Introduction

In Brazil, during the 1960s, the first movements for quality education in the countryside were implemented: the Agricultural Family School (Escola Família Agrícola - EFA) and the Rural Family House (Casa Familiar Rural - CFR). The group formed by EFA and CFR was renamed “Family Centers for Alternation Training” (CEFFA). The first experiences with Pedagogy of Alternation appeared in Espírito Santo in 1969, in the municipality of Anchieta, in a partnership between Italy and Brazil (^{NASCIMENTO, 2009}).

Pedagogy of Alternation emerged as a claim to be an alternative to traditional teaching and constitutes an educational proposal that alternates times-spaces for study at school and moments of training in the students’ communities of origin. This articulation occurs through learning in the school space and the conduct of field research, favoring the relationship between theory and practice while educating students.

Since the beginning, a school has been planned to be family-oriented and embraced by families who live in the countryside, with a proposal to contextualize education that unites theory and practice. According to ^{Nosella (2012)}, to think about Pedagogy of Alternation in Espírito Santo is to strengthen collective struggles for quality public schools for those who live in the countryside, thus expanding the concept of education for all.

From these educational actions aimed at the peasant peoples, the need for investment in the creation of teacher training courses to strengthen rural education emerged, with the Pedagogy of Alternation as guidance. As one of the initiatives, the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST, Portuguese acronym for “Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra”) sought – together with the Primary and Secondary School “Santo Antônio”, located in São Mateus/ES – to qualify the teachers/monitors at the MST settlement schools by offering teaching courses (early years) at high school level. Classes started in July 1995 at the Integrated Center for the Development and Settlement of Small Farmers (CIDAP).

The emergence “[...] of the first classes of the teaching course made the MST Education Sector realize the political and pedagogical potential of the systematic training of educators” (^{MARQUES, 2010}, p. 63), which gave rise to militancy for education in the countryside.

In 1987, the MST organized the first National Meeting of Settlement Teachers in the Municipality of São Mateus/ES, Brazil. During that meeting, the constitution of a course at higher education level, the land pedagogy course, was discussed. This denomination was thought to present its own meanings and capable of meeting the cultural identity of the people of the countryside, and one of the demands of social movements was the construction of a curriculum that approached the peasant reality and that met the needs of the subjects of/in the field.

Thus, in 1990, the National Collective of Education put into practice the systematization of the MST education proposal, but it was only in 1999 that the first class of the land pedagogy course was created in Espírito Santo, to serve educators of the agrarian reform, in an partnership between the National Agrarian Reform Education Program (PRONERA), the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) and the Federal University of Espírito Santo (^{PEZZIN; FOERSTE, 2012}).

[...] the national articulation of the MST and the Pedagogy of the Land courses in our State strengthened the struggle for Rural Education in the country, these being relevant milestones and fertilizers of the practices that today occupy the training time of rural teachers in our state. (^{JESUS, 2014}, p. 161).

From this initiative, other proposals were created at the postgraduate level until culminating in the creation of a degree in rural education, offered by the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), starting in 2014. Taking this course as the focus of analysis, we will direct our attention in this text for understanding how this course was historically configured, identifying and analyzing the facts that precede this creation and the trajectory traveled from the design of the project by its creators to the implementation of the proposal.

Theoretical assumptions about teacher training in rural education

According to ^{Foerste (2008)}, rural education is a collective construction as a practice of liberating dialogue, in the process of which students and teachers construct themselves and each other as autonomous historical subjects capable of reading the world. In this context, the educator plays a fundamental role in fostering culture, in the formation of subjects and in the political-social organization.

In the countryside, talking about education does not only imply dealing with the conquests of physical space for the school, but also the valorization of the countryside and a space where those involved are urged to stand critically in relation to capitalist society and to be subjects of their own stories, but collective subjects, linked to a social struggle (^{CALDART, 2004}).

^{Klein (2013}, p. 35) points out that the struggle for a quality school in the countryside must be reflected in an education project that considers the subjects who live in these space-time and their specificities. The author points out that “[…] it is time to deconstruct the hegemonic paradigm that carries the education offered to the diverse subjects of the field”.

