“Projeto Padrinho": results of a tutorial education project in Science Teaching at Higher Education

Abstract

Teaching science at undergraduate courses presents great challenges, and the  traditional teaching model applied in Brazilian universities is object of criticism and a great number of studies. The aim of this article is to present the results of a model of tutorial education, experimentally applied and focused on undergraduate students from Mathematics & Physics and Biology & Chemistry teaching license education programs of at the Institute of Health and Biotechnology in Coari, Federal University of Amazonas. In this work the tutors were selected among senior year students from different courses and were responsible for advising, assisting and mentoring freshmen students under the guidance of a professor, the project coordinator. This way of mentoring in education, despite showing positive results in higher education and being quite common in many countries in Europe and North America, is still poorly explored in Brazil. The results have been positive, mainly in terms of academic promotion rates in courses that historically have the highest failure and dropout rates.