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Editorial

This issue of Education and Research inaugurates its publication online only and has been organized into three major themes: teacher education, early childhood education and special education. They bring to the fore questions that insist on challenging Brazilian educational policies because their results are still insufficient to produce the effects of improving the quality of education.

The eight articles on teacher education reveal problems from the analysis of the implications of the reform in the education undergraduate degree, implemented in Brazil in the mid-2000s, including, as specificities of the subject, students’ motivations to choose the teaching profession, the challenges to the beginning and permanence in that career, quality factors of the national educational policy, the exploration of the reflective approach, and finally a production that focuses on the relationship between education students’ mastery of information technology and communication and their understanding of its use in educational practices.

This theme opens with and article by Selma Garrido Pimenta, José Cerchi Fusari, Cristina Cinto Araujo Pedroso, and Umberto de Andrade Pinto, who lead us to think about teacher training in “Teacher education courses (Pedagogy)*: weaknesses in the basic training of a teacher”. Discussing research conducted with the objective of debating the training of multipurpose teachers for early childhood education and the early years of primary education, in education courses, taking into account the implementation of their guidelines in 2006, the authors use the documentary analysis of curricula of “public and private institutions in the state of São Paulo”. Results confirm problems already explored in the literature on the subject, namely: “the vagueness of the pedagogical field and the scattering of the scope of pedagogy and the teacher’s professional practice”. The authors conclude that the courses fail to fulfill all of their roles, because they “are not fully training neither the educator nor the multipurpose teacher,” and also extract from their findings contributions to new investigations, which can be taken as references for overcoming the problems identified.

In addition to the fact that the education undergraduate program in Brazil offers challenges to the government, education systems and higher education institutions, the career choice demands reflection and brings challenges to decision making.

In the article “Factors affecting the choice of teaching programs in Colombia”, Elias Said-Hung, Gloria Gratacós and Jorge Valencia Cobos developed a quantitative study in the Caribbean region of that country, involving students from education colleges and complementary cycles of higher normal schools, with a view to analyzing factors that influenced undergraduates to choose a career in education. Assuming that knowledge about the factors influencing these choices is vital to plan how to “attract the best students to exercise this function”, in the findings, the authors indicate that the altruistic and intrinsic motivations (among which influencing the future of children and adolescents and contributing to society) are the most valued by the students who participated in the research; as for extrinsic motivations, stability in employment gained weight, whereas salary and time for family were less appreciated. Researchers indicate the need for national level policies that not only promote salary and incentive improvements, but also seek to ensure curricula is capable of attracting more qualified students.

Although the study was conducted in the Colombian context, Brazil also needs to give special attention to the increase in policies that attract better qualified professionals to teaching. However, keeping them in the exercise of their functions is also a challenge.

The article by Maria das Graças C. de Arruda Nascimento and Rosemary F. dos Reis on initial and continuing training experiences contributes to this discussion. The topic is investigated through interviews, questionnaires and discussion groups about the meanings attributed by teachers entering the profession who worked in the public education system of Rio de Janeiro city from 2010 to 2012. In the findings presented in the article “Teacher Education: Perceptions of Teachers who are Entering the Municipal Education System in Rio de Janeiro,” the authors emphasize that, for the subjects, initial education gave them opportunities for “reflecting about different aspects of the educational reality”, as well as for participating in research and extension activities and in supervised internships. The arguments of these teachers are limited to the lack of theoretical-practical connection, and emphasize the precarious welcoming policy and in-service education policy for incoming teachers, which should consider the needs of the beginning of the career.

However, some of these claims remain strong when, through the use of literature, factors that interfere with and mark the teaching profession are explored. In the article “Work, career, teaching development, and change in educational practice,” Claudio Pinto Nunes and Dalila Andrade Oliveira analyze this profession in relation to the “work, career, teacher education/development policy, and educational practice”, aspects that the authors consider essential for improving the quality of learning in basic education.1 1 - Translator’s note: In Brazil, the term educação básica (basic education) comprises early childhood, primary and secondary education. They highlight the need to implement public policies that ensure the professional development of teachers, linked to the guarantee of conditions for teaching, which are indispensable factors to combat teacher accountability for the success or failure of student learning.

