The person as a social-historical being and part of a particular community

Paulo ^{Freire (1988)} defends the idea of person of praxis, given that he or she is humanized and constructed in historical time and in a certain social space. For the author, objective social reality is the product of men's action, and, as it does not happen by chance, itdoes notchange by chance either. In this sense, to transform reality "[...] is a historical task, it is the task of men” (^{Freire 1988}, p. 39). In this regard, Paulo Freire states that:

Let us begin by affirming that only man, as a working being, who has a thought-language, who acts and is able to reflect on himself and his own activity, which is separated from him, only him, when reaching such levels, became a being of praxis. Only him has been a being of relationships in a world of relationships. By detaching himself from its environment, it has become a human being, not of adaptation, but of environment transformation, a being of decision [...] (^{FREIRE, 1992}, p. 39).

The person becomes human by acting, acting that is simultaneously historical and social (^{SEVERINO, 1995}). To consider the teacher as a historical-social person means to think who this teacher is, what practice and reality he is inserted, what are the needs and possibilities of this teacher, considering that our humanity is recognized by the differences of our ways of being, thinking and acting, differing from the biological conditions that are common to other living beings. Freire draws attention to the process of humanization of man in all his work:

I have drawn attention to human nature socially and historically built and not as an a priori. The trajectory by which we make us conscious is marked by finitude, by inconclusion and characterizes us as historical beings (^{FREIRE, 1996}, p. 75).

This principle has grounded all decisions-making concerning teachers. To consider the teacher as a social-historical subject presupposes recognizing him as capable of reflecting on his actions, capable of redesign, thinking, acting, i. e., doing and redoing his daily practice. In the formative practices analyzed, the practice that the teacher already develops is the starting point, but he is the person of this practice and he who needs to analyze it, to unravel it to transform it. Without this action of the teacher, I do not believe that there is a transformation of the practice. It is not a group for "enlightened" researchers / trainers which will transform his practice. "Unless we want to make the transformation for them, and not with them - only as this transformation seems true to us" (^{FREIRE, 1988}, p. 54, author’s emphasis).

In all the activities of the GEPEM, the teacher is the person of his practice and, therefore, he actively participates in his formation process. In the analyzed practices, teachers acted at all times: in the preliminary survey in local reality, in the analysis of data collected, in the curriculum planning, in the lesson planning for students, doing and remaking the path that would be covered with the student, participating in the analyzes of the research results, including presenting the results of these practices in different places (congresses, meetings among teachers etc.).

In the actions developed by the GEPEM, the school where the teacher works is the space of construction and production of his knowledge. In the analysis of the practices, this principle guides the elaboration of all the teachers’actions.

According to ^{Delizoicov, Castilho, Cutolo, Ros e Lima (2002)}, to consider the teacher as person of his history means to instrument him to act on his practice, involving him in all moments of this formation, recognizing him as person of his practice. On the other hand, from the point of view of Paulo ^{Freire (1996, p. 22)}, it is indispensable that the teacher assumes himself as personof his history, also of the production of knowledge,from the beginning of his formative experience, being convinced "[...] definitively that to teach is not to transfer knowledge, but to create the possibilities for its production or its construction". Therefore, considering the teacher as a person of knowledge also means considering him capable of constructing the school's schedule and not receiving it promptly from the education secretariat team of specialists.

In order to consider the person as a social-historical being, it is necessary a joint effort of the school teams in the construction of the programming of a school year. Teachers participate actively at all times, including the strategy of inclusion in the construction of new teachers that come along the way. Including them means taking back the process already built and to incorporate the way of thinking and acting of these teachers, thus, they will also feel persons of this practice, being able to act and recreate. In this sense, it is important that teachers arrive as active persons and not as objects that need to be fitted. In this way, it is necessary to intentionally plan strategies that include everyone in the construction process, guaranteeing the collective elaboration of the school's schedule, not being therefore the prefixation of a program to be fulfilled, nor falling into a spontaneity that takes advantage of the interaction of the time.

In this process, the dialogue arises as a necessity for the elaboration of the program with the educators who think, problematize, disagree, feel themselves to be producers and participants of the program. Educators are involved at all times in programming, from the analysis of reality data to the production of classroom activities. In this construction, educators reveal both the reality in which they are working and their own practice. By looking at practice from a distance and, at the same time, by problematizing it, we create the need to transform this reality, to build something new. In order to transform this reality, it is necessary, at first moment, to unveil it, because in unveiling it, persons are engaged in the praxis with it transformation, in a second moment, in which reality has already been transformed, it is not belong to the others and become of all, of the persons who participated in the transformation, in a process of permanent transformation (^{FREIRE, 1988}).

