Entre memórias e metamorfoses: histórias de vida como caminho formativo de docentes no Brasil e em Portugal

Abstract

This research was developed within the Research Line on Educational Knowledge and Practices of the Postgraduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Uberlândia, focusing on the relationship between teachers' life stories and ongoing in-service training processes. The central question was: What are the contributions of life stories to training processes aimed at professional development and the re-signification of practice? The general objective was to understand how life stories can contribute to ongoing training processes in the daily life of Basic Education schools, promoting reflective practice and professional development. The specific objectives were: to identify the meanings and significance of life stories as a reflective process of personal, professional, and academic trajectories; to foster discussions about their contributions to personal and professional development; to support dialogical training practices based on these stories, strengthening praxis; and to point out correlations between training processes and the life stories of teachers from Brazil and Portugal. Life stories are understood as a possibility for integrating formative actions within the school context, based on the assumption that continuing education has been based on pragmatic, technocratic, and decontextualized perspectives, without provoking significant transformations in teaching practice. In this sense, it is fundamental to consider teachers as authors of their own training and active participants in formative activities. The research, with a qualitative, exploratory, and bibliographic approach, established connections with Historical-Dialectical Materialism. The narrative sources used were: Narrative Interview, Formative Workshops, Reflective Diary, and Questionnaire. The analysis and critical reflection of the data were supported by the Content Analysis technique, according to Bardin (2016) and Franco (2018), and by the theoretical contributions of authors such as Bragança (2012), Freire (1996), Imbernón (2016), Josso (2002), Pineau; Le Grand (2012), among others. The results showed that ongoing in-service training needs to be redefined, considering teachers' life stories in the planning of school training activities. We observed that reflective practice is still incipient in daily school life, and that recalling lived experiences should become a constant practice to understand the present and plan for the future. We argue that, by incorporating life stories into the planning and execution of training, it is possible to promote the effective participation of teachers, consolidate dialogical and reflective practices, favoring personal, professional, and academic development. We hope that this research will invite critical reflection on one's own practice and contribute to transforming training activities in schools. The valuing of life stories is advocated as a condition for establishing a dialogical movement of knowledge production, improving the teaching-learning process and promoting the critical and transformative action of teachers in society.