No dia 14 de abril acontece mais uma sessão do Seminário de Estudos Avançados - Ciclo de Conferências. Natália Alves (Instituto da Educação da Universidade de Lisboa) será a oradora convidada numa sessão sobre o tema Constructing Learning Outcomes in Europe: a Multi-Level Analysis. Na Sala Maria de Sousa do ICS-ULisboa, a partir das 10h30. Consulte o programa completo deste ciclo de conferências.

This seminar is based on the results of the European funded research project Constructing Learning Outcomes in Europe. A MultiLevel Analysis of (Under-)Achievement in the Life Course (CLEAR) (October 2022 – September 2025), which focuses on the factors that affect the quality of learning outcomes across eight EU states (Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). It will critically discuss the notion of Learning Outcomes, emphasising the de-contextualised and one-sided understanding of learning, which ignores the relevance of different actors and spaces for learning outcomes and thus turns a blind eye to the true complexity of the phenomenon. It will argue that learning and its outcomes cannot be de-contextualised from the surrounding institutional arrangements and spatial determinants, nor from the individual life courses within which they occur. As learning outcomes and the consequent level of educational achievement are inseparable from individuals’ life progression, they are part of trajectories and transitions that are constructed in a reciprocal process of political, social, economic and spatial conditions, welfare state regulations and provisions as well as individual’s agentic resources, decisions and investments. Thus, they result from asymmetric discursive and power relations, which are shaped by the unequal spatial distribution of economic, political and educational resources and opportunity structures, which, in turn, further shape the definitions of young people as policy addressees, for example, as ‘multi-disadvantaged youth’, ‘vulnerable individuals’, ‘low-achievers’ and ‘school dropouts’.

Natália Alves holds a PhD in Educational Sciences, with a specialisation in Sociology of Education, from the University of Lisbon. She is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Education of the University of Lisbon, a researcher at UIDEF—the Research and Development Unit in Education and Training at the same institute—and the coordinator of the Research and Teaching Group on Education and Training Policies. She is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Würzburg (Germany).
Her recent research focuses on public education and training policies for low-educated youth and adults, particularly regarding transnational, national, and local modes of regulation and their effects on individuals’ life trajectories.