As stated by ^{Pernambuco (1993)}, the inclusion of persons in a collective construction can be laborious, but it is also rewarding because, as a dynamic process, it needs to be continually rethought and, as a collective process, reformulated with our partners in the walk. It is necessary, therefore, to respect the diversity of teacher formation, trying to identify what is necessary and what is significant for the group, perceiving difficulties, limits and advances.

It is also important to jointly build the materials / strategies / tools that will be used in classes, thus considering the teacher as the producer of his work. In this perspective, Pernambuco adds that:

Within the process understanding that bases this proposal, we understand that the creation of new instruments and the search for foundations are an integral and permanent part of both the activity of the educators - and to some degree researchers - that is being developed in the school, and of other researchers who assist it. Within a framework of references and alternative teaching materials, it is up to teachers, who are also producers of references and materials, to make decisions and organize the activities of their classroom (^{PERNAMBUCO, 1994}, p. 79).

Reviewing Paulo ^{Freire's ideas in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1988)}, it is possible to consider that men, at various moments of their action and / or transformation, need to recognize themselves as men in their ontological and historical vocation of being more. “Reflection and action impose themselves, when it is not intended, erroneously, to dichotomize the content of the historical form of being a man” (^{FREIRE, 1988}, p. 59).

Knowledge is built in social relations and local reality is content-generating

For the members of the GEPEM, the reality of the persons is also content-generating, constituting the starting point and the point of arrival. This principle traverses all the educational actions of the GEPEM, i. e., it occurs in school situations for students, in situations of non-formal learning, in educational situations with social movements and in the formative situations of teachers. Pernambuco considers that:

To know is to apprehend the world in its relations, a process necessarily dynamic, in which, through physical and mental actions, different persons construct, in a collective interaction, new ways of relating and understanding the world (^{PERNAMBUCO, 1993}, p. 24).

Furthermore, the use of generating themes for the construction of school programs has been the way to systematize the knowledge of the local reality, as a starting point for the selection of contents. In this regard, Paulo ^{Freire (1988, p. 83-84)} advocates the use of generative themes as a way of “[...] giving back to the people the elements they have provided to educators in an organized, systematized and added way”.

To consider that knowledge is built in social relations means to say that it is built collectively. From a very early age, persons learn with the social group of which they are part, both social rules and values, beliefs, attitudes, languages and explanations, varying throughout their life, as a consequence of their organic growth and the type of relationships that establish.

In many cities in the state of Rio Grande do Norte State countryside, there are people who have never been to school and who use, on a daily basis, some knowledge learned in the experiences with others more experienced, that are passed from generation to generation, as the midwives and the people who use home remedies such as teas and “mixtures in bottles”.

In western society, systematized knowledge or science has a set of organizational and construction assumptions with its own characteristics and specificities. For ^{Pernambuco and Paiva (2005)}, the natural sciences, humanities, mathematics and philosophy have some common points: internal coherence in explanations; interpretations constructed from the delimitation of the investigated object; definition of its domain of validity, endorsed by other scientists and / or philosophers, through written records and explicit teaching processes.

It is also known that systematized knowledge originates in the confrontation of problems and situations that the western society needed to solve in the past or contemporaneously. ^{Pernambuco and Paiva (2005)} consider that their results influence the persons' daily lives, i. e., in the way work is organized, what is available to buy, how to treat the body etc. They also argue that "[...] If we want to intervene in the way life is organized, to participate in the construction of society and the nature in which we live, we need to know what has already been accumulated as systematized knowledge" (^{PERNAMBUCO, PAIVA, 2005}, p. 10).

The relationship between systematized and everyday knowledge has been worked by several authors and in different perspectives, although, an issue is already consensual: the two types of knowledge are important to be considered by educational practices, whether for students or for teachers. Knowledge of everyday life can originate from the place where the person lives or from the macro-social context. The local ones are constructed by the persons in their daily experiences in the social group of which they are part, or in the micro reality; the global ones are derived from the experiences and access to information from the social context or macro reality.

