Professional education of teachers and democratic management: a university-school partnership for the improvement of public education

Abstract

This project is in the field of research on initial and continuing teacher education. Its purposes aim to search the understandings about the possibilities of contributing to the improvement of public education, from the local of university - school partnership and the construction, together with the school team, of actions organized by a critical and collaborative action-research. The configuration of this process of action-research is assumed as a research problem that guides the project, with a careful look at the development of actions and their relations with professional development and the training of future teachers. The institutions involved are the Raul Saddi State School, the Federal University of São Paulo, both headquartered in the city of Diadema - SP and the University of São Paulo, headquartered in São Paulo - SP. Since the end of 2015, researchers from both university institutions and the school's management and teachers of school meet periodically in forums at school and university. Principles and objectives have been refined, which are consistent with advances in the construction of this partnership, in turn, materialized in this project. The training actions have been established in the areas of continuous training of managers and teachers and initial training, in the case of carrying out traineeship activities by future teachers at school. The theoretical axes adopted in this project are based on Historical-Cultural Theory, with emphasis on the relationship between work and human development, and concepts like activity, mediation and language. These concepts allow us to discuss and situate the relationship between learning and development as a process that emerges from the needs created in the exercise of teaching and the activity of internship, when referring to the professional of the school and the trainee, respectively. We also favored discussions on pedagogical praxis, grounding immanent to the principles of action research and the reflexive critical movement under construction. The proposed actions were organized in five axes, which are assumed by different researchers: 1. Undertake efforts to build the reflexive and collaborative critical movement, as a general way of teacher training and professional development for the purpose of improving the teaching of the school; 2. To develop the supervised curriculum internship in a research perspective, as a process to enhance the trainee's training in his / her joint work with the supervising teacher in the school and the orientation of the university professor; 3. Undertake efforts to construct the general way of organizing teaching and learning in Science and Mathematics from the premises of critical and reflexive action-research; 4. Undertake efforts so that the management team is active in the construction of critical and collaborative action-research, and that this action translates into the construction of democratic and participatory management; promote analysis on the issues involved, systematize and disseminate them; 5. Undertake efforts to establish a partnership between the University of São Paulo and a public school (preferably located in the immediate vicinity of the Campus) in the perspective of actions organized by a critical and collaborative action- research, that combines the continuous training of teachers and the development of curricular stages in the areas of science and mathematics. Among the expected results, we highlight contributions in the different areas: theoretical and methodological visions with respect to the understanding of the action-research process; professional development of the participating teachers; improvement of teaching; organizational and management character of the school; improvement of the development of the internships and reformulations of the teacher´s training courses. (AU)