Editorial

The present number of Education Research presents 15 articles that deal with different times and themes. We have tried to organize them in subsets based on the convergence of themes, whenever possible, or on the proximity of the historical period considered by the authors. As we indicate below, four of the 15 articles were translated into English and are available on the journal website at SciELO (http://submission.scielo.br/index.php/ep).

Initially, the reader will find texts that deal with different aspects of the teaching profession, such as their professional trajectory, wages, health, formation and critical awareness of the exercise of teaching. Next, there is a study about the assessment of basic education in Brazil, and another one discussing the professional expectations of graduate students in chemistry from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. The subsequent articles deal with new possibilities and dimensions of teaching and learning and at the end three other articles are gathered which deal with the historical period of their objects of reflection: the first half of the 20th century, the 1950s and the 1960s.

The article entitled The classroom was my world: the teaching career in São Paulo (1920-1950) analyses the professional trajectory of primary teacher Botyra Camorin. Although the period in question is the first half of the 20th century, the text was included in the first set of articles because it deals with important aspects of the teaching profession. The author shows the possibilities, the difficulties, and conflicts which at the time comprised the process of construction of a career. From Botyra's literary and autobiographical production, confronted in the article with the works of Almeida Júnior and with the legislation of the time, we follow the reconstruction of the itinerary of many primary teachers in the State of São Paulo; they found themselves, at the outset of their careers, facing several challenges, among them the start of the profession, the work in the first schools-several of them situated in rural areas-and the conflicts arising from the contact with values and habits hitherto unknown to them.

The second article deals with detention between the knowledge of the contents to be taught and the pedagogical knowledge, a tension that, according to Chilean authors Marcela Blanca Gaete Vergara and Abelardo Castro Hidalgo, is present in the formation of teachers. Entitled The transition process towards a critical-phenomenological consciousness of the teaching profession, the work analyses data obtained in a research carried out with 12 Chilean teachers who had recently taken part or were still taking part in investigations about their own practice. The objective was to understand and interpret the perceptions and experiences of these teachers, taking the investigation about their own pedagogical work as an important aspect to the development of a scientific consciousness, or of a critical phenomenology in the words used by the authors. More specifically, it tried to identify and analyze the axes put in motion in the consciousness development process. The results found are interesting and bring new elements into the debate about the formation of teachers and about the often discussed issue of critical consciousness.

The triangle of teacher education: its players and configurations, article by Flavia Medeiros Sarti, discusses the formation of teachers that work in the first years of basic education in contemporary Brazil. The author presents a stimulating essay about professionalization and formation, integrating in her analysis contributions from the sociology of professions and from sociology of education. The text implies the analytical device of the pedagogical triangulation scheme proposed by António Nóvoa, in which each vertex is represented by the agents which, based on their specific capitals, occupy an even places within the field of formation: teachers and the organizations representing them; universities, foundations and research institutes with their experts; the public bodies. The connection is established between these axes are power relations in which different models of teacher formation are defined, such that the teacher may be both object and subject of the actions of formation. The author dedicates special attention to what she identifies as the false universitization of formation, a dominant process today in Brazil, expressed as a merely technical-instrumental perspective and in the low symbolic value occupied by the formation in the social hierarchy. This situation follows from the power relations established between the University and public bodies which, in their turn, are tied to educational policies defined internationally. It is, therefore, a stimulating essay whose contribution is significant to the debate about the theme.

The article by Andréa Barbosa Gouveia, Maria Dilnéia Fernandes Espindola and Élcio Benini, entitled Teachers' pay in Brazil: an outlook from the Annual List of Social Information (RAIS), is one of the texts available in English in the electronic version of the journal. Its contents deal with another aspect of the teaching situation: it presents the results of a study about the paying levels of secondary education teachers in Brazilian capital cities during the period between 1996 and 2008, using as its source the RAIS database from the Ministry for Labor and Employment. The hypothesis of the research is that, during the period in question, the funding policy that gave priority to fundamental education would have had a negative impact upon the paying levels of those teachers. Despite its exploratory nature, according to the authors' own words, the results of the study confirm the negative relation that was established in the period investigated between the priority given to fundamental education through those policies and the paying levels of secondary education teachers. At the same time, the results and served a different question related to the potential of the RAIS database to support the analysis. The researchers conclude that, despite having weaknesses to work with data relative to the public sector in a separate form, the database displays an interesting potential of information for a general picture of the employment structure of teachers in Brazil.

