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>>TEACHING
A beautiful program that raises the level of education
Unicamp, in partnership with city halls, carries out the
Training of Basic Education Teachers for 20 cities
of the Metropolitan Region of Campinas
JOÃO MAURÍCIO DA ROSA
One of Brazil’s biggest educational problems – the limited
training of basic education teachers - begins to be tackled in its origins from August, with the start of classes in the Teacher Training Program at Unicamp. The course is free and the project is integrated into the public policy for teacher training in higher education.
Coordinated by the Faculty of Education (FE) and aimed at Early Childhood Education and Elementary School teachers from 20 cities in the region, the program meets the requirements of the Law of Guidelines and Bases, which determines higher education for teachers in the initial grades of elementary school. and establishes a period of ten years for the adaptation of non-graduate teachers.
The trajectory of basic education in Brazil has undergone a historic turn in recent decades, favoring the massification of education to the detriment of quality. The number of vacancies and access for the least favored were increased, but knowledge was affected. The flattening of salaries and the increase in teachers' working hours affected the level of education and promoted a large migration to the private sector, which saw unprecedented growth. Education became a cheap product and the elite, who predominated in public schools, migrated to private schools, followed by good teachers.
“The debt owed to primary and preschool teachers is immense, not only due to the number of professionals who have not yet graduated, but also due to the impoverishment that occurred in their basic and secondary education, generally carried out in public schools themselves”, says teacher Agueda Bernardete Bittencourt , director of FE.
Colleague to colleague – To partially overcome these difficulties, the program will involve 25 professors from the Faculty. They will carry out intense initial work with 72 auxiliary professionals, postgraduates from FE itself, and who already work in municipal schools, therefore having experience with the reality in which students and their fellow teachers live in the public network. This first stage will require 720 class hours until August, 480 of which are theoretical and 240 practical, with internships at Unicamp units.
It will be a marathon for Unicamp teachers, who begin the program at the same time as they supervise the undergraduate course, until its completion, with a workload of 1.800 hours in each of the ten planned classes, in addition to 400 hours of cultural practices within the University. And the work doesn't stop at the end of the course. According to one of the program coordinators, Elisabete Pereira, the proposal is to create a continuing education structure in each of the municipalities.
Three-level course – The program has three course levels: improvement, specialization with a latu-sensu postgraduate degree and a degree in Pedagogy. In 2002, according to Professor Agueda, the expectation is to reach 60 teachers who have already graduated – for postgraduate training – and 400 who will graduate in Pedagogy over the course of three years. It is estimated that there are 2.780 teachers from the municipal education network in the Metropolitan Region of Campinas who need the course. Of the total of 4.012 elementary school teachers, 1.555 are not graduates. There are 3.091 teachers in early childhood education, 1.225 of whom do not have higher education.
“Early childhood education is not required, by law, to have trained teachers, but for us this is a requirement”, highlights Agueda. “The State of São Paulo is still privileged, because there are few professionals who do not have at least a secondary course in Pedagogy, although they have advanced in terms of qualifications, in terms of culture there has been no evolution”, she adds. Over the next five years, all teachers in the network who do not yet have undergraduate or specialization courses will have the opportunity to access university courses.
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Project is a collective construction
“This is the project with the greatest social reach at Unicamp and a heroic act that must be recorded”, highlighted rector Hermano Tavares, aware of the difficulties and importance of the program, during the agreement signing ceremony, on March 14, bringing together authorities in the region, including mayors, municipal education secretaries and city hall representatives. Of the 19 cities in the Metropolitan Region of Campinas that signed an agreement to participate in the program, only Holambra was left out. Amparo and Piracicaba, although not part of the RMC, are included.
“The program was a collective construction and today we are happy with the form it took”, says the dean of Undergraduate Studies, Angelo Cortelazzo. According to him, the course will serve as an example for other actions in universities across the country, mainly due to its innovative structure. For the vice-mayor of Vinhedo, Élcio Bocaleto – representative of the mayor and president of RMC Milton Serafim –, the concrete action to qualify teachers allows for critical reflection, as it is a project to popularize Unicamp. “The knowledge produced at the University will have a multiplying effect in municipal classrooms. Therefore, it is difficult to measure the importance of the moment”, he assessed.
Proposals, discussions and a lot of commitment guided the meetings of the Forum of Education Secretaries throughout last year, until the final draft of the program was reached. The first contact took place at a breakfast on January 10, 2001, days after the RMC mayors took office. Numerous meetings followed, given the interest of the secretaries and Unicamp in solving problems linked to the secretariats, mainly relating to teacher training.
Innovative
– One of the program coordinators, Elisabete Pereira, explains that one of the principles for structuring the course was precisely to offer municipalities the possibility of organizing continuing education services for their teachers, a training infrastructure in each of the departments . “The innovative nature of the project is to enable comprehensive and intensive preparation.” For the coordinator, the proposal is the result of a process of reflection and criticism between different conceptions about teacher training.
According to the advisor to the Sumaré Department of Education, José Carlos Mariano, who has been active since the first meetings, it was a productive period with many questions. “It was necessary to seek answers to several questions, such as the release of resources and course structure”, he comments. He agrees with Cortelazzo when the dean defines the project as a collective construction. “In many moments, the varied ideas and ways of seeing things helped to build the course”. The advisor also understands that the program guarantees support for maintaining a continuing training team in Sumaré. “We will have a high-quality group, which will allow us to combine theory and practice.”
A vocation for quality
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