The presence of physics education research outcomes in physics education programs in Angola

Abstract

Higher Education in Angola has been the target of much criticism, as several studies point out that there are many academics in the country, but little scientific production, although in recent years there have been some advances. According to some Angolan researchers, the lack of pedagogical qualification, the lack of adequate public policies for the development of higher education, the civil war and the subordination of the teaching staff to the political system implemented, meant that there was little progress in Angolan higher education. The present research we are presenting, with a qualitative approach, aimed to analyze whether the results of research in Physics teaching have been considered in the didactic-pedagogical syllabuses and in the pedagogical projects of Physics education programs for future teachers in Angola. This country was chosen since the first author is from Angola and this study had financial support from the Angola government through the INAGBE – National Institute of Scholarship Management.

In this study we analyzed the pedagogical projects of the program and syllabuses of four didactic-pedagogical disciplines from the academic years 2016 to 2020 of three public higher education institutions in Angola. For data processing, we used Michel Pêcheux's discourse analysis, as published in Brazil by Eni Orlandi (1999) and other authors. The results show that in the pedagogical projects of the analyzed courses, there is guidance for the use of research results, however, in the syllabuses of their disciplines, we found many outdated didactic manuals; the most recent, is over ten years old. The syllabuses present little use of scientific articles, monographs, dissertations and theses. In these documents, we detected only one academic work of national authorship; most of the research results used in the analyzed documents are of foreign origin. In addition, the results showed that most professors are in the process of training and have, at most, the academic degree of master. We can explain that since, until the date of completion of this research, there were no master's and doctoral programs in physics teaching in Angola. This research proves to be relevant, as it encourages professors and future teachers to make contact with scientific production, thus contributing to improve reading and consequently academic writing and argumentation in the teaching of this discipline.