Still on teacher education, the article “The Quality of Teacher Training under the ‘Parfor Presencial’”, by Valdinei Costa Souza, disseminates findings of a study carried out through interviews with coordinators of these courses on “their pedagogical organizing, infrastructure and faculty.” Results did not allow concluding which factors guided the statements of the research participants when they did or did not affirm the quality of Parfor. According to the author, what contributed to this was the “imprecise definition of the quality standard,” which is due to both the limitations of “Sinaes in the regulatory scope of these courses” and the “lack of Parfor Presencial guidelines to provide information for the performance of the participating institutions.”

It is also noted that different experiences in teacher education come from investments in other approaches. Among these, it is worth mentioning those which teachers are urged to participate in as subjects of their constant professional qualification. In this direction, Andrea Ruffinelli, in “Educating reflective teachers: an approach under progress and dispute,” presents results of a literature review – 24 articles from refereed journals, published from 2009 to 2014. Such sources allow understanding the main conclusions, methodologies, arguments, and tensions present in the material analyzed. Conclusions point to a decade of increasing search for strategies for the development of this reflective perspective, betting on its critical or transforming power.

Contributing to the understanding of aspects related to the subject on screen, Luciana Leandro da Silva, in the text “Policies for training university professors in São Paulo, Brazil and Catalonia, Spain: trends and challenges”, deepens the discussion on the training of trainers. Using documentary sources, interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups, the author aims to “shed light on the trends that affect policies for training professors” in some public higher education institutions in São Paulo and Catalonia. The analysis allows indicating that changes in teacher education are based on transnational and global educational reforms carried out in the last decades, which are marked by curricular reorientation coexisting with the precariousness of teaching work, although supported by the discourse of the improvement of such work. The author concludes that it is necessary to overcome not only the differentiated valuation of research activities in comparison to those of teaching, but also the intrusion of the logic of the labor market – which brings with it the “technical-instrumental paradigm” of neoliberal reforms –, and to rescue the social meaning and the “emancipatory character” of the training conceived in favor of “teacher development and professionalization”.

As seen so far, teacher education is a multi-interface topic and can be employed to foster various and distinct projects of society. Hence the variety of productions under different approaches and with diverse implications for the field of educational policies.

In the article “Evaluation of digital and pedagogical literacy in ICT based on the opinions of Initial Teacher Education students”, the authors Pedro Sandoval Rubilar, Francisco Rodriguez Alveal and Ana Carolina Maldonado Fuentes aim to diagnose the needs, in the field of information and communication technology training, of education undergraduates in a higher education institution in Chile. To this end, they use questionnaires, which were analyzed with descriptive methods. As for conclusions, the authors assert that these students have a high degree of access to ICTs and, as native subjects, enjoy these resources without difficulties. However, students are unaware of specific programs in the field of education and the possibilities of applying what they know to their future profession, particularly for the development of classes.

Regarding the theme of children’s education, four articles are published in this issue of the journal with different topics related to this stage of education, revealing the maintenance of issues already known in the area and others still little explored and that have been gaining attention in academic productions. They address diverse topics, all related to the quality of early childhood education, regarding the guarant access to all and in the practices at this stage of basic education, by discussing the relations between care and education and the uses of courtyards of educational units, for the benefit of children’s development and learning. The last article of this theme addresses the historicaldebate between the State and the Catholic Church on the role of families in the education of children, in the mid-nineteenth century, in a Brazilian province.

