Desenvolvimento Profissional de Professoras Alfabetizadoras: construindo processos formativos colaborativos

Abstract

This study is part of the line of research “Knowledge and Education Practices” of the Graduate Program in Education at Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. The main goal is to analyze how collaborative teacher preparation practices might contribute to build knowledge and to reframe professional identity, considering the professional development of literacy teachers working for the municipal school network of Uberlândia. The theoretical and methodological framework of this research guided the education practices, favoring critically reflexive and dialogical processes in the interface between the theory and the practice of the teachers. This qualitative research is based on the principles of dialectical and historical materialism and on the outlining of training research methodology (Josso, 2004). The research analyzed sound recordings of ten Dialogue Group sessions (Domingues, 2004) as well as the reflective reports of the literacy teachers participating in the study. In 2020 and 2019, these teachers engaged in and implemented the education program Diário de Ideias (Muniz, 2020) provided by the Pró-Reitoria de Extensão e Cultura and the CAp ESEBA at the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. Through the analysis, we generated two meaning nuclei (Aguiar; Ozella, 2015). The first one refers to the internal dimension of “being a literacy teacher” expressed in terms of cultural, family and personal experiences; of the fight for autonomy in teaching; and the anxieties, crisis and affections of the career. The second meaning nucleus refers to the external dimension of “literacy pedagogical practices” centered on the preparation; the solitary work; the difficulties imposed by poor working conditions; and on the breaking of conservative notions. This study suggests how training environments might enable literacy teachers to overcome their educational needs by supporting dialogical processes that encourage critical reflexive discussions and problematization of pedagogical practices in context. These environments should overcome prescriptive models that are far removed from the reality of schools with its limiting factors – social, historical and cultural, among others. An example of such models is the program for teacher training provided in 2022 by the Uberlândia Municipal Education Secretariat consonant with the National Education Plan set in 2019. Through institutionalized materials provided by the literacy program “Alfa e Beto”, the municipal program imposes a methodology that overlooks how students are lead characters in the process of learning to read and write, while giving teachers no autonomy over the pedagogical activities. We noted that the program seems to contradict the critical reflexive conception of teaching, teacher autonomy and, most importantly, the systematization of an emancipatory praxis of pedagogy. Therefore, considering its characteristics and its collaborative and dialogical dimension, training research is relevant for the professional development of teachers. It enables reframing the teacher’s professional identity, building knowledge and breaking with what is officially institutionalized through an insurgent praxis of pedagogy.