2.1 ETHICAL ASPECTS

This study integrates one of the research lines of the SolAssist⁹ Project with registration and approval of the Research Committee and the Research Ethics Committee (REC) of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)¹⁰. The project proposes the development of a Library of Assistive Solutions that makes looking into continuing education issues possible and serve as a basis for decision making by public policy managers and developers. Among its objectives is to identify Assistive Solutions in different sectors (educational and labor) in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in order to organize, categorize and analyze such solutions for the composition of the SolAssist Library, aiming to contribute to the inclusion of people with disabilities in different social spheres.

When conducting the research, anonymity was guaranteed for both the participants and the institutions, according to their preference, through the signing of the Informed Consent Form (ICF).

2.2 PARTICIPANTS

The research involved three segments of participants: 1) five coordinators from three Professional Education institutions that were directly linked to the organization and promotion of professional qualification courses and in which there were enrollments and frequency of PWD; 2) four teachers who taught classes in which there was the presence of PWD; and 3) two Labor Tax Auditors of Rio Grande do Sul.

The criterion to delimit the research context considered Professional Education institutions that had the enrollment and frequency of people with disabilities in basic vocational qualification courses in two municipalities, both located in the North-West Meso-region of Rio Grande do Sul.¹¹ The predominance was of classes linked to courses from the Professional Learning Program.

For the context of this work, the data came from the participation of the coordinators and the teachers, characterized respectively in Tables 1 and 2.

The nomenclature of ‘coordinator’ was assigned to designate the professional who assumes the position of coordinating/orienting the pedagogical actions of the teachers in the institutions, as well as aspects concerning the type of course that will be offered. The overview of the teachers participating in the study is presented in Table 2.

In order to conduct this research, it was fundamental to approach the coordinators first, to identify the teachers that included the criterion of choice, as they were the participants of the segment ‘teachers’ coming from the same institutions as the coordinators.

2.3 PROCEDURES OF DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

In order to enable the data collection from the context and the participants involved, the following techniques were used: 1) semi-structured interviews recorded and not recorded; and 2) online and/or printed questionnaire. The period of this process was from May 2016 to February 2017.

The online questionnaire was created using ‘Google Forms’ and sent by e-mail to the coordinators who couldn’t be interviewed in person. Three coordinators participated in the questionnaire online. One coordinator answered the questionnaire in printed form; and it was possible to conduct an interview with the same questions of the questionnaire, but there was no authorization to record it. The questions of the questionnaire, both online and printed, related to the repercussions of inclusion of PWD to the institution and the development of the professional qualification courses promoted by it. For the teachers, the number of questions was more extensive, with an emphasis on life trajectory and the current teaching situation, as well as the pedagogical practice in classes of PWD. Conducting the interviews with this segment was prioritized; however, of the four participants, face-to-face interviews with recording were only authorized by two of them. For the others, the script with the questions were delivered in a printed form so that they could respond and then return it within the deadline stipulated by the researchers.

The analysis of the data was articulated with theoretical and conceptual tools concerning the themes that pervade the study. Regarding assumptions for the organization of the analyzes, it is important to point out that the relevance of the organization of the content of both the questionnaires and the interviews in the categories of analyzes was not defined a priori, but rather from the reading of the material. In this sense, the themes emanating from the empirical material, with emphasis on the objective proposed here, were organized from the following guiding questions and will be discussed in topic 3, namely: 1) What criterion/criteria will the teacher chose to use in classes that have students with disabilities? 2) What was/were the reason(s) you were chosen to work in the class which has students with disabilities? 3) Do you believe that you have learned to be a teacher? In what way? And as a teacher of people with disabilities, what do you attribute this learning to? 4) What conclusions can you draw from your work, in Professional Education, the current or previous link with activities as a technician (technical education vs teacher education)?

3.1 TEACHER’S CHOICE CRITERION (CRITERIA) TO WORK WITH CLASSES THAT HAVE STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

The first question was directed to find out the teacher’s criterion (criteria) of choice when working with classes that have students with disabilities. The coordinators provided clues to this issue. In general, the five coordinators stated that teachers are invited to assume the position, thus there is no specific request for a professional to be assigned. In the institution linked to Cooperativism, teachers are invited, but they are linked to a profile that associates characteristics that are not directly connected to technical knowledge. According to the Social Promotion Manager of the Cooperative Institution (Coop_3), reconciling technical education with knowledge about people with disabilities is a complex task, since there are few professionals who cover this profile. He recorded this several times in his questionnaire:

Coop_3: ‘Difficulty in finding teachers who combine education in an area of knowledge and also the domain of ‘dealing’ with people with disabilities’.