In the research developed by Fabiana Silva Fernandes and Juliana dos Reis Domingues, published in “Early childhood education in São Paulo state: conditions of care and profile of children”, in which they use, as the basis for analysis, data from the Demographic Census (2010) and School Census (from 2008 to 2013), from Fundação Sistema Estadual de Análise de Dados (SEADE) of 2012, and from the Ministry of Health (DATASUS, from 2000 to 2012), the authors conclude that there was an expansion of coverage for children aged zero to three years and four to five years, but that, in the first age group, less than 40% are covered and, in the second, 700,000 children are still excluded from education. In addition to these findings, what requires more attention is the inequality also revealed in these data, because access is more difficult for children aged zero to three years of households where the per capita income is lower than a minimum wage.

Besides the problems arising from the shortage of policies that guarantee the necessary vacancies for universal coverage in early childhood education, there are those that concern the work carried out in educational units that require continuous investments by public authorities.

In “Scenes of everyday life in early childhood education: challenges facing the integration of care and education”, Maria Aparecida Guedes Monção discusses the complexity of working with young children. To do so, she takes as reference the moments of rest and feeding of children from zero to four years, assuming that the quality of this service depends on the “dialogical relationships between adults and children and the integration between care and education.” The ethnographic case study in an educational unit in São Paulo city in 2010 and 2011, using “participant observation, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with the CEI [Early Childhood Education Center] team and children’s families”, brought up the discussion about the need to incorporate, as a guideline of public education policies, the qualification of adult and child interactions through the inclusion of the theme of care of the body (food, hygiene, rest, and health) in continuing teacher education and in the teachers’ plans. This indication stems from the fact that the author has gathered evidence of the lack of appreciation of the emotions manifested by small children during meals and rest in the institution researched, moments discussed as fundamental in the education of children. According to Monção, teachers need to take on the leading role of their practice and, together with other professionals involved, build an education that respects the individuality and uniqueness of children, allowing the understanding that the quality of interactions is hampered by unquestioning obedience to rigid norms of times and spaces, as rites governing educational actions.

Investment in research on early childhood education also concerns other issues, some of which have been examined, but have implications for its quality.

The work published in the article “Schoolyards in early childhood schools: between the exposed and the hidden, marks and traces”, by Maria Leonor Pio Borges de Toledo, analyzes, in nine public schools of eight municipalities of Rio de Janeiro, not only the physical characteristics of school buildings, but also the circulation in this place of the institutions, paying attention to how children and adults use them. As an analytical resource, she employs photographs of the courtyards of these educational establishments, the Benjaminian theory and their closeness and separation from legal documents: Parâmetros básicos de infra-estrutura (BRASIL, 2006) [Basic infrastructure parameters], Diretrizes curriculares (BRASIL, 2009) [Curricular guidelines] and Critérios para um atendimento (CAMPOS; ROSEMBERG, 2009) [Service criteria]. It concludes that such documents are insufficient because they do not generate the changes needed to improve the quality of early childhood education, which depends on the implementation and consolidation of public policies that guarantee children are offered conditions to learn from “things and spaces that provide body education, affective and intellectual education.”

Juarez José Tuchinski dos Anjos, in “Competing Representations about how Families Educate Children (Province of Paraná, 1853-1889),” analyzes the theme employing printed documentary sources: “Constituições Primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia [First Constitutions of the Archbishopric of Bahia], reports, sermons, newspapers, and a catechism.” From his interrogative exercise to the sources, with the purpose of analyzing such representations “in a specific region of the empire, i.e., the Province of Paraná, from 1853 [...] to 1889,” the author uses Burke’s concept of social role, and Chartier’s concept of representation. Among his conclusions the intense discussions between representatives of the State and the Catholic Church on the role of the family in the education of children stand out. The production of the representations analyzed by the author, which marked the social scene at that historical moment and context, resulted from these discussions.

The third theme is organized into four articles and an interview in the field of special education.

Focusing on education of the deaf, the first two articles present debates considered pertinent nowadays, as they deal with linguistic and teacher education policies to provide services to deaf students and the public-private relationship in the organization of the provision of educational services. The following two articles investigate developments of the school inclusion policy. In the first one, we present analyses about the trajectories of students enrolled in special education in the stages of basic education, and, in the second, the discussion on the training of specialized teachers.

