Aprendizagem da docência pela prática da tutoria virtual: um estudo sobre formação, saberes, desafios e estratégias da docência na educação à distância no âmbito da Universidade Aberta do Brasil

Abstract

Distance Education (DE) is a type of education that enables the democratization of access to knowledge, the expansion of job opportunities and learning throughout life, as this is independent of the distance between student and educational institution. Their emergence and expansion were only possible due to the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) most recent. This whole process has given rise to new demands for teacher training and specific knowledge to act in this type of education. In other words, the Virtual Education, teaching setting itself differs from the traditional teaching / classroom. As we consider the peculiarities of distance education, are concerned to understand how it develops the learning of teaching the practice of virtual tutoring. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze how it develops the learning of teaching the practice of virtual tutoring. For this, the following five to have specific objectives: Identify and describe the virtual teaching setting present in the pedagogical model of distance education of higher education institutions; Describe and characterize the formation of virtual teachers; Identify and analyze the knowledge necessary to virtual tutor and the knowledge acquired throughout their educational experience in distance education and, where appropriate, in classroom teaching; Analyze possible challenges and strategies linked to the institutional training proposal for the development of virtual teaching and learning point the perception of virtual tutors on trends and perspectives of teaching in higher education. The methodology was qualitative and quantitative nature and instruments for data collection were document analysis, the online questionnaire and interviews. The sample used in the study corresponded to a total of 461 virtual tutors of undergraduate courses four Higher Education Institutions (HEI) partners in the program Open University of Brazil (UAB). The main results found that the virtual teaching learning has particularities, but also similarities in relation to teaching knowledge, difficulties and facilities, as well as challenges and strategies of classroom education. The focus of this study was to engage with issues relating to the learning of teaching and professional development process, since large studies of this theme will contribute to understand the teacher training process in distance education.