In the contemporary world, due to the access to the media, the daily life of the persons is impregnated with diverse information and different explanations for what happens in the environment. These constructions drive the persons' actions on the world (^{DELIZOICOV; ANGOTTI; PERNAMBUCO, 2002}). Therefore, there is a dynamic relationship between these two types of knowledge, one feeding the other, both in the actions of individuals and in the organization of contemporary society. Understanding the daily life of those who learn the culture in which they are immersed, their vision of the world, the media to which they have access is fundamental to propitiate the transition of these two types of knowledge.

In the teacher training processes of the GEPEM, the problematization of the teacher's practice, of what the teacher already does and knows, is a trigger not only for the reorientation of the curriculum, but also as a fundamental part of his own formation. Starting from reality, from the context, from the interests of the students have become a jargon repeated by all in the area of education, but in practice, it has not been trivial to transform everyday knowledge as a starting point for the introduction of new content in classroom.

In this regard, ^{Silva (1999)} affirms that selecting content from local problems is not a simple process, since even teachers who participated in the whole process (research and thematic reduction) keep to select them from didactic books. In this case, there are still general visions and activities, and the study of the problematic of reality serves only as an illustration of the content. This author also notes some very common misunderstandings in this process, such as: teachers tend to consider only their own vision of reality; it is difficult to construct an understanding of the worldview of the community from the selected speeches; the reductionist analysis done by the team on the local reality problematic does not allow a significant acquisition - operationalized in the actions of the students -, being restricted to the transmission of isolated contents and ideal attitudes, without considering the experiences of the community with the chosen generator theme.

In the opinion of the same author, the selection of contents cannot be restricted to fragmented cuts of objects of study; rather, a relational and contextualized analysis must be carried out in the micro and macro social structure. From this perspective, ^{Silva (1999, p. 60)} states that: "The relational and systemic analysis of local reality from its contradictions requires successive approaches and methodological contextualization that the construction of a thematic network seeks to organize."

It is also necessary to consider that the knowledge and / or conceptions constructed / acquired in daily life by teachers, sometimes interfere in the way of “teaching” and “learning” some contents. Often teachers, culturally, believe in certain beliefs, which leads them to perpetuate these beliefs with their students. In this regard, we highlight a curious case in a course we teach in a small town in the state of Rio Grande do Norte countryside for children education teachers. In this town, the population believed that rats turned into bats at night. Even after they had studied about the two animals, some teachers continued to argue that there, in their city, this occurred.

In addition, it is well known that teachers construct, in their previous experiences as students, a common pedagogical sense about the learning of individuals. It is necessary to consider these visions, constructed in the daily life, in the processes of teacher formation, since they interfere directly in the pedagogical practice. In the same way, it is necessary to consider what the students already know about the contents that we intend to “teach” (^{PERNAMBUCO, 1993}, p. 122).

According to ^{Pernambuco (1993)}, students already have a lot of information about the subject to be studied, they bring to the classroom not only information but also conceptions and explanations, sometimes, so consolidated that they conflict with the knowledge to be learned. It is also not easy or trivial to achieve a construct with the students, taking into account all the situations that arise, such as: unexpected questions, the task of conciliating students' anxiety, listening and taking advantage of the relevant contributions and, at the same time, take advantage of those that are out of the topic, but which are important for the students who have raised it. And, finally, the task of maintaining a mood of collective construction, conquering an ambient of friendship and trust.

In this process, it is possible, from what students already know, from the problematization of their speeches, proposed by the teacher or colleagues, to find ways to interact and learn together. It becomes, thus, fundamental to jointly build a schedule for a school year, involving all scholars’ segments: teachers, management and pedagogical coordination. According to Pernambuco:

By creating the conditions for the knowledge itself to be acquired in an active way, being mainly the information the necessary support for the composition of its patterns and forms of patterns, we can understand it as socially constructed, and, therefore, in permanent modification (^{PERNAMBUCO, 1993}, p.25).

Knowledge is built in the social relations that the persons establish and, therefore, the local reality generates content for the processes of school programming.

Dialogicity, collective construction and the process of awareness

Considering that dialogue, collective construction and awareness are inseparable, we identify these three concepts as a guiding principle for all the actions initiated by the Group and based, mainly, on the ideas of Paulo Freire. The assumption is that the process of awareness is affected through dialogue and collective construction, being difficult to speak of one instance without considering the others.

Regarding dialogue, in Freire's perspective, this is considered an essentially human phenomenon consisting of two inseparable and radically dependent dimensions: action and reflection. The interaction between them is fundamental to the realization of the dialogue, in such a way that sacrificed one, even partially, the other is impaired. There is no true word other than praxis. From this point of view, we can say that the true word is to transform the world (^{FREIRE, 1988}, p. 77).

