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Acta Scientiarum. Education

versión impresa ISSN 2178-5198versión On-line ISSN 2178-5201

Acta Educ. vol.44  Maringá  2022  Epub 01-Ago-2022

https://doi.org/10.4025/actascieduc.v44i4.55174 

TEACHERS' FORMATION AND PUBLIC POLICY

About ‘formation’ and pedagogical work of teachers: ‘it seems that the wind arrest the time’

Liliana Soares Ferreira1 
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9717-1476

1Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Av. Roraima, 1000, 97105-900, Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil.


ABSTRACT.

The text aims to argue about ‘pedagogical work’ and to consider the naturalization of the very recurrent expression ‘teacher training’. The expression is marked with quotation marks to highlight and indicate how much a way of thinking can be recurrently applied, becoming natural, and, therefore, being little questioned about its existence and the assumptions that guide it. It is not a matter of merely replacing expressions, but, in effect, proposing the necessary meanings to reconstruct the way teachers relate to what they produce and understand themselves as professionals. The arguments were elaborated with the systematization of developed studies and bibliographic research. Those studies were the remote empirical field, insofar as, from them, systematizations and records were analyzed. From the theoretical-methodological point of view, Analysis of the Movement of Senses was applied, which included the dialectical movement between synthesis-analysis-synthesis of the senses as a ‘asking about’, a coming and going to the speeches. Thus, this article presents the concepts of ‘teacher training’; follows an approach to teachers, their work and the ‘training’process; it also presents the work of teachers as a practice and as praxis. Finally, emphasizing the pedagogical work, it is argued that it is practical, surpassing practice, as an element of ‘teacher training’.

Keywords: pedagogical work; teacher formation; practice; analysis of movements of senses

RESUMO.

O texto tem como objetivo argumentar sobre ‘trabalho pedagógico’ e ponderar sobre a naturalização da expressão muito recorrente ‘formação de professores’. Marca-se a expressão com aspas para destacar e indicar o quanto um modo de pensar pode ser recorrentemente aplicado, naturalizando-se, e, por isso, sendo pouco questionado quanto à sua existência e aos pressupostos que lhe orientam. Não se trata de um mero substituir expressões, mas, efetivamente, propor sentidos necessários para reconstruir o modo como os professores se relacionam com o que produzem e se entendem profissionais. Os argumentos foram elaborados com base na sistematização de estudos desenvolvidos e pesquisa bibliográfica. Aqueles estudos foram o campo empírico remoto, na medida em que, deles, foram analisados as sistematizações e os registros. Do ponto de vista teórico-metodológico, aplicou-se Análise dos Movimentos de Sentidos, que incluiu o movimento dialético entre síntese-análise-síntese dos sentidos como um ‘perguntar-se sobre’, um ir e vir aos discursos. Assim, este artigo apresenta as concepções de ‘formação de professores’; segue uma abordagem sobre os professores, seu trabalho e os processos de ‘formação’; apresenta-se, ainda, o trabalho dos professores como prática e como práxis. Por fim, colocando em relevo o trabalho pedagógico, argumenta-se que é práxico, superando a prática, como elemento da ‘formação de professores’.

Palavras-chave: trabalho pedagógico; formação de professores; prática; análise dos movimentos de sentidos

RESUMEN.

El texto pretende argumentar sobre el ‘trabajo pedagógico’ y considerar la naturalización de la muy recurrente expresión ‘formación del profesorado’. La expresión está marcada entre comillas para resaltar e indicar cuánto se puede aplicar de manera recurrente una forma de pensar, volviéndose natural y, por lo tanto, siendo poco cuestionada sobre su existencia y los supuestos que la orientan. No se trata simplemente de sustituir expresiones, sino, en efecto, de proponer los significados necesarios para reconstruir la forma en que los profesores se relacionan con lo que producen y se entienden como profesionales. Los argumentos fueron elaborados con la sistematización de estudios desarrollados e investigaciones bibliográficas. Esos estudios fueron el campo empírico remoto, en la medida en que a partir de ellos se analizaron sistematizaciones y registros. Desde el punto de vista teórico-metodológico, se aplicó el Análisis del Movimiento de los Sentidos, que incluyó el movimiento dialéctico entre síntesis-análisis-síntesis de los sentidos como un ‘preguntar por’, un ir y venir de los discursos. Así, este artículo presenta los conceptos de ‘formación docente’; sigue un acercamiento a los docentes, su trabajo y el proceso de ‘formación’; también presenta el trabajo del docente como práctica y como praxis. Finalmente, enfatizando el trabajo pedagógico, se argumenta que es práctico, superando a la práctica, como un elemento de ‘formación docente’.

Palabras clave: trabajo pedagógico; formación de profesores; práctica; análisis de los movimientos de los sentidos

Introduction14

Alone in her room, sitting in her rocking chair, and wrapped in her shawl, the old Bibiana waits [...]. How hard time is to go when we wait! Especially when it's windy. It seems that the wind is handling the weather (Verissimo, 2004, p. 40, translation our).

