O Programa Residência Pedagógica como política de formação de professores: o caso da Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul.

Abstract

The social transformations led by science's evolution occur at an increasing speed. It is a consensus that the different levels of education systems need to incorporate these changes. Therefore, different teacher training actions and policies have been developed to advance and, maybe, reach the same speed of transformations society faces. One needs to understand the digital-native student, born into the globalization process, immersed in the information world, often with no scientific base and emotionally fragile, who arrives in the education institutions. These characteristics are increasingly more needed among teachers. Nonetheless, we question: what are the processes intertwined in teacher training to answer these demands? Undergraduate teaching degrees have been rethinking their curricula to overcome these challenges. Different training proposals are presented. In this work, we question: how do the actions from the teacher training policy in Brazil impact the education of future teachers? What is the role played by training institutions in this process? To answer these questions, the research aimed to analyze the policy impact through one specific action: the Programa Residencia Pedagógica (PRP- Pedagogical Residency Program). We developed the work by analyzing a project submitted to the first public call of CAPES 2018 - 2020. The research field was a higher education institution in the three states of the South region of Brazil. As the research intention was to understand the unfoldings of Programa Residência Pedagógica (PRP) in the teacher training process in a dynamic of interaction between the social subjects researched, we used the qualitative research approach. Thus, this is a descriptive, interpretative, and analytical study. To collect data, we used semi-structured questionnaires and interviews adapted to each group: local coordinators, counselors, school managers, advisors, and residents. The analytical methodology was discursive textual analysis (DTA), through which we analyzed the corpus of each group separately, resulting in categories that led to meta-texts. From this process, two other general refined categories emerged, reflecting what was raised during the research through meta text. The data allowed some inferences. The formation centered on 'practice by the practice' is present in the participants' perspectives. We could perceive difficulties in understanding the role of the school, the advisor, and the program's objectives. The discussions around PRP and its relation with the School Placement have different perceptions. After all, can PRP be an equivalent action? Or complementary? That is, we could see some conceptual uncertainties. The relationship between university and school is fragile, grounded on the support by the state and the city halls through their secretaries, portraying a certain structural deficiency. However, the immersion of residents in the school routine emerged as a fundamental point. The time and the experiences in the school environment allowed the residents to know and understand their future workspace beyond the classroom. Faced by the perception of those involved in the implementation of PRP, we also understand that, though there has been advancements in the studies and teacher-training policies, some old problems linger: misunderstandings related to theory and practice in training; difficulties in the relationship between university and school; lack of knowledge on the social profile of Teaching degree students. Despite this, we believe that PRP can substantially improve the teacher training process and become a hybrid training space, i.e., involving pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, teacher trainers, and those in continuous training, mediated by advisors/researchers. Such a condition allows for a dynamic that can improve teacher training and, consequently, K-12 education and higher education. However, there needs to be a systematic review of the structures. As an improvement proposal, we understand there need to be specific courses to train advisors at a specialization level, projects to train advisors in the universities, and establish teams of pedagogical technical support with members from the university and the school. From these remarks, we understand that the Pedagogical Residency Program had some unfoldings for teacher training among the training subjects: they could perceive the school in all its complexity for the training agents, recognize the whole social, professional, and scientific apparatus that involves teacher training, and the need for continuous training. For the policy markers, the data indicate that the action proposal is insufficient. It needs to be supported to implement them. Education does not happen in free time but results from a complex process of training, action, reflection, and continuous formation.