Rita Márcia Andrade Vaz de Mello, Leililene Antunes Soares, José Márcio Silva Barbosa
& Maria das Graças Soares Floresta Universidade Federal de Viçosa (Brasil)
Abstract
This study aimed to understand the importance and meaning of the education in the National Program School Managers of Public Basic Education through the participant teachers’ perception and reflection of themselves on their practice. We tried to understand how this formation is manifested during and after the course, in the practice of the teachers/managers, but especially as these teachers participate, through their reflection on their educational practice as agents acting within their classrooms, theirs school and their community. This field research was carried out with five tutors and ten course participant teachers of the Program and engaged in the teaching profession, particularly the school management of public schools in cities of Minas Gerais-MG, registered in the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, using as instruments semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. We realize that the course participants and the tutors highlighted that the course provided the arise of new looks over their teaching practice. The knowledge and the education process acquired and reworked through the course seems to give these professionals a keener critical sense, offering intellectual instruments useful for the comprehension and interpretation of the most complex situations, by the link between the intellectual knowledge and the day-to-day practice in the exercise of teaching at public schools. The reality goes with the objective of allowing these people emancipation, not only equip them technically to “pass on” contents and that involves rethinking their actions in class, their professional posture, their own school. We conclude that the participant teachers have done and still do an exercise of reflection on their formation and on their practice in the classroom, and in the pedagogical actions at school, in view of what was proposed by the course, the practical development of the triad action-reflection-action.
Keywords: teachers education; National Program School Managers; teaching practice; reflective teacher.
1. Introduction
This study the formation and pedagogical practice of teachers who underwent a course of Post-graduation Lato Sensu offered as distance education, in the Universidade Federal Viçosa (UFV).
This course, offered as part of the National Program School Managers of Public Basic Education, developed by the Ministry of Education in partnership with the Federal Universities, intended for teachers who work as school managers in the early years of primary education in public schools in Brazil.
Specifically, what was intended in this study was to discuss the education of teachers under the National Program School Managers in order to identify the perception of participant teachers about the influence of this course in their teaching during the course and after its conclusion. This work was developed through a qualitative approach.
We sought to verify how the participation in a course of in-service training, specifically in this Program, involved and still involves reflections on the teaching practice of the participant teachers, through an interview with ten course participants teachers and five tutors belonging to the Universidade Federal de Viçosa.
The school manager stands out in the promotion of public school, but requires the exercise of multiple skills and various matrices, because the educational systems and educational institutions are living and dynamic organisms characterized by a network of relationships among all elements that act on them.
2.Theoretical Framework
Teacher education in Brazil was linked to several conceptual proposals that vary according to the educational policy of its time, ranging from educational technicality, the market logic to the state neglect that left the teachers formation at the mercy of the private sector without an effective social control, whether by government, or by the society, allowing the formation of basic education professionals to be of a minimum quality condition which has not linked the teacher education to the investigative nature of the research and development in education (CIOFFI; BUENO, 2011).
In the formative context, it is worth highlighting the professional contentment, which is a multifaceted concept that embraces personal, vocational and contextual aspects regarding the reality of work. "The teacher’s role built throughout the history of mankind is present in the learning records of each of us under the most different guises" (SEIDMANN et al, 2012, p. 43).
The pursuit of continuing education under the perspective of the post-graduate distance courses, according to Candeias (2013) by the concrete fact that we will have a growing contingent of teachers who will make the choice of a formation linked to a post-graduation Lato Sensu course, something that is not decontextualisedfrom the reality of basic education, which is known as a constant and seems to "have come to stay", imposing the universities and especially the Graduate Programs throughout Brazil the debate about its social role.
2.1. Reflections of the pedagogical practice of participant teachers in the managers school Understanding the teacher as a reflective professional, the context is fundamental to the formation process. And this reflection must be made by sharing with other teachers, by exchange of experiences, in the look on the action itself as a teacher, in dialogue with the theories, methods and standards of their field. Viewed from this perspective continuing education advances in the perspective of initial and continuing education, where the school-space context and teacher’s role become privileged locus of such formation.
Based on these principles, we now analyze the data obtained from this research that gave voice to tutors and participant teachers which aimed to identify whether they established relations between the obtained education and everyday teaching practice.
In addition to changes in teaching practices, the course also led some participants to study more, seeking new opportunities of continued education, as highlighted by the tutor:
We realize the reorientation of practice of course participants, both in monitoring their memorials, and in the reorientation of their practices. We already have several teacher students doing post-graduate courses, i.e. a gain beyond higher education and this is an important mark of development (Tutor
"Jasmine").