The word isolated of action becomes gibberish, verbalism, "blah blah blah". In the same way, the action without the reflection turns into activism. In this sense, action by action, denying reflection, also denies true praxis and makes dialogue impossible (^{FREIRE, 1988}). Dialogue that is established among men to understand and transform the world.

For Paulo ^{Freire (1988)}, the dialogue about the world necessarily has to be significant for the persons involved. Dialogue in the very sense of switching visions, of knowledge, of conceptions, which implies an attitude of respect for what the other knows, understands and thinks. In this sense, dialogue is the encounter of men, mediated by the world, to pronounce it, not drained, therefore, in the personal relationship between you and me. In Freire's words:

But, if we say the true word, which is work, which is praxis, is to transform the world, saying the word is not the privilege of some men, but the right of all men. Precisely for this reason, no one can say the word true alone, or tell it to others, in a prescription act, with which steals the word of others (^{FREIRE, 1988}, p. 78).

This exchange is established in the action they carry out, in the project that they construct collectively and has a turning that points forward, to the possibility of a change of consciousness. True dialogue provides a change of consciousness, implying a change in the subject's action. In this view, change does not simply mean changing a vision, an isolated concept, but changing the way of working with the information set, managing to extract what is relevant, which is fundamental for the persons. In this sense, to create awareness is to create general mechanisms-elements of interpretation and action on the world.

In teacher formation, we need to establish a dialogue on teacher practice, their daily life, from its context, as well as their knowledge, and it "[...] is not in the silence that men make themselves, but in the word, in work, in action-reflection "(^{FREIRE, 1988}, p. 78). This dialogue acts as a propeller of the mediations that are established among the persons involved in the pedagogical relationship.

According to ^{Freire (1988)}, dialogue on teacher formation cannot begin to be established only in the pedagogical relationship of a course for teachers, it should start much earlier when we ask around what we will talk to the educators. In this sense, "[...] this concern about dialogue is the concern about the programmatic content [...]" (^{FREIRE, 1988}, p. 83).

For Paulo ^{Freire (1998)}, the existential experience of the student in this case, the teacher, is the starting point for establishing a dialogue formation, considering him inserted in a given context of life, which can be known and modified. If it is inherent in dialogicity, the dialogue to someone about something, in teacher formation, is sine qua non that we depart from what is familiar to the educator himself / herself, i. e., its action in the classroom and in school. Only then he will effectively participate in the dialogue (^{DELIZOICOV, 1982}).

In this sense, the use of dialogue to transform the action of educators needs to foster:

The teacher's formation should be done from the reflection of his own practice, not for the teacher or on the teacher. This implies considering him as a person of educational action, as person of knowledge. In this sense, their participation in the formation process must take place in all dimensions and at all times.

^{Pernambuco (1993, p. 23-24)} analyzes the dialogical relationship established in the São Paulo city experience, stating: "Dialogue, interlocution about a world, a shared reality, although viewed from different angles, is the main engine, which triggers and maintains the movement of the group". In this process, she affirms that we must consider respect for each one's speech, the asymmetry of positions, establishing communication so that it does not become a monologue.

In the different work proposals made from the principles of the GEPEM, the established dialogue was / is mediated by the local reality itself and by the teaching context, respecting the different visions, as well as the different levels of knowledge of the persons involved in the process, once diversity is considered as a positive factor for the construction of the practice. From the thematic research, a dialogue was initiated between the players: university staff, teachers, students and community, conducted through questionnaires and interviews, meetings and informal conversations with local residents, teachers and students.

In the process of teacher formation, it is a necessary condition to reflect on what they think, what they know, what they do and how they act in reality, becoming aware of their views of the world, of childhood, of learning, among others. In this perspective, codification, decoding and problematization appear as fundamental methodological procedures for mediating between the concrete and theoretical contexts.

Taking practice as the starting point for formation, tensions, conflicts, intentions and contradictions are revealed and redesigned in a collective way. In this sense, the very process of collective construction of curricular programming already constitutes a formation of the teacher. Thus, it is necessary to enable an experience of detachment, so that formers and educators can reflect together, dialogically and critically, about the object that mediates them. The purpose of decoding is to achieve a critical level of knowledge of reality, beginning with the teacher's own experience of his situation in its actual context.

The distancing of reality is intended to lead the teacher to a process of awareness, or to the passage from a naive awareness to a critical awareness of reality. For ^{Freire (1980, p. 29)}, awareness is "[...] taking possession of reality [...]. Awareness produces demythologization."

