THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN DISCOURSES ON TEACHER EDUCATION

For the last 30 years, the field of studies on teacher education has circulated around discourses that emphasize the need for teachers to develop professional knowledge allowing them to act with autonomy and pertinence when confronted with complex situations while teaching (^{Zeichner, 1993}; ²⁰⁰⁸; ^{García, 1997}; Pérez Gomes, 1997; ^{Gauthier, 1998}; ^{Pacheco e Flores, 1999}; ^{Pimenta, 1999}; ^{Tardif, 2000}; ²⁰¹³; ^{Altet, 2001}). Such an epistemological perspective, with important political consequences, guides the search for an alternative model of teacher education that can reach, simultaneously, a high professional and academic level (^{Etienne et al, 2009}), and is able to offer teachers, through “long-lasting studies”, greater possibilities to “enact, with autonomy and responsibility, non-routine intellectual acts in pursuing objectives in a complex situation.” (^{Perrenoud et al., 2001}, p.11)

This model of professional education integrates broad processes of change, affecting the paradigm based on a technical rationality, more traditional in the space of teacher training (^{Pérez Gómez, 1997}), and acting to consolidate an alternative paradigm, structured from a “practical rationality” (^{Schön, 1997}) that, among other aspects, considers the teachers’ work and experiences as important resources in their own learning and professional development.

Contemporary discourses on the pertinence of a professional model of teacher education, grounded in this epistemology of practice that is alternative to technical rationality (^{Pérez Gómez, 1997}), align with an older movement which values experience for learning and proposes reflexive practice as an important element for the process of human education, as it refers to the development of self-control in future actions (^{Teixeira, 1979}). The greatest exponent of this perspective is American philosopher John Dewey, who defended a version of the experimental method based on the review of significant aspects of experience, considering that “reflecting is looking back on what could be done and extracting the positive meanings that will build capital to intelligently deal with future experiences.” (^{Dewey, 1979}, p. 92-93)

Supported by these assumptions regarding the value of reflection and applying them to the space of professional education, Donald Schön, in the beginning of the 1980s, emphasized the need to invest in a new epistemology of practice grounded in the professional knowledge developed by subjects through reflection (during the action and about the action) made in work situations. The author argues that the problems of practice as connected to some professions have become increasingly more complex, marked by singular and uncertain situations which escape the precepts of technical rationality and imply the need to improvise, invent, and test the strategies produced by the professionals themselves. Under this perspective, Schön argues that professional development in certain areas should be considered as a reflective and artistic activity, which is not limited to simply applying pre-established and scientifically validated techniques or procedures (^{Pérez Gómez, 1997}).

In the specific case of teachers, this new epistemology of professional practice, which gives importance to the practice knowledge in formative processes, has been highlighted in the discourses on teacher education in the last decades (^{García, 1997}; ^{Pimenta, 2006}). Following this tendency, several studies have focused on identifying a teacher’s base of knowledge (^{Shulman, 1987}) and teaching knowledge (^{Tardif, 2010}) built from different sources of learning, mainly those developed from professional activity and conceived as specific to the teaching profession.

ASSUMPTIONS OF THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN BRAZILIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICIES: BETWEEN DISCOURSES AND PRACTICES OF TEACHER EDUCATION

The international movement guided by the assumptions of the epistemology of professional practice discussed here, which emphasizes the education and learning of working adults, circulates vigorously among educational discourses (^{Zeichner, 2008}). This epistemology is situated at the core of an international movement for the professionalization of education which started in the 1980s (^{Tardif, 2000}). Such a movement has focused on the attempt to reformulate and renew the epistemological fundamentals of the work of teachers, which implies exploring different actions, amongst which we highlight: the construction of a knowledge repertoire based on the study of teachers’ professional knowledge that is mobilized in the work context; the introduction of training, action, and research devices that consider the needs, knowledge and representations of teachers that are pertinent to the development of their professional practice; the transfer of two thirds of pre-service education to the school context; the breakdown of the university’s logic with regard to subjects in professional education courses; as well as the carrying out of research on the pedagogical practice of university professors (^{Tardif, 2000}).

This approach, which claims a new epistemological statute for teaching practice and aims to strengthen the connections between academic and school spaces in teacher training, from a less hierarchical perspective, represents an emblematic example of a change of paradigm in the thought on the role of experience in teacher education (^{Zeichner, 2010}). The assumptions made by this new paradigm that now affirms itself in teacher training indicate the establishment of a professional model that values, among other aspects, teachers’ field work as a potential space to develop knowledge considered indispensable for critical, reflexive action which accommodates the complexity of situations involving the teaching profession.