Coop_3: ‘There is no abundant supply of qualified teachers to work with classes with PWD students, in fact, these professionals are hard to find’.

Coop_2, who works in an Educational Cooperative in the hinterland of the State of Rio Grande do Sul in agreement with the Cooperative institution, where Coop_3 also works, affirms that the teacher is invited and that he is encouraged ‘to challenge and fraternity’ (Coop_2). The reference to an action that involves challenges and, at the same time, the presence of values such as ‘fraternity’ is highlighted by the participant. The allusion to this value falls into the principles disseminated in his institution of work, since it is an Educational Cooperative that has its mission and vision associated with cooperativism and, from observation, has repercussions in the construction of the type of professional that can teach people with disabilities.

In the same way, Coop_1, who works as a local coordinator in the city of the Cooperative Apprentice Program, led by the aforementioned Educational Cooperative, ratifies the criterion of the invitation, since she is the one who performs the recruitment of teachers and she adds that they are chosen:

Coop_1: ‘Through invitation according to the profile to work with young people and appropriate education for the module to be administered. These teachers, after they work, remain in the network of contacts of associated teachers of the [name of institution]’.

The S System, represented in this research by two institutions operating in different areas, is similar to the previous data regarding the criterion of choice. The word ‘profile’ associated with the teacher appears repeatedly, which, according to the reports, translates to both personal and technical characteristics.

Coord_S1: ‘Profile analysis. Involvement with the area. Patience, emotional control. Not just the technical profile’.

Coord_S2, also linked to the S System, claims to have no specific criteria; however, she cites the following characteristics as important to the teacher who will work with classes of students with disabilities: ‘sensitive, with affinity for the cause and willingness to learn’ (Coord_S2).

In the conclusions of ^{Manica and Caliman’s research (2015, p. 239)}, who devoted themselves to studying ‘[...] a new way of being for the teacher that makes the pedagogical practice of professional education for people with disabilities’, the data expressed by the coordinators are in accordance with their considerations. The authors state that ‘[...] it is up to the teacher to have patience, to know his/her student and seek strategies that meet all types of disabilities in the same classroom. [...] to have distinguished knowledge and to understand new methodologies’ (Manica & Caliman, 2015, p. 250). We agree with the authors when they mention pedagogical and methodological issues, which is equivalent to any teaching activity that is concerned with both valuing students’ knowledge and investing in improving their actions as a teacher. However, the ‘patience’ requirement, which also appeared in the coordinators’ statements, demonstrates that the pedagogical relation with students with disabilities needs this distinction that is linked to a personal characteristic. We believe that the ‘distinction’ they need is not in relation to the personality of the professionals who work or will work with this population, but rather in the issues that involve the right to education and the right to a society accessible in all spheres which undoubtedly includes attitudes. These last ones, of personal scope, follow the direction of deconstructing prejudices.

Through a search on the institutional website of each of the investigated institutions, we identified that only one exposes job vacancies for work in a wide variety of positions. With regard to vacancies, in order to work as a teacher, the minimum education requirement is High School, but for certain areas of the courses, a College degree is required. In addition, the remuneration is conditioned to the level of education, associated with the hours of classes to be taught. This information is only available on the webpage of one of the institutions that make up the S System. In the others, the process of recruiting employees is not visible through their respective websites and the ‘Work with Us’ tool has no possible way of sending a résumé. In this sense, in relation to the admission of employees who will work as teachers, the selection criteria is the responsibility of the institution. ^{Kuenzer (2008, p. 32)} points out critical data in relation to the situation of the recruitment of professionals: ‘[...] they are recruited among different kinds of professionals, without a teaching degree and who work for certain periods and generally short, through service agreements’.

This contextualization is justified so that we can understand the challenges associated with the professionalization processes of people with disabilities, taking into consideration professionals who are recruited to work within Professional Education, but who may have never thought that there could be a student with a disability in the class, or that the institution promotes courses with classes exclusively for this target population. This is the case of one of the institutions of the S System that organizes and develops PAP courses for exclusive classes of young people and adults with intellectual disabilities. According to Coord_S1, the institution’s trajectory for this type of education and organizational arrangement started in 2013, and a specific process of teacher selection was carried out to work with the first group of people with disabilities, which prioritized professionals who already had experience with Special Education. However, the professional selected at the time remained for a year and was dismissed from the position. Since then, the teacher who works with these exclusive classes does not have specific education in the area and did not have previous experience, but he has been developing in the job very well, based on the evaluation of Coord_S1. From 2014 onwards, there has been no change of teacher, nor the teacher’s desire to no longer work with classes with these characteristics.