The sense of education continues to be understood as "[...] an act of intervention in the world" (^{FREIRE, 1996}, p. 122). In this case, awareness is understood as a permanent process of critic's constructing.

In the Freirean perspective, in the process of raise awareness of the educator, the starting point would be the educator himself with his way of capturing and understanding reality, which, at a first moment, is characterized by a grasp and capture of an especially magical or syncretic type of the real. In this way, "[...] just as every understanding of something corresponds, sooner or later, an action, a primordially magical understanding corresponds to a magical action" (^{FREIRE, 1980}, p. 52).

In order to concretize dialogue and awareness in the formation of the educator, the starting point, necessarily, is the educator himself, i. e., one must start from his need as a person, from his need for the new, which emerges from the contradictions that the educator himself perceives-identifies-clarifies. Thus, conflict arising from contradictions is the motor that drives the change of vision, which impacts on the action of the educator, promoting a change in doing. According to Paulo ^{Freire (1980)}, the process of learning itself is already a way of becoming aware of the real, and cannot, therefore, be affected,unless in the midst of this awareness.

In turn, the pedagogical moments are used to enable a systematic practice of dialogic problematization, both in the classroom and in teacher formation. This means that these moments are part of the praxis process of permanent formation of educators.

The definition of these pedagogical moments is the result of the collective work of four physicists - Marta, Angotti, Delizoicov and Cristina -, whose starting point was the "Teaching of Sciences from the Problems of the Community" (ECPC) in São Paulo of Potengi municipality and at the Jorge Fernandes State School.

A synthesis (how these moments are organized) was systematized in the doctoral thesis of Pernambuco. For her, the first step is to listen to the other. The second phase is the time to meet expectations. The third stage is the synthesis, when "[...] one speech does not predominate over the other, but together they explore the perspectives created, reinforce the instruments grasped, make an exercise of generalization and expansion of previously established horizons" (^{PERNAMBUCO, 1993}, p. 35-36). These moments do not constitute phases that are isolate and distinct in time, there is always a movement between them. For the author, it is a way of reflecting on where we want to go and what direction we can take to work at any moment, so as not to fall into the extremes of imposing a scholarly content centered on one side speech, the teacher's or the student's.

Since the first experiences, some work strategies have been systematized in order to guarantee the desired dialogue in the different relations of the persons involved in the process, a dialogue that is mediated by the context of life, or, as Paulo Freire would say, around the world. The main systematizations / strategies were:

For Pernambuco, these moments can guide the organization of a lesson, the sequence of contents, the schedule of the school, a meeting of parents. In this sense, one speech does not predominate over the other, "[...] but together they exploit the perspectives created, reinforce the instruments grasped, make an exercise of generalization and expansion of previously established horizons" (^{PERNAMBUCO, 1993}, p. 34).

The principles identified and discussed above support all the educational actions of the GEPEM, orienting the choice of organizers and the parameters identified in the formative actions with teachers, which, in turn, are also anchored, mainly, in the ideas of Paulo Freire.

A research that intends to look at educational social practices that proposes a change, a movement, does not have definitive conclusions but provisional syntheses, generating new questions and the need for a new deepening. That's why, this text points only to syntheses, by the very principle that guides the look of these practices and the GEPEM itself.

Throughout the study, in the analysis of GEPEM formative practices, we identified principles, organizers and parameters. The principles base and guide the choice of organizers, which are considered fundamental in the formative proposals of this Group, appearing with regularity in all the actions analyzed in this work. In this way, we explained and analyzed the principles that underpin the GEPEM formative practices, revealing that they are articulated in doing and redoing practices.

Currently, new challenges were imposed on the Group, but it is in the challenges that we find the strength to continue in the struggle for a pedagogy of movement based on the principles built in the Group's decades of work. The loss of Marta Pernambuco, besides sudden, marked us in several ways. It was a structural break at all levels that encompassed the formation of this group. At the moment, we are in a process of rupture / continuity, with a restructuring of the persons that compose and / or acted at some point, synthesizing and grouping collective actions, so that the flow of formation that GEPEM plays in almost 25 years does not stop. We, then, carry on considering the Freirean perspective of dialogicity, a collective construction from action-reflection-action and process of awareness. Furthermore, we also highlight the model adopted by Marta Pernambuco, and by the GEPEM group, to analyze educational practices that proposes a change, promoting the inclusion of the persons in a collective way.