In the article “Education for deaf people in Brazil and Portugal: linguistic recognition, bilingualism, and teacher education policies” – whose objectives are expressed in the title –, the authors analyze the production of legal texts with equivalence in value in those countries, as well as their relations with other documents and their “implementation/interpretation.” For Angela Nediane dos Santos, Orquídea Manoela Braga e Soares Coelho and Madalena Klein, the actions to guarantee education of the deaf are distinguished in these countries by the influence of the European Union in the educational policies and actions of the deaf associative movement in Portugal and have the recognition of their sign languages in common. However, the other rights claimed by the deaf associative movements were impacted by the principles of inclusive education, and in this context their interests and those of the public authorities of these countries had to be negotiated to ensure their implementation as a public policy.

Also on education of the deaf, but in the context of a Brazilian state, in “Decentralization of Deaf Education in Brazil and its Developments in the State of Espírito Santo (Brazil)”, Ednalva Gutierrez Rodrigues and Cláudia Maria Mendes Gontijo disseminate results of historiographical research, with documentary sources produced from 1950 to 1970, on the literacy of the deaf. They adopt Bloch as a historiographical reference and, to analyze discursive statements, the Bakhtinian assumptions. In the section presented in this article, they seek to understand the implications of the proposal of Instituto Nacional de Educação de Surdos [National Institute of Education of the Deaf], which decentralizes the education of these students by creating special classes in regular schools, the main objective of the Campaign for the Education of the Deaf in Brazil. They conclude that it was only through the articulation of public and private institutions that the decentralization of the care of the deaf in the capital of Espírito Santo state took effect.

Resorting to the study of “microdata from the School Census of Compulsory Education in Rio Grande do Sul” to analyze the school flow in basic education and education of youth and adults of the target audience of special education, Clarissa Haas, Mayara Costa da Silva and Alceu Ravanello Ferraro, in the article “Education of people with disabilities in Rio Grande do Sul in view of the right to education”, detect that children older than six years have been maintained in early childhood education, and that their enrollment in the first three years of primary education has prevailed, and that less than 5% of the total number of students with disabilities in secondary education completed this level at 17 years. They conclude that it is necessary to invest in public policies not only to ensure school success stories, abut also to monitor the irregularities that constrain the exercise of the rights of these students.

Making the confluence of the themes of teacher education and special education possible, the article “An analysis of the pedagogical project and curriculum of undergraduate licentiate programs in special education”, brings the findings of a study that sought to “identify, describe and analyze” undergraduate programs in special education, using documentary sources. In this exploratory study, the authors Patricia Santos de Oliveira and Enicéia Gonçalves Mendes used projects, curricula and programs of ten undergraduate courses from eight higher education institutions. Data analysis detected their insufficiency and the diversity of curricula. They attribute this to the absence of national curricular parameters for training in the field of special education in higher education. As for conclusions, they affirm the need to prioritize the initial education of specialized teachers.

In the interview “Inclusive education and its challenges: a conversation with David Rodrigues”, two professors of Faculdade de Educação, Universidade de São Paulo, Cássia Geciauskas Sofiato and Carla Biancha Angelucci, explore, together with this renowned Portuguese researcher, from his experiences in defending the right to education for all, the concepts of inclusion and equity, “in the light of the Declaration of Incheon” (2015). Among their conclusions, it is worth highlighting their analysis of the needs arising from the implementation of inclusion policies of all students, which should encompass “rethinking educational work” as well as teacher education.

Thus, this issue begins with teacher education and ends with emphasis on the same theme, which corroborates its importance in the scenario of public educational policies with a view to improving its quality for all.

Rosângela Gavioli Prieto
Editora de Education and Research

  • 1
    - Translator’s note: In Brazil, the term educação básica (basic education) comprises early childhood, primary and secondary education.

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    Jan-Mar 2017
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