Thus, when analyzing the criteria to choose the teacher who will work with classes of people with disabilities, according to the coordinators, they are not restricted to an exclusively technical criterion. ‘Behavioral’ factors cited by the five coordinators are analyzed instead, giving mention of aspects such as: ‘emotional control’, 'dealing with people with disabilities', 'patience’, 'sensitivity’, 'Not only the technical profile’. ^{Cordeiro (2013)}, in her research, found that there is a commitment on the part of professionals to provide conditions for access and permanence of students with disabilities in the courses. However, they are isolated actions, and that ‘[...] the designation for this work is done by the personal interest of each professional and depends on their willingness and desire for the actions to be implemented’ (^{Cordeiro, 2013}, p. 158). From this passage, the actions of the personal sphere are shown to the detriment of an institutional policy. In this way, the data coming from the teachers through the questioning of the reason(s) for them to be chosen to work with the class where there are students with disabilities resemble the arguments presented previously and continue in the next section.

3.2 REASONS ATTRIBUTED BY THE TEACHERS OF THE CHOICE TO WORK WITH A CLASS THAT HAS STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

Teac_1, who until the moment of the interview had worked with a student with physical disability in a regular class of the PAP, stated that, when starting a course in which she will teach, there was no mention about the population that will be present. ‘There is no reference to the possible presence of students with any type of disability’ (Teac_1). The teacher, therefore, will identify if there are students with disabilities when confronting the class. The other teachers, when interviewed, provided more specific information regarding the topic, unlike Teac_1, who did not explain the reasons.

Thus, Teac_2, who at the time of the interview had been working for the second consecutive year with a specific class of people with intellectual disability at the PAP, revealed, in his interview, that the reason for his choice to take the class of students with disabilities was due to the following reasons:

Teac_2: ‘I’m a calm person, ok? I’m persistent. I think that, in order to work with people with disabilities, you need to have enough tolerance with the students. So that’s something that I believe it collaborates with the performance very much’.

The ‘behavioral’ factors mentioned by Teac_2, Teac_3 and Teac_4 and the experience factor as justification for taking classes of students with disabilities are exemplified in the following statements:

Teac_3: ‘Because of the experience with the deaf in the Church for more than 10 years. Knowledge of reality. Because I’m a sensitive person in relation to their needs’.

Teac_4: ‘Professional experience combined with pedagogical education are the reasons for having confidence in my work’.

Teac_4, having a teaching degree, mentions pedagogical education as an important plus for her performance. This situation is uncommon in the area of Professional Education, especially in the contexts of private and philanthropic institutions, in which few professionals have a teaching degree or qualification to work as teachers.

Similarly with the data of the coordinators, personal characteristics were also identified as reasons to exemplify why teachers take classes with the presence of students with disabilities. Calmness, persistence, sensitivity and tolerance, for example, are highlighted as characteristics that predominate in the scope of education for such performance to the detriment of pedagogical factors and professional qualification. With regard to these aspects, we can relate them to the types of content that permeate educational processes, such as conceptual, procedural and attitudinal. This classification is proposed by Coll (1986 apud ^{Zabala, 1998}), and is based on the following questions: ‘What should one know?’ - conceptual contents; ‘What should one know to do?’ - procedural contents; and ‘How should one be?’ - attitudinal contents (Zabala, 1998, p. 31). When associating these typologies with the data presented here, we verified that teachers emphasize attitudinal contents, since motives, values, attitudes and norms come into play.

3.3 LEARNING TO BE A TEACHER AND WORKING WITH PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

The resulting manifestations presuppose being a teacher to an act of learning. The idea is that one learns to be a teacher and that this learning is uninterrupted. Being a teacher is to be constantly learning with practice.

Teac_1: ‘[...] we always have to learn. And if we have some knowledge, we have to pass on, [...] we cannot stop knowledge there’.

Teac_2: ‘Learning to be a teacher is constant’.

Teac_1, in addition to ratifying teaching as learning, also mentions sharing knowledge as an element of this action. In the following statement, Teac_3 mentions that one learns when teaching, that is, in each class one experiences situations that teach how to be a teacher, as she wrote:

Teac_3: ‘I believe I have learned in every class’. ‘It is in the exercise of a profession that we learn to perform it’.

