digital society. A bibliographic search wa...

This article aims to understand how a group of preschool and primary school teachers view the process of educational transition between these two educational contexts, considering the consequences that these moments have on the children's school career and on their own personal and social experience, and that teachers play a key role as links betwe...

In today’s world, digitalization, the virtual and being permanently online become normality, corresponding to individuals’ current and future expectations, with an increasing impact, without forgetting those excluded from this reality (digital divide). Society 5.0 seeks to foster this reality. As a concept initially political-ideological, Society 5...

The COVID-19 pandemic is, currently, the focus of all personal and collective actions at the social, cultural, economic, political and religious levels, among other dimensions of human life. This Letter to the Editor focuses on the overwhelming existence of fake news directly related to COVID-19, which permeate social networks and even the media, w...

The production and presentation for public discussion of an end-of-programme project, thesis or dissertation are unavoidable elements for the conclusion of academic training in study programmes of various levels, namely bachelor’s, master’s and PhD. Although these end-of-programme projects may take on various forms, as well as different levels of d...

Scientific knowledge entails rigour and control, both as a process of creating a reasoned view of reality and also as the product of results that shape the dissemination of science. The publication is critical for the development of science and the career of the academic/scientist. This article discusses some aspects of writing in science, in a sta...

The academic editor has been, and still is, the gatekeeper of peer-reviewed scientific publications, by being whom, ultimately, defines whether or not a manuscript can be published. At a time of profound transformation in the context of scientific publication (digital publishing, open access, preprint, open peer review,...) and the expectations, in...

At a time of great dynamism among publishers of scientific publications, with the inevitability of Open Access and the ease of publishing online at low cost, it is possible to find publications with different levels of scientific respectability. In this context, the improvement of the quality of scholarly publications emerges as a critical element...

Ivan Illich was a heavy critic of traditional schooling. His proposals were disregarded, perhaps too quickly, for various reasons. This paper, based on review research, aims to add to a current (re)reading of Illich, seeking to answer the following question: what is the relevance of Illich’s proposal for a successful education in an increasingly di...

Currently, the journals in the field of social sciences seem to emphasize the preference that authors submit for evaluation and publication manuscripts in the form of research articles with empirical data, following the model of exact sciences and, preferably, with the possibility of research replication. The scholarly publication based on reasoned...

Literacy emerged as a concept that meant the application of reading, writing and numeracy skills in the individual’s everyday context. Nowadays, the concept of literacy takes on a central and multivariate dimension and is mobilized in several contexts, such as digital literacy, sustainability literacy and ocean literacy, just to name a few. This pa...

Social media, including digital social networks, runs through a large part of society. This position paper analyses the social media centrality in identity (re)construction in higher education, seeking to add to the understanding of the social media’s role in the identity, both in the individual dimension – of several higher education actors (acade...

We increasingly live simultaneously immersed in physical interactions and in a world where the digital dimension is present at various levels, such as the social, economic and political ones. In this context, the relationship between the digital world and Sustainability is pivotal. This aim of this paper is to discuss, in a reasoned manner, the imp...

This paper seeks to understand how a group of preschool and primary teachers perceive the type of use they carry out of children’s literature. Thus, it analyses the type of books in the classrooms and the underlying criteria for their choice, the frequency of the activities implemented within this scope and the organisation of the educational envir...

Classes, as a critical teaching-learning process in the school culture, remain, essentially and for the most part, without fundamental changes, following the sequence: presentation of the contents by the teacher, and implementation of these contents in a very theoretical way (highly based on the resolution of exercises, either through worksheets an...

The aim of this article is to understand the symbolic representations of the assistance strategies aimed at disadvantaged children, expressed in two newspapers published on the island of Faial, in the Azores, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries (covering the time horizon between the end of the monarchic period and the implementa...

In the contemporary context, there is a growing practice of reading higher education teaching support material using digital media tools, via scrolling text on a screen on multiple devices (e.g. tablets, iPads and computers). These materials can be either specifically prepared digital texts or scanned printed texts, as opposed to the tradition of r...

Diversos trabalhos de investigação têm realçado que os ambientes de literacia e a qualidade das práticas desenvolvidas com as crianças em torno da leitura e da escrita antes da entrada para a escola, em particular no jardim‐ de‐infância, são da máxima importância para o sucesso educativo de todas as crianças. Neste contexto, desenvolvemos um estudo...

By fostering a direct engagement of those involved in solving problems or needs in a context of real situations, participatory action research (PAR) offers great potentialities for the academic training of future and even current professionals. However, there is a weak implementation of PAR as a pedagogical training strategy in higher education. He...

The use of electronic slide presentations (ESP), usually through PowerPoint or Prezi software, has become widespread in higher education and is part of the expectations and perceptions of both teachers and students of how a successful and quality class should be. Is this dissemination of ESP use justified by the pedagogical quality fostered in lear...

At a time when interdisciplinarity is encouraged, the aim of this article is to analyse some of its implications in contexts of teaching, research and professional practice. For this purpose, and through a literature review, the concept of interdisciplinarity is discussed. Subsequently, the paper discusses its importance and the implications of its...

Os Diagramas de Venn como recurso filosófico no Jardim de Infância Resumo: Esta investigação insere-se no âmbito científico e pedagógico da Filosofia para Crianças, mais especificamente na sua prática com pessoas em idade pré-escolar. Pretendeu-se investigar o tipo de resposta de uma comunidade de investigação filosófica, modelo pedagógico e episte...

At a time when there is free access to a multitude of information, the knowledge society entails the development and mobilisation of a set of competencies of selection and application of this knowledge in a reasoned and conscious way. It is in this context that higher education should develop its activities, and it is widely recognised that digital...

The transition between educational levels is a process characterized by the complexity and repercussions that it represents to the future of children’s education. Studies conducted in this field acknowledge the relevance of the approximation and continuity between the practices of preschool and primary teachers for children’s development and learni...

O presente artigo pretende dar conta dos resultados de uma investigacao realizada junto de um grupo de 18 educadoras de infância a trabalhar na em escolas da rede publica da Ilha Terceira, Acores, Portugal, cujo objetivo foi o de compreender a sua perspetiva acerca da abordagem a linguagem escrita no âmbito da educacao de infância. Foram avaliados...

The aim of this paper is to present the results of a study developed with teachers of 18 public kindergartens in Terceira Island, Azores, Portugal, in order to understand their perspective about the written language development on preschool children. To evaluate the teachers’ beliefs, there was taken into account some aspects such as the methodolog...

Our aim is to characterise the relationships between the quality of literacy practices in Portuguese kindergartens and the development of children’s conceptualisations about written language. The participants were 18 kindergarten teachers and their 4 and 5-year-old pupils (146 children). Literacy practices were evaluated using direct observation. C...