Educational practices are widely used in the health field, both in continuing education for health professionals and health education for the general population. These two fields intersect through the development of educational knowledge oriented by a set of target representations of man and society. Such representations are demonstrated by teaching/learning processes in the four main pedagogical trends in Brazil: traditional, renewed, conditioning-based, and liberating (or the Paulo Freire approach). Based on their respective principles, methods, and individual and social consequences, we contend that liberating pedagogy can produce better results than the others by allowing the student's active participation in the learning process, thus fostering continuous development of human skills in both the health services clientele and health workers.
Continuing Education; Educational Models; Health Education