Thus, we agree with ^{Castaman and Vieira (2013)} that ‘[...] it is not enough to have technical competence, mastery of content and qualification compatible with the position or to be a well-known professional in the labor market to be legitimized as a teacher’ (^{Castaman & Vieira, 2013}, p. 8). The aforementioned data illustrates what the authors expose, since the construction of the teacher as a professional is legitimated beyond the titles that bestow their profession - it also includes the daily relations validated in the context of educational spaces.

Despite being cited by only one teacher, a family experience of the past with teaching was mentioned as a factor associated with the proposed question:

Teac_2: ‘[...] an aunt who was a teacher and principal. When I was little, she would take me to school. Despite being a short time [he’s been working as a teacher], two and a half years, I believe it was a natural process, and I’m enjoying the learning process’.

The learning that affects being a teacher corresponds to a sum of factors as observed. Teac_3 refers to teaching with PWD:

Teac_3: ‘Teaching people with disabilities, one learns to live challenges, to live not depending, but belonging to a group that helps and works as a team’.

Not unaware of this teaching, the word ‘challenge’ appears when the topic is pedagogical processes and students with disabilities. Another possible reading that comes from Teac_3, especially in this passage - ‘[...] to live not depending, but belonging to a group that helps and works as a team’ -, is the perspective of overcoming, the relation that, if there is a person with a disability in the classroom, represents teachings for life, which implies the practice of values such as giving help to others and union. In this case, the induction to this possibility of reading is open, and we expose here a criticism of such a position, because it reinforces the ‘qualifications’ that are attributed when the agenda is people with disabilities. Pursuing the same question under analysis, Teac_4 emphasized that her learning as a teacher comes from studying, researching and reflecting on practice and individuals. It should be remembered that this teacher has a teaching degree in Language and Literature. Additionally, in her own writing, she revealed that learning is not complete and that we must know where to seek the necessary knowledge. She also referred to an aspect highlighted by Teac_ 3 regarding collectivity as fundamental for education to become effective.

From the context of teacher learning in Professional Education, it is interesting to retrieve historical data about the course of this education. For this, ^{Machado (2008)} brings interesting data that demonstrates the ambiguities and fragilities with which the education of the teachers in Professional Education was revealed throughout the course of history. The author cites the creation of the Schools of Arts and Crafts by President Nilo Peçanha in 1909. This initiative corroborated with the evident lack of teachers for this area of activity. Because of this:

The first initiative in response to this demand came from Wenceslau Braz, then President of the Republic, who in 1917 created the Wenceslau Braz School of Arts and Crafts in the former Distrito Federal. This institution was short-lived since it was closed after twenty years of activity without achieving many results. It was created to educate two types of teacher, masters and auxiliars for professional schools, and teachers, better referred to as craft female teachers for primary schools (^{Machado, 2008}, p. 68).

However, this initiative was not successful due to the high rate of dropouts from that School encountered during its years of existence which indicates that the pedagogical education for Professional Education was historically irrelevant and followed a discontinuous historical course, with few consolidated public policies; that is to say, a trajectory of advances and setbacks regarding the education of teachers.¹²

In the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional (LDB) Nº 9.394/96 (National Education Guidelines and Framework Law), this modality has an exclusive chapter, Chapter III ‘Da Educação Profissional e Tecnológica’ (Professional and Technological Education), with four articles (39 - 42), which comprehensively provides the concept in relation to courses and certification. Regarding the ‘Profissionais da Educação’ (Title VI) (Professionals of Education), it states who these professionals are and the minimum necessary qualification - this text was altered by Law No. 12.014/2009. Article 61 of LDB No. 9.394/96 which establishes that professionals in basic school education are those who fully exercise their position and are graduated in recognized courses. It is also added:

I - teachers qualified at High School or Higher Education for teaching in Childhood Education and Elementary and High School;

II - educational workers with Pedagogy degrees, with a qualification in administration, planning, supervision, inspection and educational orientation, as well as those with masters or doctorate degrees in the same areas [...] (^{Lei nº. 9.394, 1996}).

The approval of Law No. 13.415/2017 establishes the reformulation of High School, the main changes being the progressive extension of the workload from 800 to 1,400 hours; flexibilization of the curriculum by areas of knowledge; compulsory teaching of the Portuguese language, Mathematics and English in the three years of High School; teaching career, among other measures. In relation to the latter, items IV and V add the following to those mentioned in LDB (Law No. 9.394/96, Art. 61):

IV - professionals with expert knowledge recognized by the respective education systems, to teach contents of areas related to their education or professional experience, certified by a specific degree or teaching practice in educational units of the public or private network or private corporations in which they have exclusively acted to comply with item V of the chapter of article 36;

V - graduated professionals who have made pedagogical complementation, as provided by the National Education Council (^{Lei nº 13.415, 2017}, p. 2).

