The Joaquim Venâncio Polytechnic School of Health, which belongs to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (EPSJV/Fiocruz), has polytechnics as an axis for its technical formation, also incorporating research as an educational principle and education of sensibility, of the senses, and of feelings as its basic premises. These premises, articulated with the concept of work as an educational principle, are the base for a political and pedagogic project that fights against a historically hegemonic worker qualification project. The article reports on the experience of elaborating a first semester of technical qualification for EPSJV students, common in all technical accreditations, and that seeks to develop critical knowledge about the field of health with emphasis on Public Health. Created in 2002, the Basic Module, the first strategy with this objective, was evaluated in 2006 and turned into the Initiation to Polytechnic Education in Health in the following year. This report also reflected critically on such process.
professional education; curricular reform; polytechnics