01-10-2002
31-12-2005
The socio-educational transformations of the last 20 years have resulted in investment in the ongoing training of professionals to the detriment of initial training. Today, having better identified the degree of comprehensiveness that continuing training can offer, we are re-thinking initial training. Not only can initial training provide the basic frameworks that in-service training can provide in a comprehensive way (Lopes, 1999), but - due to the training conditions - it seems to be able to have a definitive and irreplaceable impact on what has been called the social dimension of teachers‘ pedagogical discourse, the absence of which is at the root of these teachers’ identity crisis (Benavente, 1990; Lopes, 1999).
At the core of the project is the type of impact on current attitudes and interests in education of the training experience undergone at the Porto Primary School from 1975 to 1979 by the majority of the team (6 out of 10), who are now university lecturers in the field of Education Sciences or teachers of primary education with a degree or undergraduate degree.
Combining the aim of making the history of initial training in that exceptional time (a tribute that is owed to history) - and considering it an exemplary case from which comparisons with other situations will give rise to heuristic perspectives - with the general aim of resuming research and problematising the initial training of primary school teachers in a new way, in order to make the most of the effects of this training, the project specifically aims to study the impact of initial training on the basic professional identity of primary school teachers, identifying the areas in which it is essential and irreplaceable in relation to ongoing training.
The dimensions chosen to characterise the type of training are the express curriculum - theoretical and practical components - and the hidden curriculum - the school or training climate. Basic professional identities will be inferred by identifying the place occupied by initial training in the subjects' biographies, their illusions and disillusions. These basic professional identities will be related to the curriculum of the training schools. To this end, the following will be collected: biographies of teachers and ex-teachers of primary education trained in the 1970s, before and after 25 April, and in the 1980s and 1990s, in public or public schools, before and after the beginning of the implementation of the Reform of the Education System; the study plans of the different training schools in question; and legal documents, publications, grey literature and other general framework documentation that contextualise each period.
To carry out the work, the team will be organised into four sub-teams, covering the 70s (two sub-teams), 80s and 90s. The first year will be dedicated to identifying the places and people under study, collecting the documentation and starting to collect the biographies; the second year will be focused on collecting the biographies and analysing the documentation; the third year will be focused on analysing the biographies, establishing the relationships between the two components under study and writing the research report.
IDEAFor - Identity, Democracy, School, Administration and Training
FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Referência: POCTI/CED/37651/2001
CIIE / Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto FPCEUP - Portugal
Direcção Geral dos Assuntos Consulares e Comunidades Portuguesas