In this direction, ^{Nóvoa (2017}) defends the need to build a new institutional place that allows teachers a professional university education incorporating the professional dimension, “not in a technical or applied sense, but in the projection of teaching as a profession based on knowledge” (p. 1116). For the author, teachers’ professional knowledge should be recognized as part of the legacy of the profession and should be “worked, written, and transmitted from generation to generation” (^{Nóvoa, 2019}, p. 205). According to ^{Nóvoa (2017}), the relation of co-responsibility between university and schools to be built in this “hybrid space” (p. 1114) of education, which extends out from experiences and professional cultures, fills “a void that has prevented thinking about innovative models.” (p. 1115)

The recognition of teaching as a complex activity, of the professional space as a locus of knowledge production, and of teachers as historical subjects and actors in educational practice, able to produce new knowledge, has had a strong influence in Brazilian educational literature and, above all, in the research and practices of teacher training (^{Gatti et al., 2019}). In Brazil, some of these initiatives are situated in the scope of the international movement for teacher professionalization, emphasizing the “issue of knowledge and competence in the education of future Brazilian teachers” (^{Borges and Tardif, 2001}, p. 14). In this context, teacher education has been the object of reforms, mainly since the promulgation of the Brazilian Educational Guidelines and Framework Law [Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional] (^{Brasil, 1996}), a scenario that culminated in the consolidation of the National Policy for the Training of Teachers of Basic Education, established by Decree no. 6,755 (^{Brasil, 2009}), which institutionalized the training/formative actions aimed at teachers at the federal level.

Documents referring to this national training policy portray some assumptions dear to the movement for the professionalization of teaching and the new epistemology of professional practice, establishing as one of their principles the “recognition of school and other basic education institutions as spaces necessary for the initial training of teachers.” (^{Brasil, 2009})

They also consider continuing education, focused on teachers with experience, “an essential component of teachers professionalization, that should be integrated into school daily life and take into account the teachers different knowledge and experience” (^{Brasil, 2009}). Propositions to this effect are also found in previous legal documents, which highlight the need to make possible the use of previous education and experiences, integrating them in the pre- and in-service training of teachers, and contributing to more meaningful learning when associated with systematic reflection (^{Brasil, 1996}; ²⁰⁰¹). However, as ^{Schön (1997}) warns, this alternative epistemology of professional practice is confronted with the dominant epistemology in universities and their normative professional curriculum. The establishment of an educational model based on a new epistemology of professional practice, in the sense proposed by Schön, requires changes that transcend teachers’ traditional education, involving the way the work and the profession are organized (^{Pérez Gómez, 1997}; ^{Bourdoncle, 2000}).

A professional education model demands the use of educational devices that favor the development of a “pedagogy of alternation” (^{Altet, 2009}) that attends to the specificities of adult education (^{Roquet, 2009}). It is an education/training strongly coordinated with work, at the same time that it is supported by high-level disciplinary knowledge, which favors a reflective and critical approximation with teaching (^{Altet, 2000}; ²⁰⁰⁹; ^{Bourdoncle, 2000}). The establishment of a curriculum of university professional education requires devices of training, action, and research that allow a greater relation with the university environment and school, in which teachers’ professional practices, knowledge, and experiences stand out (^{Sarti, 2020}).

In the Brazilian case, the implementation of this professional model of teacher education has been facing important obstacles regarding both pre-service education, offered to future teachers, as well as continuing education aimed at in-service teachers. A report organized by ^{Gatti and Barreto (2009}) highlighted that the effect of governmental policies implemented in Brazil until then had not reached the desired levels, because the models disseminated in educational literature, which are based on the institutional strengthening of the school and on reflective practice, demanded more favorable institutional and structural conditions. Would the National Policy for the Training of Teachers of Basic Education, established in the same year that ^{Gatti and Barreto’s (2009}) study was published, change that situation?

In the case of pre-service education, more recent studies have shown a “distance of higher education courses from the realities of school systems in their educational practices” (^{Gatti et al, 2019}, p. 91) in Brazil. The philosophical, theoretical, political, and normative proposals that seek greater coordination between theoretical and practical knowledge in the training of Brazilian teachers “establish themselves, in most cases, at the level of ideals and are confronted with rooted cultural practices” (^{Gatti et al, 2019}, p. 75). ^{Gatti, Barreto and André (2011}) highlight the need to rethink formative institutions and their curricula to promote greater interaction between fundamental knowledge and practice, considering that there is a prevalence among us of an academic, abstract, and generic training/education.