It is important to give emphasis to subsection IV, referring to ‘professionals with expert knowledge’ as admission criterion for working in schools, as a measure to contemplate subsection V of the caput of article 36 of the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (LDB), which is presented as follows:

Article 36. High School curriculum will be composed of the National Common Curricular Base and formative itineraries, which should be organized through the provision of different curricular arrangements, according to the relevance of the local context and the possibility of the education systems, namely:

I - Languages and their technologies;

II - Mathematics and its technologies;

III - Science and its technologies;

IV - Social and Applied Human Sciences;

V - Technical and Professional Education (^{Lei nº. 9.394, 1996}).

The simplification of education to professional experience as the driver of teaching and learning processes is criticized by ^{Machado (2008)}:

The understanding that practical experience is more important or even sufficient to be a teacher in this area can be seen as an explanatory factor of the enormous dropout rate of those enrolled at Wenceslau Braz School [as mentioned above] and of the flexibility of deadlines for compliance with the legislation. It is also explanatory of the insertion of conductivist pedagogy in professional education, based on the demonstrative method (^{Machado, 2008}, p. 79).

Therefore, according to subsection V - ‘Formação técnica e profissional’ (Technical and professional education) -, it is not necessary to undergo undergraduate education and the insertion of professionals with ‘expert knowledge’ is admissible, reinforcing the past and ratifying the present Professional Education as a fragile identity of the teacher.

3.4 THE CURRENT OR PREVIOUS LINK WITH ACTIVITIES AS A TECHNICIAN: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING IN PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

In this chain of reflections associated with praxis that emanates as a priority in the performance of teachers in Professional Education, the data obtained from the final questions refer to the implications their current or previous link with activities as a technician has on their work in this area. The statements and registers are composed of the participants’ previous and current experiences of working as technicians. One of the participants, in addition to working as a teacher, maintains the position of accountant, to which she attributed significant importance. From the point of view of some of the teachers of this study, Professional Education needs to have an emphasis on practice; thus, its professionals need to have this previous experience. In this sense, they assert the following:

Teac_1: ‘It helps me a lot [the professional experience as an accountant], for example, the accounting of years ago has not changed anything compared to today’s accounting. We may have system innovations, but theory and practice have not changed, because there will always be debt and credit, and that you will always be able to teach’.

Teac_2: ‘The ideal is that the teacher has some experience. [...] a teacher who has not gone through this part of business practice, I believe will have a little more difficulty in passing on such knowledge, because what is our goal here? Prepare them for practice. Then, how will a teacher teach the practical part if he does not know the machine, does not know an offset printing machine, does not know how to regulate it. So, this becomes much harder for the teacher. If he has never worked in the administration department, he won’t know what bureaucratic processes are all about’.

^{Gariglio and Burnier (2012)}, when investigating the knowledge demanded by these teachers for teaching in Professional Education, point out that ‘[...] these people [the teachers] often have professional experiences in the technical areas that constitute their vision of the world and of the professional in the area, which will impact their performance in the education of students’ (^{Gariglio & Burnier, 2012}, p. 219).

Therefore, it is about what has been illustrated previously by both Teac_1 and Teac_2, the latter with more emphasis. The hierarchization of knowledge in the pedagogical activity in the context of professionalization, strongly linked to a technical education¹³, reduces the individual to a disarticulated learning of the relations he establishes with society, disregarding that the world of work is permeated by social, cultural and, above all, economic relations. The valorization of the experience as technicians, evoked by the participating teachers, resonates with ^{Gariglio and Burnier’s (2012)} statement: ‘Through these knowledges [from the previous contact with the practice of the Professional Education area of action], those presented to the students come to life with practical examples of concrete professional situations that they will face in the world of work’ (^{Gariglio & Burnier, 2012}, p. 224).

Teac_4, who does not have a technical course or professional experience besides teaching, reported that she lacks this type of previous placement, as she has experienced limitations in this regard in classroom situations. According to her, the specialization courses in the area of Professional Education, of which she has completed in this area, accommodate for this gap.

We also emphasize the need for this teacher to be recognized as an education professional and not only a professional in technical areas, with a life trajectory where only experiences stand out. A challenge that returns and that is more strongly present nowadays, considering that the current public policies in the educational scope are directed towards opposed sides to this dimension, according to the Law No. 13.415 of 2017 when it refers to ‘professionals with expert knowledge’ to work in the formative itinerary of technical and professional education.