This paper aims to understand the training process of university teachers, through Teaching Assistantship in two higher education institutions, one public and the other one private, located in the state of Minas Gerais. During the development of this work it became necessary to compare what the graduate students claimed to be the important in the Teaching Assistantship and what actually was done during their undergraduate classes. This was done in order to try to confront the discourse and practice of student teachers. In this sense, the objective is to compare the results between the groups investigated, identifying common and disparate features in the two higher education institutions studied. To this end, we opted for the triangulation of data between the responses of student teachers who taught undergraduate classes and the responses of students on their performance. Thus, it was possible to identify that teachers who were more motivated showed better performance. It was observed that the motivation of these teachers was related to the acquisition of experience in the classroom and to their need to acquire a closeness to the teaching activities. Moreover, they claimed that for them teaching had not only a professional but also a personal character. Another issue that was perceived in this investigation showed that teachers generally failed to link theory and practice to the fullest.However, it was noted that teaching assistants understand the importance of this connection, but the lack of practice, was often a limiting factor. And this practice was not only related to the practice of classroom teaching, but also to market experience. In this sense, the private Higher Education Institution (HEI) presented a distinct method of teaching, and this institution graduate students could experience other three situations: Research, Business and Social Project. The graduate students of public HEIs were also asked about the possibility of opting for other experiences. The result was that the majority (84.71%) stated that although these experiences could not replace the Teaching Assistantship, these would be interesting practices because they are complementary to teaching. It can be seen, therefore, that the addition of other opportunities to experience the practice, like in learning laboratories, would provide an alternative to university teacher training, for it makes possible the construction of these professionals, more fully.
Teaching Assistantship; Teaching Assistant; Student teacher; Motivation to teach; Theory and Practice