In the case of in-service education, which more directly interest us in this article, the problematic relation between theory and practice is more complexly shown because, as stated by ^{Day (2001}), intervention during the teachers’ career should consider “their life stories, their experiences of professional learning, their professional know-how, and the cultures of professional learning in school that determine their daily work contexts” (p. 87). According to the assumptions connected to the new epistemology of professional practice, it would not be possible to “think of teachers as a homogeneous collective, but there are different levels of personal and professional maturity that teacher training programs should consider” (^{García, 1999}, p. 60). The incompatibility between the guiding assumptions of educational initiatives and the institutional and structural conditions of training is pointed out by ^{Marcelo García (1999}), who underlines that teachers go through different phases “representing specific and distinct personal, professional, organizational, contextual and psychological demands, among others” (p. 112). In this sense, ^{Reali et al. (2008}) emphasized that beginner and experienced teachers have different knowledge bases to teach from. Thus, experienced teachers are normally able to mobilize more complex knowledge, which gives them greater control over the class dynamics and more varied strategies for professional work. In the same sense, according to the authors, “experience favors the construction of a situated knowledge - developed according to the working context and accessed and used as problem-solving tools” (p. 84). Following the same direction, ^{Romanowiski and Martins (2010}) highlight that, during the teachers career, the object of reflection changes as “beginner teachers tend to be more concerned with content and teaching procedures, while more experienced ones are more concerned with students learning.” (p. 294)

However, ^{Romanowiski and Martins (2010}), ^{Reali et al. (2008}), and the before mentioned report produced by ^{Gatti and Barreto (2009}) indicated problems and gaps related to the proposals for continuing education developed among us, which would not address the more specific educational needs of experienced teachers, in their different phases of professional development.

More recently, ^{Gatti et al. (2019}) pointed out the innovative initiatives of teachers’ continuing education in Brazil, which, according to the study, aimed to promote formative experiences that are more adjusted to teachers’ work conditions and careers, recognizing that course-takers are in different phases of their professional life. These are educational proposals which, although still incipient, suggest advances in the professionalization of educational processes focused on experienced Brazilian teachers. Considering these recent signs of change, we shall now explore the findings of an investigation that aimed to identify elements of how the in-service teacher education - thus, teachers at specific stages of their teaching careers - has been developed in the scope of the National Policy for the Training of Teachers of Basic Education (^{Brasil, 2009}), more specifically at Parfor.

THE FIRST TEACHING DEGREE IN PEDAGOGY OF PARFOR AS A PROPOSAL OF EDUCATION FOR EXPERIENCED TEACHERS

Our empirical reference for the study was the First Teaching Degree in Pedagogy of Parfor. It is a public initiative of in-service education that has, in its core, traces of the legal regulations that guide teacher education in Brazil. The course was established as a response to article 11, clause III, of the National Policy for the Training of Teachers of Basic Education (2009), which recommends the “emergency offer of teaching degrees, courses, or special programs targeting in-service teachers working for at least three years in the public system of basic education”. It is part of a greater set of actions developed under a collaboration among the Union, the States, the Federal District, the municipalities, and Higher Education Institutions (HEI). The course has a study load of 3,200 hours - 400 of which dedicated to supervised school placement/internship - targeting the training of teachers that already work in the public system and have no higher education degree, as demanded by the Brazilian Educational Guidelines and Framework Law (^{Brasil, 1996}). The hybrid character (^{Bueno, Souza and Bello, 2007}) of this training, which integrates specificities of pre- and in-service education, enhances the challenges of creating training models that cater to the educational needs of in-service teachers.

Given the scope of Parfor in the Brazilian territory, we made an empirical selection based on the information from a spreadsheet available at Plataforma Freire,¹ prioritizing proposals of the First Teaching Degree in Pedagogy/Parfor offered on campus through partnerships with public (state and federal) universities and implemented since 2009 or 2010. We considered the possibility that these institutions, which had implemented the course from its initial proposal, would have had more time to improve their formative propositions.

