A comparative analysis of university pedagogical centres’ activities in Mozambique and Sweden

• Many universities around the globe consider raising the pedagogical competence of their teachers to be an important task. The common way of approaching this task is the creation within the university of a specialised centre in charge of staff pedagogical development. This study attempts to provide an analysis of activities conducted by two pedagogical centres situated in two dramatically different contexts: one of the poorest countries in the world (Mozambique) and one of the richest (Sweden). A qualitative study was carried out based on a comparative policy document analysis, on-site observations and semi-structured interviews with two staff members from both centres. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) provided a theoretical framework for the analysis. The collective activity system is taken as a unit of analysis that connects psychological, cultural and contextual perspectives (Engeström, 1999). We found that the official rhetoric of both universities explicitly focuses on the development of pedagogical competence for all categories of teachers. Therefore, as was expected, similarities were identified in the object and expected outcomes of the centres’ activity. However, due to significant differences in historical pre-conditions, cultural contexts and artefacts used for mediating activities in the two centres the findings revealed many differences in the corresponding collective activity systems. The study suggests that the implementation of pedagogical training at a university should carefully consider contextual, social and cultural factors shaping collective activity systems and if necessary construct compensatory artefacts to ameliorate possible frictions in the developmental process.

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