EDITORIAL
This issue of Education and Research offers to the reader a group of articles in which dominate studies about teaching, presented under the view of the pedagogical tradition, of the challenges, evaluation processes, and of education in non-school environments, among other themes present in the education daily life. These are Brazilian, Argentinian, Portuguese, and Spanish researches who investigate the school and the teaching situations, contributing to a deeper reflection about questions of great current interest within the field of education. The three essays at the end of the volume invite the reader to reflect upon language based on original approaches, to a strengthening of the modes of resistance to a limiting daily life. The translated text that completes the group of articles adds to this perspective of overcoming social control, highlighting thinking as alternative of inventiveness.
Learning to be a teacher in the 19th century: influences from Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart, a study conducted by Sarah Jane Alves Durães from the State University of Montes Claros (MG), raises aspects of teacher education at Normal Schools or Education Centers based on the dissemination of conceptions of childhood and education, and of the changes in primary teacher education, grounded both on the scientific rationality dominating teaching methods, and on feminine characteristics. It presents the "analysis initiated by Pestalozzi on the concept of woman as the mother-educator, and on the fact that Froebel was the first to incorporate her as a professional of education" in order to discuss teaching as a feminine attribution.
The reflection about the classics in education present in the essay Aspiration for recognition and the education of self-love in Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Claudio Almir Dalbosco from the University of Passo Fundo (RS) has its argument based on the proposal that "in order to cope with the investigation on the fundamentals of human sociability, Rousseau develops a theory of human recognition, putting at its base the concept of self-love". The concept, sustained by the comparison with the other, with what is outside oneself, represents the "eminently human capacity to compare oneself with the others" under the perspective of human sociability. Along the lines of the educability of self-love and of the difficulties inherent to such task, it points out the limits and challenges placed to the pedagogical relationship between educator and educating present in Rousseau's project of natural and social education. The author concludes that "both in natural education and in social education the role of the educator as ruler stands out".
Resuming the discussion on teacher education, the article Inquiries on teacher education polices and art teaching in the curricula of Pedagogy courses by Janedalva Pontes Gondim and Ângela Maria Dias Fernandes from the Federal University of Paraíba presents a study conducted in that course, as given in three public universities from that state, with the objective of understanding teacher education for the first years of fundamental education, singling out the teaching of art. The authors discuss the legislation concerning the formation of the pedagogue and the curriculum proposal offered by the universities in Paraíba in search of the place occupied by the teaching of art; they analyze the conceptions of art and the corresponding methodological assumptions, and propose that the education of the pedagogue in this area should not be restricted to the contends related to child education and fundamental education, but should be an investment in the aesthetic formation of future teachers.
In the article An essay on burnout, engagement, and coping strategies in the teaching profession by Margarida Pocinho from the University of Madeira and by Célia Xavier Perestrelo from the Regional Secretariat of Education and Culture the difficulties found in the teaching profession are discussed, which, according to the authors, can contribute to a situation of emotional exhaustion for some teachers, whilst others get even more involved with the work, reacting to the obstacles as if they were challenges. To the former, "resorting to strategies of coping strategies adopted in response to different forms of stress is one way of dealing with the difficulties inherent to the exercise of the teaching profession", leading the authors to conclude that "the more coping strategies of control and confrontation the teachers employ, the greater professional fulfillment they will achieve, this constituting one of the ways to promote professional engagement".
The article by the Portuguese authors João Silva, Nicole Rebelo, Patrícia Mendes and Adelinda Candeias from the University of Évora, The portfolio in teacher education and professional evaluation, describes a bibliographical survey of several studies developed about portfolios, with the purpose of investigating "the validity and usefulness of this tool for teacher evaluation in the area of professional formation, demonstrating its applicability and respective advantages and disadvantages". Among the former, they point out the possibility of controlling one's own assessment by teachers; as disadvantages, they argue that "a disproportion can be observed between the quality of the portfolio and the efficiency in the teaching process, that is, the success of this assessment tool may not reflect what a teacher truly is". Convinced of the importance of this tool, they suggest its use aiming at a personal as well as collective reflection, and also for short-term and long-term evaluation, although they indicate that the portfolio must be associated to other instruments of assessment of teaching practices if its results are to be successful.
Still on the topic of evaluation, Gisele Francisca da Silva Carvalho and Maria do Socorro Alencar Nunes Macedo, from the Regional Teaching Superintendence of São João Del-Rei (MG), in the article Official evaluation: what teachers say about its impact on teaching practice, debate based on the discourse of literacy teachers the impact of the Proalfa Program (Literacy Evaluation Program of the State of Minas Gerais) to teaching practice. The analysis, carried out with the use of concepts such as "those of reform and change, as proposed by Popkewitz, tactics and strategies, postulated by Certeau, and also the concepts of polyphony and voices, authority discourse and internally persuasive, from Bakhtin's enunciation theory" reveals tactics of adhesion and resistance to the program.