From the 38 universities identified in our empirical selection, seven course coordinators of First Teaching Degrees in Pedagogy/Parfor, from four Brazilian regions, agreed to help with the study, thus allowing the inclusion of their courses among the empirical references for the investigation. Aiming to keep the participants’ anonymity, we named the courses Parfor1/Northeast, Parfor2/ Northeast, Parfor3/Southeast, Parfor4/North, Parfor5/Northeast, Parfor6/ Northeast, Parfor7/South.

We first explored the courses through their documents, with the “analysis of different types of materials, which have not yet been analytically treated, or that can be reexamined, aiming for new and/or complementary interpretations” (^{Godoy, 1995}, p. 21). We examined official, technical, and instructional sources related to these degrees. With the goal of identifying the objectives and practices that transcend what is stated in the documents, we also conducted semi-structured interviews with course coordinators, focusing on questions about the creation, organization, and evaluation of the training proposals offered to in-service teachers.

We analyzed the data gathered according to the perspective of content analysis, as a way to systematically investigate the messages contained in the documents studied (^{Bardin, 2011}). In this direction, in a pre-analysis phase, we performed a floating reading of the data sources; while exploring the material, we identified the first units of register; and, on the last phase, we treated and interpreted the data, through inference work (^{Bardin, 2011}, p. 45).

The criteria for the choice and delimitation of emerging theme units were based on the specific objectives of the research, aiming to identify: the formative structures; the conceptions of practice, knowledge, and teaching experience; the way the professional context of the in-training teachers was approached; the organizational forms adopted by the course, as well as the educational devices used. The empirical data presented according to these theme units allowed us to identify some conceptions that ground the educational models assumed in the configuration of the analyzed teaching degree courses.

Regarding the educational structure of such courses, we observed that four among them proposed an adaptation of the political pedagogical project (PPP) of their regular Pedagogy courses. Parfor1/Northeast points out that the course proposal “establishes itself as an adaptation of the Political Pedagogical Project of the Pedagogy degree” (PPP/Parfor1/Northeast, 2010, p. 14).² Parfor2/Northeast also highlights that the course “has specificities which set it apart from the regular courses annually offered by [the] university” and, therefore, has a “different methodology to that of the courses on continuous offer” (PPP/Parfor2/Northeast, 2013, p. 19). With a similar concern, Parfor5/Northeast stresses that the “contents are coherent with the needs of in-service teacher education as they respond to a specific demand, targeting professional teachers” (PPP/Parfor5/Northeast, 2012, p. 63). Parfor6/Northeast recognizes the knowledge already built by in-training teachers when it points out that “considering the experience that teachers bring with them, the curriculum structure was designed to optimize the in-training teacher’s pedagogical time in this formative space which is the university” (PPP/Parfor6/Northeast, 2018, p. 3). These decisions suggest some acknowledgment of the specificities of different levels of personal and professional development teachers go through during their careers (^{García, 1999}).

In a different way, Parfor3/Southeast, Parfor4/North, and Parfor7/South opted to keep the same pedagogical projects that guided their regular Pedagogy degree courses, emphasizing the need to preserve the academic quality of the education offered. According to the coordinators of these proposals, occasional adaptations were up to the professor responsible for each subject. This is the case of Parfor7/South, which attributes to professors-researchers working in teacher education the autonomy to “adequate contents, didactic material, media, and bibliography” and “to participate in work groups to develop specific methodology and didactic material to develop a special on-campus course for first or second teaching degrees or pedagogical training for basic education teachers” (Parfor7/South, Resolution/2011, Art. 9, Clause VIII). Parfor3/Southeast was also organized in this way; according to its coordinator, there was no “specific methodological design for this. But every professor could make adaptations, that was allowed, I was dealing with people with a lot of didactic experience.” (Coordinator, Ped/Parfor3/Southeast, interview, 2018)

Despite these differences, the contents of the educational proposals analyzed here indicate, to a greater or smaller degree, assumptions connected to the epistemology of professional practice, including critical positions regarding the need to overcome technical rationality and promote reflection and research as strategic elements in teacher education.

