Política de formação docente para a educação profissional dos professores do IFRN: avanços e desafios (2008-2018)

Abstract

This paper analyzes aspects of teacher training for Professional Education at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte, considering the period from 2008 to 2018. It aims, as an objective, to analyze the actions carried out in this empirical field to train its respective teachers, identifying the advances and challenges for the implementation of an institutional training policy focused on the specificities of teaching in the Professional Education modality, considering the concepts of human training, Professional Education and teacher training presented in the institutional documents. We took, as a theoretical-methodological approach, the focus of historical-dialectical materialism, from which a trajectory was systematized that included a literature review; document analysis; interviews with coordinators and teachers of the investigated courses; and questionnaire application to the institution's teachers who were former students in these courses. The data analysis reveals considerable challenges from the perspective of a specific training policy, but it also presents significant advances. Among the challenges, there is the need to offer courses aimed specifically at teaching, in the Professional Education modality, with a longer duration, at the graduate and undergraduate level. In addition, when these are offered, there is a very low adhesion of teachers working in the institution, filling the vacancies with external demand in all cases. However, the research shows that, for those who participate, the courses are important training environments that support pedagogical practice. Thus, we defend that the actions developed within the scope of IFRN, in the period from 2008 to 2018, aimed at the training of their own teachers and that specifically deal with teaching practice and the respective specificities of the modality, are punctual, poorly articulated and happen, mainly, with external induction, besides being devoid of a universal feature. However, since the training processes are based on the concepts of integral human formation, Professional Education and teacher training assumed in the institutional documents, such actions may favor the materialization of a training process that contributes to building an ethical-political-didactic-pedagogical commitment of the teaching staff, without which there may not be a perspective of education aimed at the interests of the working class, that is, counter-hegemonic concerns.