These actions contribute to the reflection of an emancipatory/liberating school, which does not exclude or prioritize subjects. For ^{Freire (1987}, p. 10), this school carries out the pedagogical work aware that “[...] the practice of freedom will only find adequate expression in a pedagogy in which the oppressed are able to reflexively discover and conquer themselves as the subject of their own historical destiny”.

Thus, when we reflect on teacher training in rural contexts, we immediately think of training committed to transformation, aware of the school reality, of the complexity and challenges that emerge in this field. However, many teachers who work in rural schools were not trained to deal with the peculiarities of the region, having difficulties in promoting dialogues between curricular knowledge and those that emanate from the territories where the students come from.

According to ^{Arroyo, Caldart and Molina (2008)}, the largest number of lay teachers is concentrated in the countryside, training conditions in rural areas are minimal and, in general, teacher training programs, including teaching courses and higher education courses do not address the issue of the field, not even in the regions where most teachers will surely work, or, if they do, it is in the sense of reproducing prejudice and pejorative approaches. In universities, curricula for teaching courses are based solely on the urban context and exclude minority contexts and groups from discussions, from problematization and from methodological construction, such as popular education initiatives, social movements, the rural environment, etc. (^{RIBEIRO; MARIN, 2009}).

Based on the question exposed and in response to the claims and educational demands of peasant communities and social movements, which took place with a lot of struggle, proposals for implementing teacher training courses to work in rural schools gained visibility in debates engendered in academic and political spaces. In Espírito Santo, the teaching degree in rural education also had its origin in the struggles and demands of social movements that understand the right to an emancipatory education for peasant peoples, considering the training of teachers as one of the pillars of this achievement.

Methodology

We chose to employ historical research of a qualitative nature, seeking to understand the past through the present. ^{Bloch (2002)} defends the inseparability of the present and the past, stating that historians research the past from their time – from the present time – and from their social space. Thus, we understand that the history of education in the present time changes the history of education in the past.

As methodological procedures, we selected the analysis of documents and the performance of unstructured interviews with subjects involved with the creation of the course. At first, we analyzed the Pedagogical Political Project of the Teaching Degree in Rural Education and the document Tempo-Comunidade (Time-Community) and Tempo-Universidade (Time-University), the latter produced by the teachers who worked in the first two years of the course’s operation (^{UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2014}).

^{Nunes and Carvalho (2005}, p. 29) highlight the importance of sources for education historians, arguing that “[...] they depend, in their investigations, not only on the questions formulated within certain theoretical matrices, but also on the historical materials they can count on”. In this sense, written documents (official or unofficial) are the historians’ raw material, what they use to make history (^{LOPES; GALVÃO, 2001}).

From the analysis of the documents, it is possible to understand the value that education has in the training of subjects. The construction of the political-pedagogical project of a course means the opportunity to approach the community, parents, teachers and the technical team in search of results that show this importance (^{VEIGA, 1995}).

In the teaching degree in rural education, the political-pedagogical project aims to train teachers to work in rural schools, through “[...] operationalization of school planning, in a constant movement of reflection-action-reflection” (^{BETINI, 2005}, p. 38).

According to the political-pedagogical project (PPP) of the teaching degree in rural education at UFES, the course aims to supply the need for education in/for the field, through processes of reflection on new educational paradigms; to compose more accessible curricula, adequate didactic resources, contextual teaching materials for the collective development of critical and dialogical knowledge; to constitute alternatives to a society project that does not meet the expectations of the population in the countryside. Therefore, when looking for inspiration in ^{Fazenda (1979)}, it signals that the organization of this project has as a theoretical and conceptual basis the multi, inter and transdisciplinarity in overcoming the limits of the disciplines.

Therefore, we can affirm that the PPP is committed to a project to change society and people’s lives, placing the school as one of its actors, by recognizing its importance. As stated by ^{Veiga (1995}, p. 13), “[...] it is political in the sense of commitment to the formation of citizens for a type of society”.

In the second moment, we carried out unstructured interviews for data collection, as, according to ^{Moreira and Caleffe (2008}, p. 168), “[...] they allow us greater freedom to ask questions without establishing a sequence in advance”. The interviewees reconstruct the history of the creation of the course proposal by means of selective recall of memory. As pointed out by ^{Le Goff (1996)}, collective memory is part of the great questions of developed societies and those in the process of development, of the dominant and dominated classes, all fighting for power or for life, for survival and promotion.