Taking as its reference critical theory, the article Analysis of the attitudes of fundamental education teachers towards inclusive education by José Leon Crochik from the University of São Paulo, Dulce R. Pedrossian, Alexandra A. Anache, Branca Meneses, and Maria de Fátima E. M. Lima, from the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, presents a research conducted with fundamental education teachers on attitudes related to inclusive education, revealing obstacles and elements favorable to this kind of education.
Under the title Implications of the educative action in spaces of specific professional orientation in Spain, Francisco Javier Blanco Encomienda and María José Latorre Medina from the University of Granada discuss the pedagogical intervention in spaces dedicated to sick and/or hospitalized children, the so-called hospital classes. The authors intend, firstly, to unveil the meaning of psychopedagogy within the hospital context, and then to focus on the training of hospital psychopedagogy professionals. They conclude the text by indicating proposals for action based on the educational implications of the work within this context.
Pablo Francisco Di Leo, from the University of Buenos Aires, presents part of the results of his doctoral studies in the article entitled Violence and social climate in secondary schools: experiences of teachers and principals, in which he analyzes social climates prevailing at public high schools in Buenos Aires based on the practices and meanings attributed by teachers and administrative staff, the subjects of the research, to situations of school violence. The article is organized around two categories identified in the discourses and practices of teachers and administrative staff, school violence and crises of the institution and school authority, put in dialogue with conceptual tools of contemporary social theory and of other studies on the theme under analysis.
In the article "Thought of the outside", knowledge and thought in education: conversations with Michel Foucault, Cintya Regina Ribeiro from the University of São Paulo considers "the current conditions of thought as a problem of educational research". In so doing, it questions the articulation between knowledge and reflective thinking, using as a reference the works of Foucault and Nietzsche, "particularly about language, the production of truth and their implications for the ways of knowing and thinking". Foucault's discussions based on Blanchot's "thought of the outside", and on Deleuze's "thought of difference" constitute the "analytical platform" which the author uses to develop the question proposed.
Marcos Villela Pereira from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande Do Sul and Cleber Gibbon Ratto from the Methodist University Center, in the article Self-praise and the inordinate anthropologization of human sciences, propose a "philosophical critique of a specific form of anthropologization of the human sciences". The essay, which departs from the assumption that man produces his own regime of knowledge, intends "to examine this regime that turned language into the expression of knowledge and of the conscience of the world".
The article Writing as a way of life: educational connections and unfoldings by Julio Groppa Aquino from the University of São Paulo puts in question the writing of oneself, such as formulated by Foucault, and discusses "three recurring arguments about school writing: its categorization in genres, its examining function, and its subordination to reading", in order to, according to the author, "view writing as a circumstance propitious to the existential styling of the writer, having in mind, with Foucault, the indispensable effort of resistance and ethical self-creation in the face of the subjectivation games typical of school practices".
The volume concludes with the translation of an article by sociologist Claudine Haroche, research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, and a member of the Edgar Morin Centre at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Published in 2010 in the Cahiers Internacionaux de Sociologie, The unassessable in a society of distrust presents a critique to the neoliberal society and discusses the increasing assessment of individuals and of their accountability for what they did, are doing, and will do as a form of social control. According to the author, "the goods and the people are being increasingly assessed and, therefore, inevitably compared, giving rise and reinforcing forms of competition and rivalry which are permanent and exacerbated". Along these lines, the author invites us to reflect about the processes of thought, highlighting that it is the "unassessable that allows the freedom to think, to imagine, and to invent: in other words, that allows the unforeseen, the novel".
The Journal, in line with its internationalization policy, offers two articles from this issue in English, available online from the SciELO website. They are English versions of the texts Writing as a way of life: educational connections and unfoldings by Julio Groppa Aquino, and "Thought of the outside", knowledge and thought in education: conversations with Michel Foucault by Cintya Regina Ribeiro.
Lastly, two pieces of information. The first is the opening of the access to the volumes published between 1975 and 1996 at the then called Revista da Faculdade de Educação. Since July 2011 they are available from the portal Educ@, a virtual library whose objective is to give access to collections of quality periodicals in the field of education. The address of the portal is http://educa.fcc.org.br/scielo.php. We recall that the volumes published since 1997 can be found at http://www.scielo.br.
The second information refers to the new composition of editors of Education & Research. Our thanks to Lucia Emilia Nuevo Barreto Bruno, editor of the Journal for a few years, who is leaving the editorial coordination, and our welcome to Denise Trento Rebello de Souza, who is taking on this role along with Teresa Cristina Rego. Renovation is always a positive element in the constitution of the team.
Maria Letícia Barros Pedroso Nascimento
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
24 Oct 2011 -
Date of issue
Dec 2011