Referring to the conception of teachers’ practice, knowledge and experience, the results of the study indicate a significant diversity. In Parfor1/Northeast, for example, the consideration of teachers’ experience and knowledge produced by in-training teachers is taken as a starting point to transform practice, presupposing the need to “review some postures adopted in the classroom”, to “reflect on practice”, and to “correct some habits”, based on the knowledge of “other realities” (coordinator Ped/Parfor1/Northeast, interview, 2017). While this course proposes a distance from their practice so that teachers can reflect and get to know “other realities”, Parfor2/Northeast emphasizes teachers’ experience, seeking greater interaction between the educational contents and the teachers’ daily practice in the classroom. The coordinator highlights the relevance of working, during training, with “factual data” and “the reality of the classroom”. The course’s document also points out that “the pedagogical practice of the teacher-student has a training character.” (Student kit/Parfor2/Northeast, p. 2)

The relationship with teaching practice and the professional context in which teachers work poses a challenge for the proposals of teacher education analyzed here. As the coordinator of Ped/Parfor1/Northeast recognizes, there are no specific devices that take into account the teachers’ professional experience as an educational element. It is up to each teacher in training to “create a bridge between what is discussed in the classroom and their own experience” (Coordinator Parfor1/Northeast, interview, 2017), i.e., between what they learn in the university and the knowledge developed from their experience in the classroom, a connotation that marks the traditional separation between these spaces in teacher education. The challenge to access the professional field as a space of professional learning seems to bring out a historical distance between school and university in teacher education, between teaching and research, and between teachers and researchers.

Faced by this challenge, education proposals seem to consider the possibility of importing knowledge produced by teachers in their professional space, assuming it as a “horizon of reference of the education process itself” (PPP/Parfor5/Northeast, 2012, p. 61), which should be “considered” and “thematized” (PPP/Parfor2/Northeast, 2013, p. 69) in the academic context. In this respect, Parfor6/Northeast highlights “the experience teachers bring with them […] in this educational space that is the university.” (PPP/Parfor6/Northeast, 2018, p. 3)

Although the university context is predominant as an educational space in the analyzed proposals, this type of hybrid education (^{Bueno, Souza and Bello, 2007}), which combines characteristics of pre- and in-service education, shows some tensions regarding the ways in which in-training teachers are perceived, since they also play a hybrid role with regard to their role as basic education teachers and their role as students in higher education. The survey conducted in the documents and interviews revealed a predominance of the terms “students” and “undergraduates” to refer to in-training teachers in most Pedagogy/Parfor courses analyzed. The tensions between their professional situation and the student role they are required to play show themselves in certain difficulties they have during the course, which were pointed out by some coordinators (Parfor1/Northeast, Parfor3/Southeast, Parfor5/Northeast and Parfor7/South), regarding lack of time to study and reading/writing skills. In this sense, the coordinator of Ped/Parfor1/Northeast comments that “students at the end of the course have to write an undergraduate thesis, and this is where we notice that they have had little progress in their writing, they have advanced little in this idea of scientific construction” (interview, 2017). Similarly, the coordinator of Ped/Parfor3/Southeast states that the professors had to “make methodological adjustments because they [the in-training teachers] had enormous gaps related to writing, the acquisition of cultural capital, of knowledge.” (interview, 2018)

These difficulties that are faced by teachers in training are considered common to students admitted to higher education. According to ^{Coulon (2017}), affiliation to the academic context depends on learning a true student métier that takes place through the discovery of the routines and new codes of the university, and the quick assimilation of rules that are more sophisticated, complex, and symbolic in the academic environment. The university, as a space of teacher education, is strongly marked by the form of socialization that is proper to it (^{Demailly, 1991}; ^{Perrenoud, 2008}; ^{Bourgin, 2011}; ^{Peraya, 2018}), which is characterized by the centrality of theoretical knowledge and scientific research, by activities guided by a curriculum, by the structure of subjects and their theoretical perspectives, by the combined activities of professors who are also researchers, by students’ personal and autonomous work, by oral and written communication in academic language, by seminars, lectures, among others. As it constitutes a more complex and fragmented form of socialization when compared to the school form, the first allows for a redefinition with regard to the characteristics that are typical of academic culture (^{Devauchelle, 2018}). With this possibility, the courses analyzed here, marked by the university form of socialization, reveal some specific contours in their ways of conceiving and organizing the educational structures and of reducing the conflicts between the teachers’ professional culture and academic culture that are present in the undergraduate experiences of in-service teachers.