It begins with this stretch of The weather and wind, by Érico Verissimo (2004), referring to the typical wind of the gaucho pampa and its impact on humans, seeming to interpea them. It is a very different and specific wind, transformed into a kind of character in the imagery creation of that important writer from Rio Grande do Sul. In the course of the narrative, there is continuous reference to the wind. This, in his apparition, acts as if he were atasing, maneasse, time, preventing him from freedom to modify, to allow human beings to become even more human, according to their possibilities.

Inspired by this passage by Érico Verissimo (2004), this writing aims to 'unblock' the expression 'pedagogical work', often subsumed or even erased by another known expression: 'teacher training'. To this end, understandings of 'teacher training' are presented, since it is very recurrent to describe it as a time in which teachers become teachers. It is believed that its recurrence, seeming to have a universalizing sense, applied to everything and little by little, over the years, contributed to the mischaracterization of its central sense, linked to the way teachers produce themselves.

In this effort, as 'weaning', in a regional sense, concerns the 'untie, release', it is proposed, then, to think about how to release the approaches on the work of teachers from the meanings of 'teacher training'. This is because it contains ideological aspects that bind it, which are: a) linking it to the demands of continuous renewal, re-educating and reprofessionalizing ones of teachers, implying that it is a profession in continuous danger of superfluidity; b) require the teachers themselves to remain in 'formation', since, if they do not, they may cause the obsolescence of their profession. To overcome this contingency, the expression 'pedagogical work' is highlighted, on which it will be argued in the sections of this text. It is not a mere substitute for expressions, but effectively to propose meanings necessary to reconstruct the way teachers relate to what they produce and understand professionals.

To guide the argumentation, which aims at the debate on these aspects, is located the 'teacher training' in studies and authors who approach and defend it. The expression is marked with quotation marks to highlight and indicate how much a way of thinking can be repeatedly applied, naturalizing itself, and, therefore, being little questioned about its existence and the assumptions that guide it. The objective is to indicate 'pedagogical work', as an expression, containing in itself, the greatest power, both to describe the education, doing and self-production of teachers, and to demarcate how political this production is. This questions the naturalization and even the fact that the 'teacher training' is imprecise, and aspects that have weakened the concept.

For this, the arguments were elaborated based on the systematization of studies and research15, in which the meanings of their work were studied with teachers of Basic Education (Ferreira, 2022), the paths by which teachers are produced and how these elements articulate and reverberate in the pedagogical work performed within the school. The reports of these projects, the discourses of the teachers who were interlocutors of the researches and, at the same time, bibliographical research was carried out in works that address the theme 'teacher training'. Then, we considered those studies and researches as a primal empirical field, to the extent that the data produced on those occasions were not analyzed, but the systematizations, the records resulting from the researches.

The writing of the article, after the production of the data, was forwarded in accordance with the principles of the Analysis of The Movements of Meanings (AMS), elaborated and disseminated by the research group with which we work. It is a theoretical-methodological basis that includes the dialectical movement between synthesis-analysis-synthesis of the senses, applying procedures for drawing tables with the data found in the discourses, works and arguments derived from the comparison between both. This action always happens as a 'ask yourself about', which requires, concomitantly, to come and go in bibliographic research, to settle arguments, ratify them and even refute some. The analysis and systematization of the data produced made possible the arguments presented here. In turn, the elaborate tables do not appear directly in the text, but support the argumentation.

Thus, this article presents the conceptions of 'teacher training'; following an approach on teachers, their work and 'training'; there is also talk about the work of teachers as practice and as praxis; and, then, final considerations, highlighting the conception of pedagogical work. Such sections, even distinct, are interdependent for argumentation, aiming at achieving the objective that guided the elaboration of this text.

‘Teachers' formation’: a concept that 'handles' the time of pedagogical work?

It is considered about the concept of 'teachers’ formation’, found on the basis of many discourses16 about the work of these professionals, aiming to describe it as dependent, needy and only successful if in 'formation'. This concept has already been found divided into 'initial formation', 'continuing formation' and 'permanent formation', which will be addressed below.

In the Brazilian case, possibilities of teacher education for work exist since the profession of teacher has been officially created in the colonial period of the country's history. Initially, during the Jesuit period (1549-1759), the priest-teachers held preparatory courses before starting educational work, linked to the areas of rhetoric, oratory, theology, philosophy among others (Ferreira, 2001). With the increase in the population and the continuous educational demands, in the imperial period, the Normal Course17 was established, in the context of secondary education, and, in the middle of the Republican period, from the 1930s on, the bachelor's degrees18 were instituted as an alternative in higher education, aiming at education for the work of teachers. Since that time, for teachers, 'initial training' was carried out in Normal Course or in bachelor's degree. This framework lasted until the publication of the third Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education, LDB 9,394 (Law No. 9,394, 1996), which established the requirement of a bachelor's degree for teachers to be admitted, differentiating who would work with Early Childhood Education and who would work with Elementary or High School19:

Art. 62. The training of teachers to work in basic education will be done at a higher level, in a full degree course, admitted, as minimum training for the exercise of teaching in early childhood education and in the first five years of elementary school, that offered at secondary level, in the normal modality20 (Law No. 9,394, 1996, art. 62, translation our).

