Ensinando a ensinar ou vivendo para aprender? A interação entre os conhecimentos de um professor atuante e de um aspirante, como subsídio para aprendizagem da docência.
Abstract
Contrary to what is known as process-product researches, in which teachers
used to be seen as a mere technical performer, nowadays the teacher is the
centerpiece in the educational process. In this new approach, the teacher is the
core of the debates and professional practices, personal life and know-how of
the professional practices are analysed. Lee Shulman is one of the researchers
who tries to make a list of required knowledge for a teacher to carry out his/her
job. This list is referred to as knowledge base of teaching by the author, which
is formed, mainly, by content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge and
pedagogical content knowledge. As one of the sources to acquire such
knowledge is the everyday practice, we have asked in which aspects and how a
veteran teacher and a teacher-to-be, working together in their development
process, and having a training teacher as mediator, can share the required
knowledge in teaching. Two professionals graduated in Education and the
researcher, in the role of mediator, took part in this study. One of the
professionals, referred to as teacher-to-be, had no classroom practice; the
other, referred to as veteran teacher, had an eighteen-year-long experience.
Data was gathered from August through December 2003. The focal point was
the elaboration, implementation and reflection about a series of five classes
taught to early grades in Elementary School, the subject being air . The focus
was the knowledge that is part of the knowledge base of teaching pointed out
by Shulman. Results showed that the teacher-to-be faced the same difficulties
and experienced similar tensions and anxiety as her veteran peer when at the
beginning of her career. However, after years of practice, the veteran teacher
seemed to have solid techniques or strategies on how to deal with students,
differently from the teacher-to-be, who still tried to build them up by a process of
trial and error. The greatest interaction between them was about the general
pedagogical knowledge , when they talked about strategies to control students
discipline, their characteristics and their behavior during classes. Both
presented an important lack of content knowledge , which made it difficult for
them to understand each other when that was the point. They had different
motivation concerning the focus of analyses of the classes and about what they
wanted to learn: the teacher-to-be focused on her own performance while the
veteran teacher looked at the learning process by the students. Such fact might
show that, instead of helping the development process, the longer the practice
the more difficult for the peers to interact since the teachers interests could be
different. Accepting an opinion or idea from a peer seems to be tied more to
private characteristics of those involved. Contrary to what was expected, i.e.,
that the teacher-to-be could learn more about how to teach from the veteran
teacher, there was learning by both professionals and an improvement in their
knowledge base of teaching .