The Portuguese authors A. Rui Gomes, Rute Pacheco and Maria Silva-all from the University of Minho-and Ana Peixoto-from the Caldas das Taipas Secondary School-present the results of a study conducted with 1162 teachers who teach at the basic and secondary cycles in the North region of Portugal and in the Autonomous Region of Azores. Entitled Occupational stress and the change to the Portuguese Statute of the Teaching Career, the work was carried out in two different moments: 2004-2005 and 2008-2009. In the first phase, the objective was to evaluate the general experience of occupational stress in teaching, but the changes in the Statute of the Teaching Career introduced in 2007 and 2009 by the Portuguese Ministry for Education raised a large number of critical responses from teachers, prompting researchers to investigate whether the experiences of stress and of burnout syndrome had been modified between the two periods. The changes introduced by the new Statute are related particularly with the teaching evaluation process and with changes in professional categories after the introduction of a distinction between teacher and full teacher. The results of the study point towards an increase in stress and burnout after the above-mentioned changes, mainly in areas associated with time pressure, excessive work, and bureaucratic and administrative work. Nevertheless, in areas related to the abilities and motivation of students a reduction was observed in such experiences during the second stage of the research.

Another article available in English in the electronic version of the journal is Three generations of assessments of basic education in Brazil: interfaces with the curriculum in/of the school, by Alicia Bonamino and Sandra Zákia Sousa. The work analyses three moments of the undergoing large-scale assessment of Brazilian education, trying to characterize its design, objectives and uses, having as its axis of analysis the interference of such process in school curriculum. Although distinct and successive in origin, these experiences: accessed and show elements in common with proposals put forward in other countries, revealing the existence of a worldwide agenda concerning evaluation. Firstly, the authors analyze the Saeb system instituted in the early 1990s, and state that, despite being "apropriado para diagnosticar e monitorar a qualidade da educação básica nas regiões geográficas e nos Estados brasileiros", this evaluation system "não permite medir a evolução do desempenho individual de alunos ou escolas". The fact that its results are presented in a collected form would hinder its use for the introduction of accountability policies seeking to improve the quality of schools. Apart from that, because it is built upon a sampling basis, Saeb affords a low-level of interference in the school life and curriculum. The other two generations of assessments systems dealt with in the article are characterized by supplying elements to accountability policies, although this happens in distinct levels. Hence the authors' reference to mild accountability policies (of a more symbolic character) and to strong accountability ones. The former are regarded as second-generation and, although they make their results public, presenting them back to the schools, they do not established material consequences. An example of this second-generation system is the Prova Brasil (Brazil Exam), which was implemented in 2005 and whose results started to integrate Ideb already in 2007. Its main feature is precisely its objective of establishing goals and publicizing the students' results by school and by school system, without however involving awards or sanctions. Finally, the third-generation policies (of strong accountability) are those involving awards such as those adopted in the State of São Paulo with the policy of a Merit Bonus, and in the State of Pernambuco with the Educational Performance Bonus. The authors discuss the potential risks of the last two generations of evaluation systems considering that, according to previously conducted studies, these are the systems that have been gaining prominence in the definition of educational policies and, consequently, those of a higher potential to direct what, how, and why to teach.

Capping this first group of texts, we have the article entitled Teacher of higher education: the view from the narratives of graduate students in Chemistry. Its nine authors-Ana Luiza de Quadros, Dayse Carvalho da Silva, Fernando César Silva, Frank Pereira de Andrade, Gilson de Freitas Silva, Juliana Cristina Tristão, Helga Gabriela Aleme, Leandro José Santos, Sheila Rodrigues Oliveira-, coming from different institutions-Federal University of Minas Gerais-UFMG, Federal University of São João Del Rei, Federal University of Viçosa and State University of Campinas-, present here the results of a study conducted with graduate students from UFMG, having as its focus the "correlation between the growing specialization offered by graduate programs […] and the improvement in the quality of university teachers". The data collection instrument devised by the researchers invited participants to write about a fictitious situation in which they should describe aspects of their experience as teachers. Ninety-nine students were invited, out of which 34 took part and prepared the requested narratives; in them, three situations appeared: the preparation for approval in the admission exam, the classes taught, and the activities developed during the first four months of work. The results indicate that these students value research activities above those of teaching, leading the researchers to conclude that this can be associated to the demands made in the selection processes for teachers of higher education, and to the dynamics in most universities, which evaluate intellectual production in the form of articles under a more quantitative perspective, whereas teaching is assessed in its quantitative dimension. Besides that, students tend to reproduce the culture of their graduate studies teachers, who emphasize research and the organization of an environment conducive to good performance in this field.