In turn, regarding 'continuing education', the text of Law No. 9,394 (1996), according to Santos (2011, p. 2), indicates three names when addressing it: "[...] in-service training (art. 61, item I); as continued professional improvement (art. 67, item II) and as in-service training (art. 87)" (translation our). The author observes that it is not only a semantic distinction, but denotes the conceptual basis assumed by Brazilian educational policies, in line with the world guidelines for this area. Through these denominations, it is indicated that the educational processes for teachers would be directed by "[...] technical-instrumental teacher training policies, guided by a compensatory perspective of training" (Santos, 2011, p. 2, translation our). When treated as training, improvement, training, there are two possible inferences: a) they are or can be lightened and, therefore, there is the possibility of not allowing the time necessary for the effective production of knowledge; b) are associated with the logic of practice by practice, enhancing it to the detriment of a theoretical deepening.

As for the 'continuing formation', Estrela and Estrela (2006), considering the Portuguese context, whose characteristics are not too dissociated from the Brazilian, capitalist and peripheral, describe it as "[...] the set of intentionally framed activities" (Estrela & Estrela, 2006, p. 74, translation our). It happens after the 'initial formation', with the aim of "[...] professional and personal improvement of the teacher, in order to an appropriate exercise of function that benefits students and the school" (Estrela & Estrela, 2006, p. 74, translation our).

In this argumentative direction, it is observed that, in general, the "initial and continued formation" is consistent with that proposed by Veiga, as an action: "[...] continuous and progressive that involves several instances and attributes a significant appreciation to pedagogical practice, experience as a constitutive component of training" (Veiga, 2006, p. 470, translation our). The author denotes the care in clarifying how it links to the theory and practice relationship, usually treated dichotomically, stating:

When valuing practice as a formator component, at no time is the dichotomous view of the theory-practice relationship assumed. The professional practice of teaching requires an explicit theoretical basis. Theory is also action and practice is not a receptacle of theory. This is not a set of rules. It is formulated and worked from the knowledge of concrete reality. Practice is the starting and arrival point of the training process (Veiga, 2006, p. 470, translation our).

This clarification is supported in Nóvoa (1992, p. 25), which defends the need for training to produce a "[...] critical-reflexive perspective, which provides teachers with the means of autonomous thinking and facilitates the dynamics of participatory self-formation." For the author, the process of 'teacher training' is referred to the individual, implying "[...] a personal investment, a free and creative work on the paths and projects of their own, with a view to building an identity, which is also a professional identity" (Nóvoa, 1992, p. 25, translation our). Thus, it is observed in the arguments of these authors a need for continuous studies for teachers to perform their work. These studies make up the set of what they call 'teacher training' and, associated, an indication that they should do so individually, on their own initiative, implying that if they do not, they will not be 'trained' or 'continuously trained'.

In a text, analyzing the production on 'teachers’ formation’, between 1992 and 1998, in the GT Teachers’ Formation of ANPED - National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Education, in the midst of another and broader research work (parallel to the implementation of Law No. 9,394 of 1996) on the same theme, Brzezinski and Garrido, when describing the works read, reiterate principles of 'teacher training' that, if considered the importance and scope of ANPED for studies in education in the country, it is worth taking into account: "[...] it is increasingly identified with the process of continuous teacher development, emphasizing the unity of this process in the diversity of its phases: pre-service or initial training and in-service or continuing training" (Brzezinski & Garrido, 2001, p. 83, translation our).

Six years later, in a research on the work of teachers in the period between 1998 and 2007, Soares (2008) analyzed the elements related to the specificity of this work, including training. Criticizing the way they are associated with reflection on the practices performed and the requirement of competent teachers, says the author:

[...] to the extent that the work and training processes of teachers, especially those who work or will work in public school, are weakened, precarious, lightened and emptied of content, in order to contribute to the strengthening of a counter-hegeon project of society (Soares, 2008, p. 140, translation our).

More recently, when reporting research that aimed to study the actions of the state and municipal departments, aiming at the 'continuing education of teachers', Davis, Nunes, Almeida, Silva, and Souza (2012) highlighted, as conclusions, two predominant trends: a) leaving the 'continuing education' in charge of schools, exempting the education system; (b) education systems hire companies offering "[...] ready-to-form packages" (Davis et al., 2012, p. 78, translation our).