The interviewees are two professors/professionals who participated in the creation of the teaching degree in rural education at UFES, campus Goiabeiras, for playing a certain protagonist role in the elaboration of the proposal sent to the Ministry of Education and in discussions within the university, bringing the demands of social movements, given the implication that they have with them. Our purpose was to obtain information from the respondents, capture descriptions of the situations and elucidate details of the event. Data analysis took place in a qualitative way, in which we sought to contextualize rural education in Espírito Santo, considering the relevant aspects that contributed to the emergence of a specific teaching degree for teacher training for rural schools.

The interviews were previously scheduled, through an invitation made by email. Initially, the objectives of the research were presented and the procedures for conducting the data collection were clarified, and signatures of the free and informed consent form were also collected. Thus, the interviews, carried out in March and April 2018, were organized in spaces of the Federal University of Espírito Santo, seeking to ensure an appropriate environment for audio recording and in order to reduce possible external interference. The produced narratives from these meetings helped us to think about historical, social and political aspects that permeate rural education and the scenario of creation of the course in question.

We believe that narrative sources are very important for historical investigation and can be used as a research and teaching tool in a two-way street. The role of the researcher, when analyzing a historical event, is not to judge, but to understand: “[...] a word, in short, dominates and illuminates our studies: understand ... through understanding and not judgment that the historian must analyze the facts” (^{BLOCH, 2002}, p. 163). From the perspective of understanding, we developed this research.

The teaching program in rural education at UFES

The rural education teaching course at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, offered as of 2014, emerged as part of a national policy on rural education and it is the result of a joint effort by the Ministry of Education (MEC), Secretariat of Higher Education (SESU), Secretariat for Professional and Technological Education (SETEC), Secretariat for Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion (SECADI) and social movements.

In order to go back to the constitution of the full degree in rural education at UFES, it is necessary to go back in time and in history, to remember the first initiatives that supported the course in question. In this scenario, the land pedagogy course, also conducted by UFES, in partnership with several social institutions, including the MST, stands out.

Appearing in the 1990s, the pedagogy of the land course began the training of rural teachers throughout Brazil. The first classes to inaugurate their teaching program had their classes at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) and at the State University of Mato Grosso (UNEMAT).

At UFES, the full teaching degree course in pedagogy for land reform educators – land pedagogy – had 62 students and took place at the Goiabeiras/Vitória campus, in a partnership with the MST and the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (^{KLEIN, 2013}). Subsequently, partnerships were established with the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and State University of Rio Grande do Sul (UERGS).

Land pedagogy courses arose from the need to train teachers with a specific profile and identity to serve rural people. “This was the starting point: since then, the courses have experienced many achievements and created other challenges” (^{MOREIRA, 2010}, p. 108).

From the land pedagogy course, new demands arose, resulting from the relationship established between the university and the Landless Rural Workers Movement, based on the premise that rural education is a right of the people who live there and a duty of the State. In this sense, one of the justifications for creating a teaching degree in rural education was to think that it is possible, at the same time, to have the formality required to teach in a school in the countryside, with the knowledge accumulated by being from that place, reducing the possibilities of having teachers who do not understand that way of thinking (^{JESUS, 2014}).

It is worth mentioning that the proposal of pedagogy of the land is the mainstay, the “umbrella” that houses the discussion of an education proposal created collectively and, based on this premise, the undergraduate course in rural education was being managed and subjectified as the place of action, which houses men and women who will constitute a team of professors whose task is to contribute to the formation of more critical subjects (^{MARTINS, 2012}).

From the creation of the land pedagogy course and other actions/reflections constituted, the implantation of the teaching program in rural education began. To this end, a team of teachers was formed in order to think about the project along with social movements. Several discussions were held to create this course so that it would meet the wishes of the peasant population in the state.

[...] And then, we made great progress in discussions with social movements and within the university, within this perspective of creating a degree. What ended up happening was that discussions at other universities also flowed in a similar way to UFES’, I say similar because it was not along the same lines, for example: Brasília was proposing a degree course very similar to our land pedagogy course, and they also sought to make these offers as a definitive thing and not just an occasional one. And then, in a way, we were surprised by a decree from the federal government, which instituted a new degree course called education in the countryside. (Respondent 1, 2018).