The next five articles deal with various dimensions and possibilities of teaching and learning. The first, by Raquel Aparecida Marra da Madeira Freitas, is entitled Teaching through problems: an approach to student development. The article discusses three approaches that emphasize the active learning of the student based on the solution of problems. The first two approaches, problem-based learning and the methodology of problematization, are discussed from the viewpoint of their limitations and of the eclecticism that characterizes them from the theoretical and conceptual standpoint. Apart from that, according to the author, these approaches would be closely linked to situations of a practical order, failing to give students the opportunity to develop a deeper mental work with important, solid concepts for the apprehension of the contradictions that involve the object of knowledge. In an attempt to describe contributions that go beyond these limits, the approaches of Vygotsky, Leontiev and Davydov are mentioned, according to which, apart from teaching students so that they learn contents as results of scientific investigations, the teacher seeks to bring them to an understanding of the investigative trajectory in which the contents were elaborated, allowing the students to meet the genesis of the concept and its conditioning factors. This perspective goes beyond problem-based learning or experience based learning, since it also includes the understanding of the social and historical character of all scientific knowledge, and also it has as a focus the formation of a kind of thinking-thinking by concept-that allows this third approach-developmental teaching-to be used in the most diverse areas of knowledge. It is an article that offers substantive contributions to the debate about the importance of developing the intellectual autonomy of the students.

The work by Claudio Baraldi, Dialogue, agency and experiential camps, deals with experiential learning, understanding it as a social process of communication that demonstrates agency, which denotes the autonomous construction of the meanings. The author explores its social conditionings and the cultural assumptions that underlie it, trying to show how it can be improved through a dialogue that enhances the personal expression of ideas and emotions by the participants. From the transcription of interactions filmed during four international camps for teenagers, the analysis focuses on the specific meanings of the empowering dialogue, and highlights what makes it possible, as well as its main obstacles.

Authored by Flavio Theodor Kunreuther and Osvaldo Luiz Ferraz, the article entitled Education outdoors through adventure: learning moral values in nature expeditions deals with the pedagogical potential of open air teaching based on a research conducted with teenage students. As part of the study, the authors discuss the results of the participation, in one of these courses, of a student who came from a shelter, analyzing the statements about it given by the coordinator and psychologist of the institution. The conclusion of the study asserts that this kind of practice allows experiences that stimulate teamwork, debates about justice and solidarity, reflections about values and principles related to courage, personal effort, discipline, respect and the overcoming of limits, apart from motivating the development of an environmental awareness. The role of the educator is, in these courses, fundamental to guarantee that the experiences are physically and psychologically safe for all the participants.

A similar theme is discussed in the article Moral education: the learning and teaching of justice in school by Adriana Müller and Heloisa Moulin de Alencar. The authors focus on the school teaching of the moral value of justice, interviewing 20 teachers from the sixth to the ninth year of fundamental education in five schools of the private school system of the city of Vitória in the State of Espírito Santo, Brazil. The objective was to identify how these teachers "thought they had learned about justice during their school lives and how they reckoned they taught this moral value in their pedagogical practices". The interest of the authors was in investigating if there was any change between the way in which the interviewees learn and the way in which they taught their students. The conclusion is that the dominant way of learning experienced by them was the imposition of ideas and of values about justice, a manner of learning which they eventually reproduced in their teaching practices with respect to the students, thereby establishing a vicious circle that needs to be broken.

