Ensaios sobre os efeitos da educação a distância nos indicadores do ensino básico público: um olhar para a formação de professores

Abstract

Due to the enormous inequalities in the supply of higher education in the Brazilian territory and the lack of teacher training in Basic education, the Open University of Brazil System (UAB) was established (Decree 5.800/2006) to democratize and interiorize access to higher education in Brazil, through distance education. Considering the discussions on distance education and the UAB policy for teacher training, this thesis, composed of three essays, explored in the first two essays the UAB's focus on Brazilian municipalities through logistic regression and cluster analysis; and the impact of UAB on teacher training, with the difference-in-differences method. While the third essay investigated the relationship between the mathematics performance of 9th-grade students and the type and modality of teacher training, using the propensity score matching method and generalized driven regression (GBM). The results indicate that the UAB is a hybrid policy, which combines universalization and targeting strategies, although characteristics of the municipalities that refer to the targeting in more socioeconomically and educationally disadvantaged places only partially influenced adherence to the policy; the UAB had a positive impact on the teacher training rates of elementary school municipalities that received the poles, compared to those that did not; the event study showed that longer exposure to the policy yields even greater impacts on the variables of interest; results also indicated that mathematics teachers licensed in this area, in the distance modality, imply better results in mathematics exams compared to teachers with higher education or without higher education. This effect is accentuated for the performance of students in unfavorable conditions, such as those from rural areas and schools with lower socioeconomic indices. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the performances of students who studied with mathematics teachers trained in distance mode or face-to-face. Given the discussions and results presented in these essays, this work has potential to contribute to the assessment of the expansion of Distance Education in Brazil, which is still in development, and which has been one of the main public choices for teacher training in the country; and to expand the literature on distance education and teacher education. From a managerial perspective, this thesis can help to underpin discussions and decisions around teacher training policy assessment in Brazil and other developing countries which suffer from similar teacher qualification problems as Brazil.