This national project was premised on the idea that it was necessary to create an educational system that would bring social relevance, based on the construction of a school that valued the integral and full form of the subject in the field, that is, a school that contributed to the formation of autonomous citizens, who are aware of their rights and duties towards society.

Such an educational proposal, which was designed in conjunction with the demands of the MST, supported the creation of a teaching degree in rural education at UFES:

In the case of a teaching degree in rural education, what has been achieved so far has given impetus for the movement to continue organizing itself and making its agenda for articulation with universities in offering this program. I understand that our involvement in the process, […] it comes as a result of the journey that we had been taking with the MST, mainly, and what is achieved in the first moment in terms of proposals for a degree as a course that would be funded by the federal government. [...] The expectation is that the universities started to assume this offer, as an integrated offer to the other university degrees. (Respondent 2, 2018).

The creation of the full teaching degree course in rural education (PROCAMPO) was requested to the Ministry of Education (MEC) in 2008, but the project needed adjustments and only through an edict published by MEC itself, in 2012, which opened the possibility for several universities to offer training courses for teachers in the field at a higher level, is that the university finally obtained authorization for the course to be implemented.

The discussion between UFES and the MST, concerning the creation of a course along the lines thought by the movement, did not occur in a harmonious way all the time. In the interviews, we could perceive criticism and certain prejudice in relation to the conception that the social movement brought, because, in addition to being an innovative proposal, it changed the logic of functioning already installed in the university, mainly for deconstructing closed course concepts:

The organization of the offer itself was much discussed with Prograd,² so that for each organization that we made, it mischaracterized what we understood as a possible offer made to the field, meeting demands that we already understood as rural teaching training demands. And with that, when trying to make a design ‘out of the university box’, Prograd said: ‘Look, you can’t, because we don’t offer 15 hours, we don’t offer 35 hours, you have to fit in the 60-hour standard’, because that avoids problems. (Respondent 2, 2018).

Many of the conflicts between social movements and the university, in the implementation of the course, lead us to remember that there is still a process of massification of teaching, a consequence of the opening of schools to all, disconnected from investments in the quality of pedagogical work directed to the popular layers of society. In this logic, it is necessary to train the market, without due concern for the quality of the teaching-learning processes, a scenario portrayed by ^{Santos (2012}, p. 83) when he argues:

The traditional logic does not allow conceiving the students’ daily life as a space for the construction of academic knowledge, since traditional education, used to denying any form of manifestation of the working class, is threatened by the idea of granting academic status to the knowledge that emerges from the ground of the peasant people.

The proposal of the teaching degree program at UFES pointed to a training that would transform reality, unveiling the unknown and deconstructing prejudice. Social movements believe in the organization of the school and the educational processes going together to reorganize society.

It is necessary to remember that the search for an educational process that recognizes the demands brought by the countryside began in the 1960s, with the experiences of popular education and the struggle for agrarian reform. The Citizen Constitution, approved in 1988, adopted the concept of education as a right of all and a duty of the State, and Law no. 9.394/96 affirmed this recognition when it deals with the specificity of rural education, in its Article 28:

Art. 28. In the provision of basic education for the rural population, the education systems will promote the necessary modifications to adapt to the peculiarities of rural life and of each region, especially:

Despite the legal guarantee for public education, schools have changed little. This served as an incentive for social movements to fight and demand that the changes take effect. As a result, on December 4, 2001, through Notification nº 36, the Operational Guidelines for Basic Education in Rural Schools were established and, in the following year, the creation of the Permanent Working Group on Rural Education (Resolution no. 1/2002 of the National Education Council) (^{BRITO, 2011}).

In 2006, the Ministry of Education issued a public notice with the regular offer of a teaching degree in rural education. In 2009, through Decree No. 6,755, of January 29, the basis for teachers’ training for the modality was established, but, only in 2010, the decree was published regulating the accreditation of universities that would then offer the referred teaching degree, serving all groups working in the rural area.

UFES had already filed an accreditation process with the MEC in 2008. This project underwent adjustments and was resubmitted in 2012. The government decree incorporated policies such as access to university, training for managers of these educational spaces, school lunches, transportation, production of specific materials, in addition to respect for the Pedagogy of Alternation (^{UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2013}).