In a similar perspective, evaluating the Brazilian situation of expanding access to Basic Education and the consequent emergence of discourses in favor of continuing teacher education, Gatti (2008) states, justifying the predominance of discourses on 'teacher education':

The emergence of so many types of training is not free. It has a historical basis in emerging conditions in contemporary society, the challenges posed to curricula and teaching, the challenges posed to the systems by the increasing reception of children and young people, the difficulties of daily life in the education systems, announced and faced by managers and teachers and verified and analyzed by research. The discourse of updating and the discourse of the need for renewal were created (Gatti, 2008, p. 58, translation our).

After presenting the historicity of the programs created after Law No. 9,394 (1996)21, Gatti questions whether it would not be more appropriate to invest in the public budget to expand access to public vacancies in order to "[...] train graduates and invest in the qualification of these courses, in terms of design, teachers, infrastructure, leaving for continuing education really improvements or specializations?" (Gatti, 2008, p. 68, translation our). And the same author responds that it is necessary to make it more appropriate "[...] with adequate insums and innovations, basic teacher training for all levels and modalities would be a more consistent policy for better qualification of workers in education networks" (Gatti, 2008, p. 68, translation our). Thus, it would be, according to Gatti (2008, p. 68, translation our), providing students "[...] important knowledge for their personal fulfillment and work and their contribution to a more integrated collectivity".

The Master's and Doctorate research on the theme 'teachers’ formation', according to the repository of academic production of the CAPES Foundation (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Staff), including subcategories such as 'initial teachers’ formation', 'continuing teachers’ formation', 'continuing teachers’ formation', 'teacher formation', continuing teachers’ formation, are many.

Table 1 Indexes of the number of papers in the Capes Thesis and Dissertations Bank on categories related to 'teachers’ formation', between 2010 and 2020. 

Category and subcategories Dissertations Theses Total
Teachers’ formation 8.151 3.009 11.160
Initial teachers’ formation 800 445 1.245
Continuing teachers’ formation 1.138 367 1.505
Permanent teachers’ formation 24 07 31
Teacher formation 3.516 1.355 4.871

Source: Prepared by the author.

An analysis of these quantitative data should consider that they are only from the last ten years of production, excluding the vast production of books, articles, papers presented at events since the 1980s, when this theme became a focus on discussions and events, such as meetings of the National Association of Researchers in Education - ANPEd (which has a Working Group with this title) and the ENDIPE - National Didactics Meeting and Teaching Practices. Such events, because of their importance and scope, contributed greatly to expand and naturalize the categories under analysis. At the same time, one should consider the inclusion of all categories in the category 'teachers’ formation'.

Based on the arguments presented so far, it can be highlighted that 'teachers’ formation' is the subject of numerous studies, applied to specific situations: levels of education, projects of governments, regions, countries, etc. Nevertheless, they usually start from the central category 'teachers’ formation', indicating to join a certain theoretical perspective, which assumes there is a need for teachers to 'graduate' to work, through initial processes, at the University, or continued, in events for this purpose or even at school.

The 'permanent formation', affiliated to the belief of an infinite set of studies, is less studied, because it is allied to continuing education, much criticized for inpurging other processes, associated with the theory of human capital which makes us believe in the continuous investment in the human being within late capitalism. In this sense, the Theory of Human Capital, proposed by Theodore Shultz, "[...] neoclassical economic basis, whose objective was to explain the influence of the 'human factor' (H) on productivity. The theory of the economic factor considers that society as a product of factors - economic, social, political [...]" (Ramos, 2014, p. 32, author's griffin, translation our). Corresponding to this understanding of the social, "Education appears, then, composing the economic factor, as an individual capital that would have consequences on social capital" (Ramos, 2014, p. 32, translation our). In such a context, "[...] human capital is a factor of social development and equalization of individual income, therefore, of social mobility; but the economic factor determines access and school trajectory" (Ramos, 2014, p. 32, translation our).

And the conceptual approach ends, citing that "[...] the concept of formation, like many others in our field of knowledge [education] is susceptible to multiple perspectives" (Garcia, 1999, p. 19, translation our). It would be related to didactics and the teaching and experience. According to Garcia, still, when describing the concept:

[...] the formation presents itself to us as a complex and diverse phenomenon on which there are only few conceptualizations and even less agreements in relation to the dimensions and theories more relevant to its analysis [...] training, as a conceptual reality, is not identified or diluted within other concepts that are also used, such as education, teaching, training, etc. Secondly, the concept of training includes a personal dimension of global human development that needs to be taken into account in the face of other eminently technical conceptions. Thirdly, the concept of training has to do with training capacity, as well as the desire for training. That is, it is the individual, the person, the ultimate responsible for the activation and development of formative processes [...] (Garcia, 1999, p. 21-22, translation our).

This excerpt from the author ratifies the argument of the inaccuracy of the concept. Like Garcia's arguments (1999), in addition to Nóvoa (1992), other foreign authors are mentioned when the theme is 'teacher training'. Some of the best known are cited, present in the references of the academic papers found in the Bank of Theses and Dissertations of CAPES: Schön (2000), Alarcão (1996), Perrenoud (2007), Gauthier (1998), Zeichner (1992), Tardif and Lessard (2005). These well-known authors have in common the defense of 'teacher training' related to trajectory, development and professional experience, understood as consequence and characteristic.

