Docência na educação superior em cursos de tecnologia: formação, identidade e impactos da sociedade informacional

Abstract

This study aimed to understand the impacts of the information society on higher education teaching of technology courses. The research involved teachers who work in higher education technology of a Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, in Minas Gerais - Brazil. The guiding questions: how do teachers have developed their careers and professional identities? How do teachers understand teaching in higher education technology courses faced the impacts of the information society? What are the contributions of initial and continuing training of teachers to face the challenges posed by the information society when conducting teaching? This is a qualitative research, using documentary analysis and narrative interviews. The first stage involved the analysis of Lattes Curricula of 45 teachers from the following areas: 22 from Food Processing, 12 from Information and Communication, and 11 from Business and Management. Three teachers were chosen from Food Processing for the narrative interviews in the second stage of the research. The results reveal that the information society and the management of higher education in Brazil have resulted in new models of construction of identities by teachers. We observed three groups of identities constituted by the research subjects: those who remain outside the productivity required in higher education, which is a small group that demonstrates non-compliance with the requirements of the current academic production system; the second group, numerically more representative, is formed by teachers who joined even timidly, but already demonstrate involvement in academic productivity requirements and, finally, the third group that is small and is immersed in high productivity scheme and visible intensification work mainly because it consists of teachers working mostly in stricto sensu graduation programs. Each group experiences its own dilemmas of their identity condition that is not fixed and immutable, but in clear process of construction. We found that higher teaching technology courses are undergoing a process of changes and requirements arising from the political, economic and social field due to globalization, technological and informational changes that greatly affect the process of teaching and learning and the teacher\'s work as well. The challenges faced by the teachers surveyed are as marked: despite having the domain of scientific knowledge, they know they always need to be updated to meet the demands imposed on them; teachers understand the need to have a prospective vision linked to constant changes; they understand the need to be mediators of the process of teaching and learning, despite the appreciation of the transmission of knowledge; they need to deal with cultures present in the classroom and, thus, they have shown concern with affective aspects of students; finally they demonstrate ability to generate their own continuing education so they need better direction that can come from institutional policies of the teachers professional development.