Even though the project went through adjustments, the group understood that it could not give up the Pedagogy of Alternation. Having it as a pedagogical basis certainly represented the victory of the boldness of the social movement, it meant having managed to go through the whole bureaucratic process that involves the creation of a higher education program with approval at different bodies. This victory also portrayed the ability to articulate partnerships built in the most diverse spheres.

^{Santos (2012}, p. 84), when dealing with the concreteness of this project, reminds us that “[...] if the courses did not have the organization of alternating times, many of those who access the university today would not be able to do so within the current academic environment”. Working in Pedagogy of Alternation means giving equal weight to knowledge, that is, knowledge coming from the student communities and that which makes up the corpus of knowledge about the fundamentals of education.

It is also important to remember the resignification of the role of the teacher who, from this perspective, teaches and learns simultaneously (^{FREIRE, 1996}). Teachers participate in the processes of teaching and learning; they become part of the daily dynamics of the struggles of rural women and men in favor of a liberating education that recognizes rural peoples as subjects of law and knowledge (^{SANTOS, 2012}).

In a debate about the structure of the course, the group of initiating teachers developed a proposal that could meet the needs of the peasant peoples:

We thought of a course that was itinerant, we thought it could happen here, but it couldn’t be restricted to the classroom. So I understand that we had a very beautiful construction in the process, what we wanted was a lot of solidarity. It was a collective construction of making things happen that we know they gain another dimension in the countryside, to the extent that you can impact families, when thinking about the perspective of alternation. (Respondent 2, 2018).

From the interviewees’ reports, it is possible to understand that the group felt the need to think about teaching processes that occurred through alternation. This experience aims to ensure the specificity of training in sociocultural diversity and the universal right of rural people to public, quality, secular, and socially referenced education, since the knowledge acquired in it favors intercultural dialogues between the university and the countryside.

It is in the connection of school knowledge with the family environment that they reflect on their environment and develop their landmarks of identity references, enabling them to maintain contact with the multiple dimensions of this reality and helping them to form a collective cultural identity that surpasses the geographic barriers of their areas of belonging. (^{CALIARI, 2012}, p. 39).

The full teaching degree in rural education at UFES stands out for seeking joint involvement between theory and practice. Thus, it is configured to train professionals to work in elementary education II and high school, through areas of knowledge and not through subjects, which was consolidated, at the time, as one of the pioneering experiences, in addition to alternating training in higher education, according to the description of the political-pedagogical project:

The Teaching Degree Program in Rural Education Project proposed by MEC foresees to enable teachers for multidisciplinary teaching in a curriculum organized in four areas of knowledge: Languages; Human and Social Sciences; Natural Sciences and Mathematics; Agrarian Sciences. The proposal of this Licentiate degree at UFES, in its first stage (until the year 2016), will offer students the option of choosing between these two areas: HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES (Geography, History, Philosophy and Sociology) AND LANGUAGES (oral and written expression in Portuguese, Arts, Literature and Physical Education). Each student can choose to qualify in one of them, for which they will be licensed. (^{UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2013}, p. 9).

This organization of the course for the training of teachers in the field per area of knowledge and the pedagogy of alternation are combined in an important proposal to meet the demands of the peasant peoples. The practice of Pedagogy of Alternation has been taking root historically in the state, being an empowering stage for the emergence of the course that enables partnerships between the State, the rural community and rural movements. Thinking about teacher education, alternately, implies a collective construction committed to the reality of peasant families.

Rural education is about education that values family unity and the life of rural people, as well as respect for culture and work, in order to prioritize the social relationships that are established in contact and care for the land, breaking the vision of the field as a space for agribusiness. Access to higher education for rural subjects, from the perspective of rural education, according to ^{Fernandes (2009}, p. 15), “[...] is one more tool for the formation of citizens capable of transforming society and themselves and it is thought based on the dialogue with the broader reality”.

In the political-pedagogical project of the pedagogy course, hitherto existing at UFES, there was no mention of education in the countryside or education based on specific methodology that recognizes the form of organization of this population segment. With the creation of a Licentiate degree program in rural education, we found the path desired by social movements and by peasant peoples, that is, training that considers the specificities of those who are in that territory. The pedagogy course was also affected by this initiative, because, even though in a timid way, it started to offer an optional discipline in the field of rural education.