Thus, the difficulties involved in affiliation (^{Coulon, 2017}) to the academic universe, faced by in-training teachers, lead to strategies of hybridization between the university and school forms of socialization, producing a curious process of schooling whereby the university form is learnt (^{Bourgin, 2011}). This process is characterized by the adjustment of educational practices, aiming to reduce discrepancies between the traits of the target audience and the specificities of the academic environment. Such a process of schooling as applied to university education brings attributes from the school form of socialization to the pedagogical relationships, in the greater concern with students’ motivations and the maintenance of order, in the control and establishment of supra-personal institutional rules. On the other hand, the university form also sustains itself, mainly through the type of relation that is established with content, revealing itself in educational activities (guided by the curriculum), in the centrality of scientific research, and in the students’ personal and autonomous work (^{Bourgin, 2011}). However, we should note, following ^{Demailly (1991}) and ^{Peraya (2018}), that neither the school nor the university form of socialization meets the demands of professional education. Therefore, a delicate problem imposes itself.

In the Teaching Degrees in Pedagogy/Parfor analyzed, the school form of socialization reveals itself in, among other factors, the adjustments implemented by teachers in training to cope with the difficulties they face regarding specific aspects of academic culture. In Parfor1/Northeast, for example, such adjustments were made through the use of workbooks based on a compilation of texts. Thus, reading practices go through procedures that bring them closer to school culture. Anyhow, the university form of socialization leaves important marks on the educational practices enacted in these contexts, regarding, for example, the demand for a longer period of study (Parfor1/Northeast), reading habits (Parfor3/Southeast and Parfor7/South), academic writing practices, particularly for the undergraduate thesis (Parfor1/Northeast, Parfor3/Southeast, Parfor5/Northeast and Parfor7/South); as well as the valuing of students’ intellectual (Parfor1/ Northeast, Parfor2/ Northeast e Parfor5/Northeast) and academic autonomy (Parfor2/ Northeast and Parfor5/ Northeast).

Regarding the organization of training, differently from the school form, in some of the courses under analysis the space-time dimension of learning seems to have more flexible contours, typical of the university form (^{Devauchelle, 2018}). This specificity shows itself in an organization according to modules, with classes held at the weekends, during holidays and vacations (Parfor1/Northeast, Parfor2/Northeast, Parfor4/North, Parfor5/Northeast, Parfor6/Northeast and Parfor7/South) and the commute of the professors-trainers to the educational centers of Parfor located in associated cities. The flexibilization of the space-time dimension in the education proposals examined considers the professional condition of in-training teachers, who often work two shifts, requiring a reformulation of the study schedule; the great distance between the teachers’ place of residence/work and the university campi; or even the need for logistic and operation adjustments to be made by the university itself.

The proposals present different ways to offer the education of in-service teachers, emphasizing more strongly an educational perspective that is grounded on the school and university forms of socialization which stand out in training contexts. They therefore differ from a professional logic of education, which relies on greater coordination between the university context and the in-training teachers’ professional context. This distancing from a professional perspective of education seems to have contributed to trigger some difficulties identified during the educational process, culminating in the creation of alternative pathways to develop some training devices.³ The original version of the Interdisciplinary Seminars proposed by Parfor5/Northeast, for instance, focused on “theoretical-conceptual” themes of “practical-applied nature” (PPP/Parfor5/Northeast, 2012, p. 76), including even the professional condition of in-training teachers in its mention of experience reports as one of the activities that could integrate this curricular component. The initial proposal offered a choice among a variety of activities (lectures, debates, roundtables, workshops, experience reports, among others). However, during the course, the Interdisciplinary Seminars eventually took on new contours, with activities aimed at developing writing skills following academic standards. The course coordinator highlighted that this new version of the Interdisciplinary Seminars implemented experimentally intended to promote teachers’ more active participation in their own educational process and to meet a training need identified by the professors.

Some courses proposed specific education devices, designed to develop the in-training teachers’ writing abilities, preparing them for their undergraduate thesis (Interdisciplinary Seminar of Parfor1/Northeast; Reading and writing workshop of Parfor2/Northeast). The creation of devices to facilitate fluency in the codes that underpin academic work seemed closer to a perspective of academic literacy (^{Carlino, 2003}, p. 410), focused on the development of the ability to interpret and produce texts according to the rules and codes of academic culture.

