The objective of this article is to consider research that verifies how the Brazilian institutional context has affected the occurred transformations in professionalizing education, since 1964. One is about a theoretical essay that recommends the historical research, of descriptive character. The contextualization of the facts allows us to interpret and to compose the scene of the transformations of the professional education, in the period of analysis. The relation of influence between the institutional context and the occurred transformations in the Brazilian professional education can be verified by means of qualitative analysis that uses relation mappings to be generated for documentary analysis. The results to be gotten will allow us to confirm or to refute the hypotheses that the institutional contexts and the spread values, for occasion of considered the two promulgation of LDBs: 1971 and 1996. They are not differentiated and they are characterized as neoliberal and the coercitive and normative contextual pressures have significantly affected the occurred transformations in the Brazilian professional education. The inquiry of these hypotheses will propitiate an excellent study and will extend the understanding of the routes determined for the professional education and its consequences throughout time, making also possible, a future projection, facing the maintenance trend and homogenization of the legitimated values in the Brazilian society by means of efficient mechanisms of domination.
professional education; institutional context; educational legislation