The group of texts about teaching and learning, we present the article entitled Agroecology, sustainable consumption and collective learning in Brazil , by Fernando Passos dos Santos and Leila Chalub-Martins. It's the result of a participative research carried out during 23 months in 2007 and 2008 with a group of consumers from Campinas denominated Trocas Verdes (Green Exchanges). This group, organized in a self-managing form, denotes the pedagogical possibilities of the collective and egalitarian practices concerning the learning of sustainable consumption, environment, characteristics of conventional consumption, and justice in socioeconomic relations. From the establishment of direct relations between producers and consumers, the group seeks fair, is and conscious consumption in which the two parts involved-producers and consumers-establish rules so as to guarantee the realization of everyone's objectives. In so far as it is based on an active position of the participants, self-management for agroecological consumption is seen by the authors as a pedagogically significant and socially emancipatory proposal. Although not mentioned in the article, it is worth remembering that the proposal of self-management was already inscribed in the work of the first anarchist thinkers of the 19th century, such as Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin and that, in the educational field, in the experiences of Paul Robin and of the Rationalist Schools inspired by the work of Francisco Ferrer y Gardia.

The three articles that conclude this number discuss educational issues and experiences that took place in the 1920s, 1930s 1950s and 1960s. The first of them, by José Damiro de Moraes, is entitled Noemy Rudolfer and the organization of school and of the world of labor in the 1920s/1930s; it has been translated into English and is available online. It discusses the intellectual and professional trajectory of Noemy Rudolfer, a psychologist who worked in the educational field alongside well-known people such as Lourenço Filho, having been one of the signatories of the Pioneers Manifest of 1932. In the period under study, Rudolfer played a prominent role in the defense of educational psychology as a fundamental resource for the organization of school. By advocating professional guidance within the schooling process, especially for children and youngsters coming from workers' families, she brought herself close to W. Taylor's maxim of the right man in the right place. The author situates Rudolfer within the process of conservative modernization that was being developed in the 1920s and 1930s, showing its links with the renovating movement of education and with the creation of the Institute for the Rational Organization of Labor (IDORT) in 1931, a period of dissemination of the principles of the scientific administration of labor by industry captains such as Roberto Simonsen, and Roberto Mange, amongst others. The professional guidance focused primarily on pupils belonging to workers' families is, therefore, articulated with the project of rationalization of labor, which had already gained supporters in many parts of the industrialized world.

The penultimate article, Automatic promotion in the 1950s: the pioneering experiment of the Experimental School of Lapa (Sao Paulo), by Lygia S. Viégas and Marilene P. R. Souza, presents and discusses the important contribution to Brazilian education of the pioneering project of abolishing school failure in the São Paulo State school system developed in the late 1950s and implemented in the early 1960s. The authors describe the historical context in which the debate about automatic promotion emerges already in 1918, and explain the way in which the issue gained expression during the developmentalist period of the 1950s. To such end, they analyze the constitutive elements of the project and the testimonies given by educators involved in it, seeking to reveal its limitations, potentials and contradictions. Nowadays, faced with policy of continued progression, the dissemination of this research and of the debate about the experience developed by the Lapa Experimental Group constitutes a valuable contribution. For that reason, this is one of the articles translated into English and made available in the electronic version of the journal.

Lastly, we present A school for rural people: popular culture, peasants and the basic education movement (1960-1964), by Cláudia Moraes de Souza. It is an analysis of the nationwide educational project created by the Catholic Church through the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) and entitled Basic Education Movement (MEB). This project consisted in teaching people from rural areas to read and write, and to act alongside them with a view to promote changes in attitudes and sociocultural behavior. Under this perspective, that actions involved distinct areas such as health, food and hygiene; housing; family and neighborhood relations; labor relations; religious and political organization of rural communities. The work was developed through the articulation of several radio educational systems constituted by nuclei organized to receive programs focused on the education of adults under the centralized coordination of direct representatives of the CNBB and of the Ministry for Education. The author analyses the meeting of different cultures and the daily resistances observed both within the rural school and in the radio school. In spite of the difficulties faced by the Movement and of its underlying assumptions of imposed modernization-"from the center to the periphery, from the Southwest to the Northeast, from the cult to the popular"-, the author considers that, from this movement, anonymous rural workers could learn to read and to count, obtained their electoral registration, and discussed actions and strategies for the transformation of life and its condition.

We hope that this number of Education and Research offers its readers a group of information, ideas and proposals that stimulates them to continue to advance their works of research and teaching.

Lúcia Bruno

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  21 June 2012
• Date of issue
  June 2012