In addition, the need to overcome the concept of 'teacher training' is reiterated, rethinking it in the direction of teachers' educational processes. It is justified by wear and application sometimes excessive or even inaccurate. That is, it is not proposed 'or this or that'. It is proposed 1) to perceive this dissonance in relation to the concept; 2) observe the phenomenon in a differentiated way; 3) to consider as centrality for these educational actions, the notion of pedagogical work, as it will defend itself below, in the text.

Teachers as workers, their work and formation

It is understood that teachers are workers immersed in a society in which, as a working-class22, they sell their workforce and receive a salary to maintain their living conditions sparingly. When they carry out their work, obviously, they go beyond, because they also assume characteristics of welcoming, implicating, rescue and living of the human proper to education.

Ensuring the condition of worker to teachers means acting in line with a whole historicity of struggles for a professional category, besides characterizing this work as a social and, therefore, political production. This is because the way teachers' work is presented, divided, precarious, intensified and fragmented, contributes to the loss of something that until very recently fed a certain social imaginary of the profession: the belief in a degree of vocation for this work, which denoted an immanent degree of humanity of the professional. When they understood themselves, teachers did not organize themselves to fight for better salaries, because they, although reduced, repaid their donation. Similarly, living conditions and working conditions were mixed, generating an indissociation that kept teachers without claiming changes, since they carried out their social mission. Associated was the implicit fulfillment of the activity of educating, and this mission was carried out with a donation and demonstration of the highest degree of love for human beings.

The growing collapse of this imaginary, influenced by the unbridled metabolism of capital, among other factors, generated the confrontation of a real, marked by the dissociation between work and the worker and the need to accomplish something without the return being immediate and neither sufficient and worthy the salary. This path, to some extent, resulted from the attempt to separate the worker who produces his work - and, in the case of teachers, the one who works with the knowledge he produced - and the worker who reproduces a work based on a thought of others - and, in the case of teachers, for example, those who produce their work, reproducing the didactic material prepared by others, such as the case of handouts and textbooks. In this second case, there are teachers who, daily, repeat procedures, creating little in relation to their work and, consequently, feeling subsumed by repetition, in a continuous practice.

In a text from 2006, Bezerra e Silva already criticized the appropriation of the expression 'pedagogical practice', applied in the midst of the description of training actions for teachers, in a naturalized way, without the need for conceptual explanation and, at the same time, the reduction of 'pedagogical work' to 'practice'. And they affirmed, in defense of their argument:

What is at stake is not the use of certain terminology. It's not a nominalist question. This issue involves political and ideological domination, the manipulation of symbolic power and the structuring of sociability within Brazilian educational institutions. Therefore, it has repercussions throughout society to the extent that it places in the center of discussion the training of teachers and the national schooling system (Bezerra & Silva, 2006, p. 2, translation our).

For the authors, pedagogical work is 'human praxis', but, in keeping with capitalism, ends up "[...] framed in a sequential logic and a temporality to which all professions were subjected in the history of modern, industrial and capitalist societies, to the average social time of capital reproduction" (Bezerra & Silva, 2006, p. 6, translation our).

Describing the work of teachers as a practice, it is, then, in a minimalist23 way, when, in its complexity, it requires a reading of the real, a proposition, a validation of the proposal and, throughout, an evaluation. Therefore, it is praxis, a singular, responsible and productive action in relation to knowledge. If treated as a practice, it is minimized in its potentialities and reduces the implications of the worker with his production and also minimizes the political implications of this work. As a result, even if Law No. 9,394 (1996) provides for the autonomy of teachers to choose, decide, plan and carry out the institutional pedagogical project and, previously, the individual24, there seems to be no conditions for teachers to apply this prerogative, often allowing themselves to repeat procedures, without reflecting on them and on the historical-social conditions of the school and the students with whom it works.

Characterized as a practice, it is easier to control the work of teachers, reducing it to a reproduction of procedures consistent with the direction of society, in the current stage of capitalism. In favor of an action contrary to minimization and control, we highlight the need for an effective articulation between what is proposed for the work of teachers, especially from universities, and what actually happens in schools. In this sense, it is necessary more than extension activities or work initiation projects, an effective admission of researchers in the school, experiencing and participating in pedagogical activities. As such action is not characteristic of all universities, and most only act in extension and research in an illustrative way, proposals result ing whose centrality is 'teaching' teachers to perform their work or providing them with instruments, techniques and facilitating alternatives for specific problems, read from the pedagogical and social totality.

