As we prepare to commemorate forty years of recognised postgraduate studies in Brazil in 2006, it is relevant to register the contribution of one of the educators who channelled the best of his efforts into postgraduate studies in the field of education, in the period between 1970 and 1987. In the first part of this article we seek to trace the itinerary of this educator/thinker as an intellectual aware of his responsibility for the construction of Brazilian education and the process of democratisation of education in the country. In the second part, we demonstrate how he perceived a postgraduate programme in education and his participation in programmes in Rio de Janeiro. In those programmes in which he participated as lecturer and researcher the Pontificate Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), the Institute of Advanced Studies in Education at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (IESAE-FGV) and the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) he left his mark by defending that postgraduate studies should always seek to conciliate practical teaching with theory, and by insisting that research in education should be characterised by reflection on its roots, its categories and its process, as well as the search for synthesis. We conclude by affirming that the best efforts of this educator were dedicated to the academic world in his role as lecturer, researcher and teacher of teachers.
Durmeval Trigueiro Mendes; postgraduate studies in education; teaching and research