Dificuldades de aprendizagem: contribuições do Programa de Apoio Pedagógico do CMF para a melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos não concursados

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the contributions of the Pedagogical Support Program that was implemented in 2014 in the Brazilian Military School of Fortaleza (CMF) to improve learning outcomes in students with learning difficulties. More specifically, drawing on a population of 202 students in the 6th and 7th grades at CMF, we have tried to determine if there was a significant improvement in the understanding of Portuguese and Mathematics by students with learning difficulties after two months of the Program’s intervention. The verification of the learning by the students was carried out through the application of a pre-test and a post-test in an experimental group (pedagogical support) and two control groups students who automatically entered CMF without an admission exam due to military regulations and students who entered by means of an admission exam. Neither of the control groups was part of the Program. The difference between the pre-test and the post-test from each of the groups was evaluated by means of the t test paired in each school year. The differences in the improvement of the learning outcomes between the groups were evaluated by means of the t test for independent samples. The software used for the data analysis was the SPSS 16.0 for Windows. To determine the success or failure of the learning outcome, we have also made a comparison between 2014 and the five preceding years of the proportion of students that needed to take remedial classes because they did not obtain passing marks; students that successfully took these remedial classes and improved their marks so that they passed; and students that failed these classes and did not go onto the next grade. The results revealed that the Pedagogical Support Program contributed to the improvement of the learning outcome of the students from 6th grade that were a part of the Program, in both Portuguese and Mathematics after the two first months of activities. On the other hand, the improvement of the 7th grade students who were a part of the Pedagogical Support was only significant in Mathematics and only when compared to the group of the students who entered by means of the admission exam. The research has also revealed that in the 6th and 7th grades in 2014, the Pedagogical Support Program contributed to a lower percentage of students that needed to take remedial classes on a bimonthly basis or at the end of the year, and a higher percentage of students who were able to improve their marks, when compared to the average of these percentages over the previous five years. The percentage of students that entered without an entrance exam (due to military regulation) and who failed the 6th grade in 2014 was practically the same as the average of these percentages in the last five years. In contrast, in the 7th grade this percentage was almost five times lower. Therefore, in general, the Pedagogical Support Program at CMF in 2014 succeeded in improving the learning outcomes of the students with learning difficulties. The outcome of this survey confirmed the findings in literature that state that learning difficulties not only restrict themselves to the cognitive aspects, but that they also cover a wide spectrum of factors that are philosophical, psychological, sociological, pedagogical, etc. that make it harder for the student to learn and may even keep them from learning altogether. This requires an extension of the concept of pedagogical support beyond the remedial classes. Despite the improvement achieved by this Program, the Program needs to be improved so that it obtains even better outcomes. In addition, the Pedagogical Support Program will only be completely matured when there is a policy of pedagogical support that permeates every area of education and where a different perspective is taken by all involved in the educational process, in particular the teachers and administration.