Regarding the full Licentiate degree in rural education, it is expected to train educators based on the following objectives:

The teaching degree program in rural education aims at real change. The militants who struggle to implement this project believe that if there is a group of oppressors and a group of oppressed people, this was created by the society in which these oppressed people live, who, having no other reference, adhere to the oppressor’s ideas. However, education cannot be thought of only from the perspective of the oppressor, it is necessary to have a new paradigm. This can be achieved with a way of educating that thinks about life, care for the environment, sociability among people and has, as its central axis, a new development project with social justice (^{FREIRE, 1987}).

With regard to organization, the course follows the provisions of Notification CNE/CEB no. 1, of February 1st, 2006, that is, it is organized alternating between Time/Space School-Course (TE) and Time/Space Community-Course (TC), articulating with the reality and education of rural populations (^{SILVA, 2013}). The dynamics of alternation, which the course proposes, is that the student is understood in these spaces and times in an integral and humanistic way, to incite educational transformations.

The alternation of the teaching degree in rural education is structured in three dimensions. The first is based on human formation, which aims to overcome the capitalist school; thus, we understand that the alternation of the course assumes a counter-hegemonic praxis, articulating the production of life and knowledge. The second conception is about socio-political and cultural relations, making students able to establish a new project of society and insertion in social relations. The third dimension highlights the relations of knowledge production (^{UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2013}).

As for the forecast of school days, it organizes in-person steps in the university environment, according to the other courses, and steps that must be accomplished in the environment in which the student lives. This means different times in the urban sector. The months of January and July are those in which the student must be at the university in person, in addition to the monthly meetings of three days. There, they should attend practical and theoretical classes. They should also exercise the ability to self-organize through group work, exercise resolution, reading, as well as cultural activities. Each student is responsible for organizing their study time when they are not in class with teachers and collaborators (^{UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2013}).

In the Time-Community, the student prepares and performs activities such as: research on reality, registration of these experiences, implementation of pedagogical actions, experiences that make it possible to share knowledge and develop learning projects in their municipalities of origin. The definition of the activities that will be developed is oriented in the months that the student is in the university in person, that is, they return home with tasks and deadlines to be fulfilled in the period that they are in the community. This form of organization allows students not to lose their references with the place in which they live, allowing them to participate in the challenges that still permeate a better understanding of the need to have educators in the field committed to another way of educating.

From this perspective, the performance of the Time-Community in the licensure program is mediated by three fundamental elements, between school subjects and the socio-professional environment, namely: Study Plan (PE), Reality Notebook (CR) and the Integrator Seminar (SI).

The Study Plan (PE) is prepared by the student and plays a central role in which, through reality research, the dialogue between popular knowledge and scientific knowledge is promoted. This plan consists of questions, based on the students’ objective reality, being linked to their daily realities. Also as part of the mediation process that takes place during the PE, a valuable mechanism is adopted, which is the Reality Book (CR). This notebook follows the student throughout the course. It records the entire school trajectory, which are the main issues discussed in the PE [...]. In this sense, performance of the EP with the development of research, data collection, analyses and reflections, are all recorded in the Reality notebook, which can also be called a Memorial or Book of Life. After studying the reality, made concrete through the Study Plan, students create their syntheses that will be socialized in a moment called ‘The Common Placement’ so as to produce their antitheses (^{UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2014}).³

Another highlight of this course is the practice of self-organization. The course proposes that students use self-management for maturity and autonomy in order to deal with issues that go beyond the classroom space. “From this “organicity”, the students become responsible and protagonists in their training process management, even if in part, besides contributing to the cooperation and construction of the pedagogical project” (MST apud ^{GONSAGA, 2009}, p. 81).

The course also contributes to thinking about a new society project, using as a premise the importance of rural subjects as protagonists of education in this context. In order for this to occur, it is necessary

[…] articulation between the teachers involved in the course; construction of collective moments for socialization of the actions and responsibilities of the bodies and the university; and the articulation between all the research and extension projects that directly and indirectly develop actions with the subjects of the field and rural education. (^{UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2013}, p. 105).