The curricular school placement/internship, an obligatory component of teaching degrees, was the main point of tension for the proposal of devices more adequate to the conditions of the in-service teachers studying with Parfor. The proposals made with regard to the curricular internship kept the same contours as those proposed to pre-service teachers, culminating in difficulties related to this activity being seen as redundant, which created resistance among the in-training teachers, as reported by the coordinator of Ped/Parfor3/Southeast. Another difficulty had to do with the amount of time necessary for the internship, which imposed the need to flexibilize the in-training teachers’ workload. As stated by the coordinator of Ped/Parfor1/Northeast: “These are professionals that often work all day long, so what time will they have to do an internship? So I’ve been having this concern, to sensibilize the Secretaries of Education and have them flexibilize the schedule of these students.” (interview, 2017)

The curricular internship of Parfor3/Southeast, which initially followed the proposal established in the institution’s pedagogical project (the same for the Parfor and the regular course), took on more flexible contours in the face of teachers’ resistance and interest, integrating alternative activities (work groups, the creation of didactic material, cultural trips, theater, dramatization, exhibitions).

The modulations made in these educational devices show the tensions between the university form of socialization, which predominantly guides academic culture, and a professional perspective of education, one that becomes even more evident in the hybrid type of training that characterizes the Teaching Degrees in Pedagogy of the Parfor. In this respect, ^{Gatti, Barreto and André (2011}, p. 221) highlight that one of the most frequent complaints on continuous training is that “the programs do not include a systematic follow-up and support to the pedagogical practice of teachers, who have difficulties to understand the relationship between the program and their actions in school daily life.”

In the study on innovative training practices conducted by ^{Gatti et al. (2019}), the authors point out some aspects that distinguish them: the importance of formalizing a partnership between the university and the school; a well-defined structure with guiding principles, clear objects, and the definition of the participants’ attributions; planning and registration strategies; follow-up, mediation, and evaluation of interns by the school’s teachers. More specifically on continuing education, the authors draw attention to some points of convergence among innovative proposals: training guided by the problems pertaining to the school context; the fostering of reflexive processes based on pedagogical practice and a research attitude; the value of teachers as knowledge producers and protagonists of their own training, as well as the conception of the school as a space that produces knowledge and culture (^{Gatti et al., 2019}).

In the Parfor proposals analyzed here, few initiatives were aimed at outlining hybrid educational devices that proved to be closer to the professional perspective of training, fostering a coordination between university education and the work context of in-training teachers. The few devices we observed seemed to follow the perspective underscored by the course coordinators as being different from the regular education proposals. This was the case of the Coordinated Workshops [Oficinas Articulares] (Parfor2/Northeast) and the Curricular Integration Workshops [Oficinas de Integração Curricular] (Parfor5/Northeast), which were based on strategies for the integration between the knowledge and experience of teachers working in basic education and the promotion of meaningful learning, through active participation and the consideration of their own interests in the education process. Such devices are focused on the possibility that in-training teachers can identify, in their own work space, the problems to be explored in their education process. Therefore, they are devices that favor a type of training in context (^{Ferreira, 2009}) by allowing the interaction between the training process and the work situations of teachers, following a professional logic of education (^{Formosinho, 2009}).

Still with regard to the contours of some educational devices deployed by the courses under examination, the data suggest a considerable emphasis on investigative practices and the conception of teacher-researcher - a view largely disseminated in academic-educational areas. In this sense, the Interdisciplinary Seminars (Parfor1/Northeast), the Complementary Activities (Parfor2/Northeast), and the Interdisciplinary Seminars (Parfor5/Northeast) are educational devices that prioritize the development of an investigative attitude by teachers. Following the same trend, Parfor2/Northeast, Parfor4/North, and Parfor6/Northeast also refer to the perspective of action research that implies the “recursive effect due to a permanent reflection on action.” (^{Barbier, 2007}, p. 117)

Strongly marked by the university form of socialization and traditionally expected in undergraduate courses, the undergraduate thesis is an educational device that comes closer, in some analyzed proposals, to the professional practices of in-service teachers. In this sense, Parfor2/Northeast, Parfor5/Northeast, and Parfor6/Northeast opt for memoirs, written pieces that allows the creation of professional knowledge (^{Fabre and Lang, 2000}), as an alternative to the undergraduate thesis. They therefore present possibilities to approach the singular dimensions of the educational trajectory of the in-training teachers. However, even this more professional educational device seems to prioritize, in the investigated cases, the rules of data production, collection, and processing, at the expense of writing the memoirs which is, potentially, more formative (^{Fabre and Lang, 2000}).

Despite establishing hybrid initiatives, which combine features of pre- and in-service education, the analyzed proposals of the Parfor present diverse dichotomies, reinforced by the predominant influence of the university form of socialization. Thus, the hypothesis that these courses might adopt a perspective closer to the professional model of education, establishing more effective relations with the teachers’ work contexts and practices, was not confirmed.