For this reason, the need for teachers to recover their working conditions has been defended, based on the reelaboration of meanings and professional belonging25. It is thought that the management mechanisms implemented in the school, in relation to the organization of the pedagogical, end up colonizing the work of teachers, making them subjected, in the name of a collective. In contradiction, it defends the need, before elaborating a collective institutional pedagogical project, to have the possibility for teachers (re) to elaborate their pedagogical project, in convergence with the interests and beliefs of their peers.

In the same way, we seek to clarify what is effectively the work of teachers, because it was perceived, through the researches conducted, the difficulty of expressing and describing what they do. It is understood that the teachers' work is the production of the class26 - understood in its broader conception, as any relationship that is related to knowledge, in different social spaces - and, in it, the production of knowledge of the teachers themselves and students. It is thought that there is a possibility that the school can be reunited in its senses, as an eminently social institution and, in this effort, overcome the difficulties it goes through in contemporaneity, which are to achieve its fundamental objective, the production of knowledge by the subjects. When they elaborate their individual pedagogical project, teachers cut the categories that guide their work, their professional action, since: "If knowledge is socially produced by the group of men in the relationships they establish at work to ensure their survival, it is elaborated, systematized, privately" (Kuenzer, 1998, p. 16, translation our). This epistemological making allows discernment between what they want/do not want, what can/cannot, among knowledge/knowledge, between production/construction of knowledge. With these bases they are producing their autonomy, their detachment from the mere reproduction of pedagogical practice and sculpting their own, subjective, meaning, without, however, departing from their collective, because they can only know if what they propose is possible in the subjection of what they produce to the evaluation and enrichment of their peers.

In relation to this movement necessary in the constitution of teachers' work, it is interesting to highlight their existence in language. And, therefore, it is paradoxical, because it is a singularization that takes place in the universal: teachers produce themselves or seek to produce singulars and do so in language, a universality. Therefore, there is no total singularity, there is, at most, a singularity "[...] combinatorial, a false singularity" (Castoriadis, 2007, p. 115, translation our), but a singularity. And the singularity, as a project of autonomy and detachment from the empty reproduction of meaning, is still evidence of professional growth. This aspect reinforces the understanding of singularity as a paradoxical process of socialization: "[...] the social individual is a fabrication of society" (Castoriadis, 2007, p. 121, translation our).

The singularity of the subjects is also, in this sense, the product of the representations elaborated through their social belonging and their subjectivity, linked to "[...] reflection or reflexivity" (Castoriadis, 2007, p. 123, translation our). Reflection or reflexivity is fundamental in the elaboration of the individual pedagogical project and, consequently, in pedagogical work: it is the subject-teacher giving himself the subjective place of subject of his work and his profession, making choices and assuming responsibilities in the capitalist context, which is not always favorable to him as a worker.

Then, producing the class, their pedagogical work, the teachers continue their historicity, an absolutely social production, since it is the convergence of interests and desires. It is understood that, in daily pedagogical work, teachers learn to work as teachers. In this context, the productions are varied, including learning to plan the profession, which implies transcending the data, at the ready, without terning to reproduction only. Thus, the professionals elaborate the class, its effective creation. The class is this synthesis of pedagogical work. In this perspective, the concept of pedagogical work with which it has been argued can be systematized as this:

[...] it is proposed that the work of teachers, when selecting, organizing, planning, performing, continuously evaluating, monitoring, producing knowledge and establishing interactions, can only be understood as pedagogical work, immersed in a capitalist context, in which the teachers' workforce is organized by employment relations and in which the subjects act under social, political conditions. However, even though it is immersed in capitalist relations, pedagogical work, by its characteristics, presents possibilities for the worker to go further, to project himself in his work in order to confuse and move humanely with it, since a raw material is language (Ferreira, 2018, p. 605, translation our).

There is implicit in this description of pedagogical work, the overcoming of the state of dehumanization of the teachers' work. A necessary and previous overcoming to think of an emancipatory and humanizing project for the school, which, despite conforming discourses every day heard, would be transformative of the social, capable of coping with the imperatives of capital, but only possible if the subjects of the pedagogical in the school, teachers, and, consequently, see their profession reconstituted. Due to this overcoming of the current condition, through assuming the political condition of workers, including perceiving their work as an effectively their production, imbriated in the political and collective context of education, the work of teachers is constituted, understood as pedagogical praxis, that is, transformative pedagogical work.

In this perspective, there is a need to go beyond the naturalized conception of 'teacher training' that believes there is a process that prepares for work and another, throughout this, that continues to prepare for work. The work is the being of teachers daily and always. Therefore, it is advocated that the work of teachers is always pedagogical work, and this results in the production of knowledge about the work itself, about itself and about the students, continues and intensely.

Overcoming the conception of teachers' work as a practice, it can be possible to understand it as pedagogical work. In this overcoming, it is understood, there is something subjective operating: the meaning of teachers' work. While it is understood that 'formation' is necessary, the imaginary of having something is created for teachers, in addition to their own work to be sought, when, it is in the work that she or he produces himself teacher".

