Collaboration in initial teacher training for constructing didactic knowledge: a study in Higher Education

Resumo

A study was developed with students from a professional master’s degree. The aims were: i) to identify their representations of collaborative work (by means of a questionnaire and an individual written assignment); ii) to understand the impact of these representations on the use of collaborative work practices in online forums (through a questionnaire and messages posted in the forum); iii) to understand how the use of collaborative work in online forums contributes to the construction of didactic knowledge when addressing the issue of spelling (through messages posted in the forum and didactic tools designed by the groups); iv) to understand the contribution of this knowledge to the creation of didactic tools when addressing spelling. Results show the relationship between the appreciation of (and failure to appreciate) collaboration and its use in a collaborative environment, which impacts on the knowledge constructed and therefore on the didactic tools designed by the students.