Formação inicial de professores para educação básica, no contexto dos IFs : propondo indicadores de qualidade, a partir de um estudo de caso no IFRS

Abstract

The training of Primary and Secondary Education Teachers, especially from the 1990s on, has become the focus of constant educational policies in the international, national and local levels. In Brazil, mainly after the National Educational Bases and Guidelines Law of 20 December 1996 (LDB/96), a wide process of implementation of initial and continuous training programs and courses for Primary and Secondary Teachers was started, in order to encourage chiefly higher education training. In this context of increasing number of vacancies for teacher training were implanted the Federal Instituted of Education, Science and Technology (Institutos Federais de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia - IFs), which were established by the Law n.o 11.892 of 2008, and which must allot 20% of their vacancies to this end. Hence, there is a new locus, with little or no experience in offering teaching degrees and, at the same time, an institutional model with peculiar characteristics, such as the verticalization of education, which allows direct interaction with Primary and Secondary Education for trainer teachers and teaching degree students, the carrying out of formative paths inside the same education institution (from Primary and Secondary Education to Graduate Studies), and the proposal of training based on the triad teaching, research and extension. Seen in these terms, the view defended is that the Federal Institutes with a verticalized structure, together with the triad teaching, research and extension, can be a fruitful means of teacher training, if strategic actions that take into consideration the characteristics of their teaching degrees and their institutional context are conceived and planned. To support this idea, this research investigated which dimensions should be considered, with the aim to construct quality indicators for initial training in these institutions context. This research of qualitative nature, which constitutes a study-case, was carried out in Campuses that offer teaching degree courses in the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande Sul (IFRS). The participating subjects were administrators (provosts and deans in the university units), course providers, and senior-year-students of teaching degree courses; the data collection technique involved comprehensive interview and application of mixed questionnaires; the data collected was analyzed on the basis of Discursive Textual Analysis (Análise Textual Discursiva - ATD) procedures, by Moraes and Galiazzi (2007). The results based on this data were organized in three main points explored in the empirical investigation: positive aspects and/or potentialities, challenges in offering of teaching degree courses that were noticed during the research, and proposals to qualify such process in the IFRS. The dimensions to be observed arise from the analysis with the objective to qualify initial training of teachers for Primary and Secondary Education, that is: the administration, the curriculum, the pedagogical practices and the training of trainers, for which quality indicators were established. In all of them, the verticalization of teaching was emphasized, considering its potential to provide innovative, quality teacher training processes.