This presupposition also justifies the preposition to the concepts of 'teacher training' that are based on pedagogical practices. Organized, they reveal that teachers need to know a sequence of practices through which they can conduct their work and do not describe the work as continuous and articulated concreation to the individual/collective pedagogical project of teachers. Because it is a pedagogical work, its dimension is to know oneself, to produce with and for others and, above all, to understand oneself as a worker. This is because there is no pedagogical work without the political dimension, that of becoming a worker together with other workers. Therefore, it is not only a matter of semantic inversion, it is the change, or rather the reconstitution of meanings. Pedagogical work, to describe the work of teachers, implying affirming that this work is elaborated daily in school among the pairs of teachers, is a powerful and broad category. Its semantic power includes:

a) A sense of work;

b) A sense of being human that produces its existence, historicity and knowledge;

c) A práxica dimension, and, therefore, transforming life, collective life, education;

d) An overcoming of the stage of disbelief and withdrawal that affects teachers periodically because it is a renewing sense of their work.

It is also reiterated that pedagogical work is essentially political and teachers are always politically constituted subjects. The class, although it is its primary production, is not unique. To produce it, it is necessary to follow the movements of its surroundings, to opt for this or that possibility of understanding the world. It is worth saying: to produce the class is to perform the effective pedagogical work, praxis that has language as a means - in the sense attributed by Gadamer (1988). In this time and in this space, the dialogue would take place between students and teachers with "[...] knowledge and culture embodyed in works, and therefore in cultural praxis" (Chauí, 2001, p. 69, translation our), revealing "[...] that the place of knowledge is always empty and that for this reason everyone can also aspire for it, because it belongs to no one" (Chauí, 2001, p. 69, translation our). It is a democratized work, in the most faithful sense, which presupposes genuine participation and engagement, "[...] work in the full sense of the concept: movement to suppress the student as a student so that in his place arises the one who is equal to the teacher, that is, another teacher" (Chauí, 2001, p. 71, translation our). In this context, dialogue is not a mere strategy, but a means, an environment (Gadamer, 1988) where the class is produced, not being artificially organized only to start it, with a sense of expression, communication only, but to produce knowledge.

In a sense, pedagogical work, understood as dialectical, because, at the individual level, there is the subject, its historicity and subjectivity. At the collective level, its subjectivity and historicity are expanded, based on dialogical moments in which there is socialization, projections, links of intentions and actions with other subjects, through language.

Final considerations

Pedagogical work is a time. Time to produce teacher/teacher in (with)experience allowed by the production of knowledge. A time proper for each subject that cannot be tied (or carried) to other conceptions, whose centrality is not their own work and workers, in a political, collective, social and human way.

Because of this bias, the text aimed to systematize teachers' pedagogical work senses, differentiating them from 'formation processes', evidencing that it overcomes it, by contributing to the reconstitution of the meanings of what teachers produce as teachers. Therefore, pedagogical work is práxico, par excellence, also surpassing practice, as a synonym for teachers' work.

To this do so, the conceptions of 'teachers’ formation' were taken up in several studies on the subject. A differentiation between 'formation', 'continuing education' and 'permanent formation' of what is considered fundamental was proposed: the necessary elaboration and maintenance of meanings for the work performed by teachers. These aspects were related to a defense of overcoming 'pedagogical practices', and attribution of emphasis to pedagogical work. To discuss them, it is ratified, it was considered that the teachers' work is a social, political and, at the same time, subjective production, because it is a production between subjects, which transcends the social space of the school, reaching its surroundings when not beyond it.

The school, this social institution where teachers' work most commonly happens, because it is complex, contributes to the subjects being confused: are they what they are or will they engage in a reproduction of an imposed social practice? Confusion does not allow them to see that assuming what they are is giving possibility to their life project, while engaging in reproductive projects is ephemeral and requires them to give up effectively performing the work. Work is understood as a social relationship that aims to transform the real and humanization, by which subjects become more and more human by transforming nature. In capitalism, however, work is wage labor, immersed in production relations, becoming alienated and alienating if guided by the repetition of practices without constituting a political and pedagogically elaborate choice.

For these reasons, it is appropriate a more accurate analysis of the 'teachers’ formation' in its most underlying intentions. It is understood that, without a critical analysis, they can be restricted to mere cathartic moments that simplify a much more complex process: that of teachers effectively understanding themselves as workers and understand how fundamental their work is socially and politically, if it is done from the perspective of pedagogical work.

All the arguments presented here intends to propose this analysis and, consequently, the possibility of understanding the work of teachers in another perspective, in contrast to the minimizing logics that have presented themselves as determinants of what these professionals produce. Thus, groups and collectives can be configured, which together carry out their work in a way that is less committed to the demands of capital and, then, inserted in the struggles for an effective, humanizing, authorial and viable school education for all, teachers, students and the community. Together, teachers can fight for conditions to 'wean' time and viable conditions for their pedagogical work.