We find that the important obstacles identified in this study regarding the configuration of a form of education that comes closer to the professional model of teaching are due especially to the strong presence of the school and university forms of socialization in the investigated contexts. The tensions established between these two educational traditions, with their specific cultures, respectively the school and academic ones, produced educational proposals that seem distant, in many ways, from a “true university education with a professional end” (^{Altet, 2009}, p. 222) - which in turn assumes a complex relationship with knowledge from different sources (^{Tardif, 2000}). The resource, employed by the Parfor degrees, of anchoring their educational practices in the school and academic cultures - little attuned to the demands of a professional training perspective (^{Demailly, 1991}; ^{Peraya, 2018}) - suggests important gaps in our educational context, referring to the frailties we face in trying to establish a professional culture of teacher education.

FROM THE RENOUNCEMENT OF TRADITIONAL EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES TO THE FORESHADOWING OF A PROFESSIONAL CULTURE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

The results found by our study suggest the coexistence of competing paradigms in the context of teacher education, connected to very distant conceptions regarding teachers’ professional knowledge and experience, professional education, and the role of the university.

The particularities of the type of hybrid education that distinguishes the First Teaching Degree in Pedagogy of Parfor - that could potentially boost greater interaction between the academic space and the schools where the in-training teachers work - were not enough to build education proposals with more professional contours. The education initiatives analyzed show strong marks of the school and university forms of socialization, reflecting historical gaps in the models of pre- and in-service teacher education. The challenges remain, therefore, to break away from traditional dichotomies in the field of teacher education between teachers’ training and professional space, and to overcome the fragilities that characterize the commonly established relationships between theory and practice.

Some of the proposals analyzed sought to promote greater interaction between the academic sphere and teachers’ professional space, adjusting the training practices used to respond to the specificities of the experiences of in-training teachers. Some innovations even had impacts on the curriculum reforms of the institution’s regular courses, as was the case of Ped/Parfor2/Northeast.

Possibilities of change, as those experienced in some cases analyzed here, are also perceived in a broader space of teacher education in the country, driven, for example, by the Institutional Program for Teaching Initiation Scholarships [Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação à Docência (Pibid)] and by the Pedagogical Residence Program [Programa Residência Pedagógica], both connected to the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education (CAPES). Such programs exemplify the search for new educational practices that reach greater articulation between teaching degrees and schools. Other innovative initiatives regarding teacher education have emerged in the national context, as indicated by the study conducted by ^{Gatti et al. (2019}).

However, despite these innovative initiatives that bring the Brazilian field of teacher education into debate, we must admit the existence of difficulties that distance us from broader and more meaningful changes in the culture that organizes the relationships in this space. The establishment of a professional education culture - which in fact legitimizes the school as a locus of teacher development and that considers the different professional stages experienced by teachers - depends on a historical and collective construction.

We suffer the significant distance that persists between the level of sophistication of the discourses that have circulated during the last decades and the more effective possibilities to transform teacher education practices in the country. Discourses on teacher education in Brazil have been changing more rapidly than the culture and material conditions of existence of national institutions. Therefore, we experience a clear mismatch between, on one hand, our expectations towards teacher education and, on the other, the education curriculum and practices that generally hold in courses designed for teachers.

Thus, we stumble forward in the construction of spaces where teacher education, work, and practice are treated conjointly, outlining educational proposals that attempt to equalize demands that not always converge (pre- and in-service education; school and university cultures, among others) without advancing significantly towards a specific type of hybridization, grounded on a professional culture of education, which includes an effective interface between the university and the school, so as to produce a “third space” (^{Zeichner, 2010}, p. 486) - a “hybrid space” (^{Nóvoa, 2017}, p. 1114) - that is able to overcome the division between professional/practical and academic knowledge. More immediate initiatives that set us in this pathway require systematic investments by the government to broaden teacher education policies addressing interinstitutional training structures, also implying the schools and their agents in the training, thus recognizing the essential role of teachers themselves in the training of their peers, something that demands the professional revaluation of basic education teaching.

A professional culture of teacher training is established in line with the change of epistemological paradigm that insinuates itself in many programs of teacher education, as is the case of Parfor. However, through our educational actions, we must effectively grant an epistemological statute to the diverse types of knowledge that are constitutive of teaching, which, produced and circulating in different spaces, must converge and be mobilized in favor of professional learning and the development of our teachers.