The course participants emphasized that there was freedom of opinion and dialogue among course participants, tutors and project’s coordinators, as they were free to provide feedback and were heard when they did not agree with some work methodology.
We questioned the course participants about how was the formation obtained in the Program and the analyzes made by them highlighted advances in their practices and changes in attitude in their educational work:
I changed, grew after having completed the Program School Managers, my students tell me that I changed and I realize that in the classroom, and in my own life, an advance that I sought and found in the Project, in the experience with the fellow students, tutors and in the exchange of experiences. I changed in my house, and now I have learned to look for new ways to help students advance when they cannot learn in a specific way (Course participant
"Bromélia").
As can be observed in the speech of the student "Bromélia", changes occurred not only in the classroom, but in her life as a whole, affecting also the domestic space.
In the case of the evaluation process they went through in the Program School Managers, the course participants reported that, besides having been observed during the course, they made several tests and papers. Said that despite the new methodology of work, because it is a distance learning course, were being evaluated in a comprehensive and integrated manner:
With the tutor in the classroom observing the teacher’s lesson, seeing how he put into practice what they had studied in the guides. This happened once during the semester. So the teacher would have the notes in accordance with
the attitudes, procedures, plans, everything which would take the student to have a significant learning (Course participant "Rosa").
The student "Margarida", in the following quote, brings a critique of a certain type of assessment that prioritizes memorization, which is already ready, made by people not involved in that group:
The assessment worked for the teacher, for the student and the institution, where all are evaluated in the teaching-learning process and this assessment should be continuous. But the problems were more personal and yet we were heard and respected, the biggest problems we observed were in some tests per module, the ones that came from Belo Horizonte for us to do like an entrance exam. Some questions were of pure memorization, that we did not like, but over time has improved, the course was therefore constructed from the development (Course participant "Margarida").
This report shows the ability of the course participant to criticize her own education process, reflect on the type of evaluation used, which leads necessarily to a reflection on the practice itself, leading to changes in how these course participants analyze and act on their evaluative practices as teachers.
[Evaluate] Is diagnose what the student has learned or did not learn while you could teach or not and that this evaluation should be done, because that's how we know our students, but there are several ways to evaluate and teachers must use all (Course participant "Hortênsia").
The ability of the teacher to reflect on their actions takes him to redraw a new knowledge, a new strategy from the challenge is sometimes presented. The proposal of the of National Program of School Managers realizes the teacher as a reflective professional able to think about his practice and through the studies acquired combined with his experience, redesign new knowledge, new know-how and new practices.
The data collected, it can be noticed that for the investigated group, the formation received in the Lato Sensu course sense of the National Program of School Managers offered at UFV favored a link between the theoretical principles studied and the pedagogical practices developed by these teachers.
3. Conclusion
The National Program School Managers of Basic Education take as base the teaching paradigm or the practical rationality paradigm, because it strengthens the importance of the reflective teacher, whose main axis is the redefinition of teacher professional identity. This paradigm is opposed to the paradigm of technical rationality and values the pedagogical experience and practice, considering the knowledge constituted by the people, their knowledge in relation to the teaching practice experienced.
We realized, in the research carried out here, that course participants and tutors emphasize that the course provided the arise of new perspectives on their teaching practices. The knowledge and the formation process acquired and reworked through the course seem to provide these teachers with a sharper critical sense, offering them useful intellectual tools to understand and interpret the most complex situations in which a link between intellectual knowledge and the everyday practice in the teaching profession in public schools. The reality walks in order to allow the emancipation of these people and not just equip them technically to "pass on" contents and this involves rethinking their actions in the classroom, their professional behavior, their own school.
The most important finding was the need of a practice whereby, according to SHÖN (2000, p.30), action and reflection must go together, contributing to the dialogue and overcoming "practical situations that are unique, uncertain and conflicting ". Certainly, action and reflection-in-action are able to give real support to the changes in the educational, political and social fields.
Based on the positive experience they had with the offering of the first class, we certify that the University cannot do without its social function and its production of knowledge and that this partnership between several institutions, effected in the Lato Sensu course not only helps in the formation of the course participants, but it has been a meaningful experience for all involved, promoting changes in teaching practices at all levels, highlighting the ever pressing need to link theory and practice in order to build an inclusive and quality education.
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