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14Text produced based on research funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq (Process 306603/2019-5) and the Research Support Foundation in the State of Rio Grande do Sul - Fapergs (Process 41507.540.19616.28062019).

15It is referring to the research projects developed within the scope of Kairós - Study and Research Group on Work, Education and Public Policies, which is dedicated to research ing about pedagogical work, its historicity, implementation and possibilities in the school, inserted in the capitalist context.

16"These are statements organized and expressed by the subjects, through an intentionality, an objective in relation to the interlocutors(s), pre-established and teleologically elaborated, because they anticipate reactions, understandings, interactions to be achieved through the expressive organization of language" (Ferreira, 2020, p. 4, translation our).

17The Normal Course began in the country in 1835 for teachers to learn how to work with the Lancaster and Bell Method (monitoring method), transplanted from England.Throughout that century, it was deployed in several provinces. At the beginning of the last century began the offer on a larger scale, both in community and public institutions, reaching its peak, from the 1950s. With the expansion of bachelor's degrees, since 1990, the Normal Course lives its chance, to the point that, in this decade, it is little accessed, because, given the prerogatives of LDB 9.394/1996, the 'teacher training' should take place in Higher Education (Ferreira, 2001).

18The degrees began in Brazil in 1935, "[...] with the creation of the University of the Federal District, also at the initiative of Anísio Teixeira, the School of Teachers was incorporated into it with the name of School of Education. Something similar occurred in São Paulo when, in 1934, with the creation of USP, the São Paulo Institute of Education was incorporated into it. And it is on this basis that, in 1939, pedagogy and undergraduate courses were established at the University of Brazil and the University of São Paulo. From this emerged the paradigm that, adopted by the other institutions of higher education in the country, considered the issue of teacher education for secondary education and for normal schools themselves" (Saviani, 2005, p. 17, translation our).

19For work in Professional and Technological Education, in Basic Education, for the case of teachers with bachelor's degrees, pedagogical training courses were implemented, according to Law No. 9,394 (1996) and Art. 14 of Decree No. 8,752 (2016): "Art. 14. The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities, will support programs and courses of second degree and pedagogical complementation for professionals who work in areas of knowledge in which they do not have specific training of higher education" (translation our).

20This paragraph is as amended by Law No. 13,415 (2017), the menu of which is: "Amends Laws No. 9,394 of December 20, 1996, which establishes the guidelines and bases of national education, and 11,494, of June 20, 2007, which regulates the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and the Valorization of Education Professionals, the Consolidation of Labor Laws - CLT, approved by Decree-Law No. 5,452 of May 1, 1943, and Decree-Law No. 236 of February 28, 1967; repeals Law No. 11,161 of August 5, 2005; and establishes the Policy to Promote the Implementation of Full-Time High Schools" (translation our).

21Reference is being made to the following programs: a) National Network for Continuing Education of Basic Education Teachers; b) Pro-Literacy - Mobilization for the Quality of Education; c) Pro-Bachelor's Degree; d) Proinfantil; e) Ethics and Citizenship Program. Building Values in School and Society; f) Program to encourage the continuing education of high school teachers; g) National Plan for The Training of Basic Education Teachers - PARFOR. More information about these programs can be obtained from the Ministry of Education website: http://portal.mec.gov.br/

22Expression applied in accordance with Antunes (2005, p. 52, translation our), to describe a "[...] broad, comprehensive and contemporary notion of the working class [...]", that is, "[...] those and those who sell their labor force in exchange for salary, such as the huge range of precarious, outsourced, manufacturing and part-time workers, which are characterized by the temporary employment bond, the precarious work, expanding in the entire productive world. It should also include the rural proletariat, the so-called cold buoys of the agro-industrial regions, and, of course, all the unemployed workers who constitute this monumental industrial reserve army".

23Several authors do not present the work of teachers as practice, such as Duarte (2001, 2003), Pimenta (2002), Moraes (2003), Kuenzer and Rodrigues (2009), Shiroma (2003), Shiroma and Evangelista (2004).

24It is described as an individual pedagogical project, the elaboration necessary for each teacher, previously to participate in an institutional pedagogical project, and "[...] it includes knowledge of the world, in-depth knowledge of its science, approaches to work with this science and understanding of relational aspects, subjectivity and dialogicity specific to human coexistence" (Ferreira, 2017, p. 175, translation our).

25The expression 'professional belonging' is elaborated by Amaral (2016), in his doctoral thesis, related to the understanding of the subject being included in the profession and in the working group.

26It is worth emphasizing that the class is a synthesis of a whole collective effort, because there is planning, there is evaluation, there is the integration of teachers in the community, through meetings, participation in councils and there is the whole educational process to work as a teacher, in the university and in the school itself. The class is the time to glimpse the synthesis of all these processes. This is why it is claimed to be the effective work of teachers, as a synthesis of the lived and the learned and projection of themselves in their work, that of producing knowledge.

Received: August 10, 2020; Accepted: January 25, 2021

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