The teaching degree in rural education, more than training teachers to work in these timespaces, expects these professionals to understand the importance of men and women fighting critically to change a logic that considers them to be part of the gear of a capitalist society. Social movements call for the protagonism that recognizes the importance of land for man’s life. In this sense, the licensure program proposes that the teacher have knowledge of how to act in the school management of rural schools, in teaching and in the articulation between school and social movements.

When answering about how the course thinks about the education of the rural educator, the interviewees point towards the organization by areas of knowledge, which, in the case of a full Licentiate degree in rural education, campus Goiabeiras, are the areas of languages and social and human sciences: “Our proposal for the curriculum was to work together until the third term in a joint way and, from the joint training, then, go to the specificities. That was our idea, that’s how it was thought” (Respondent 2, 2018).

By organizing the curriculum by area of knowledge, the teaching program in rural education seeks interaction and dialogue between scientific knowledge and popular knowledge, establishing relationships with peasants’ way of life. To guarantee this articulation between the different types of knowledge, ^{Souza et al. (2016)} defend the interdisciplinary organization of the curriculum, so that the theoretical-conceptual reflection can make teacher education more integrated with the life and reality of students.

So the training of this professional was thought of in many ways, understanding that the field could and can boost university, academic life. We did our best to make this path. I think it depends a lot on the students. At first, there was a lot of restriction on the student who was linked to the countryside. We cannot just shut down to whoever is from the countryside, we have to think that the interdependence of countryside and city is an understanding that we have today, building another paradigm. If we restrict, we can also exclude the opportunity for people who want to be part of this struggle. (Respondent 2, 2018).

The profile of candidates for vacancies in the course meets the criteria established by MEC based on the demands that were identified, discussed and defined jointly by the partner entities of this ministry in the process of implementing the courses. The objective here is to consolidate affirmative action with preference for teachers who already work in rural schools and need to be qualified for teaching with knowledge about the available teaching tools. In addition to these criteria, the candidate needs to take a written test that is related to the policy developed in the countryside.

Despite the criteria established for entering the course and the creation of the PPP for submission to the MEC, the group of teachers initiating the Licentiate degree proposal understood that these aspects could be modified later, along the course:

The house we want to be tidied up, we will tidy up during the process as well. We can’t think that this house will be all tidied up before we start. As we build, we will tidy up this house, it will gain new contours, it will gain new colors that had not been thought of before, and this is not negative in my opinion. This course has a lot of it, handcrafted elements, understand? It is a type of handicraft that, at first, is not known at all before practicing it, before doing it, and you will improve it as events call for new colors, new molds, new forms. (Respondent 1, 2018).

It should be noted that the degree in rural education at the university is a recent achievement and that it is built daily, it is not a ready-made and taught course, it is a course in the process of construction, which allows the discovery of new paths for teacher training. The proof of the commitment to this type of education is expressed in the various training courses offered over the years, aiming to supply a lack of specific knowledge for these professionals. So much so that, since 2010, the UFES Education Center has had the Research Group on Cultures, Partnerships and Rural Education (^{KLEIN, 2013}), in addition to others that emerged after the creation of a full degree program in rural education.

According to ^{Molina and Sá (2010}, p. 43), the “[...] The pedagogical challenge of this proposal is to create a comprehensive, coherent educational project that produces values, convictions, worldview, organizational awareness, capacity for action, full sense of being human”. In this sense, thinking about the rural educator’s training is to understand the course as a facilitator in the human construction of educators in rural contexts, which occurs in the student’s relationship with the course and with the reality in which it is inserted.

For ^{Caldart (2012)}, because it is the result of social movements that fight for land reform, rural education already contains a differential, which is the struggle for rights that meet the desires of the working class for a different world. This causes this education to be incorporated into the imagination of those who are in the countryside through a differentiated education, which can also spread to an education project for those who live in the city, around their conceptions.

Final remarks

The answers found in this study help us think that the teaching Licentiate degree in rural education has, as a pedagogical proposal, the concretization of a rural education policy as a human right and as an instrument of social development, aiming to train educators qualified to work in the management of educational processes in rural schools and to develop pedagogical actions aimed at the formation of subjects in an emancipatory and critical perspective, capable of producing confrontations for issues inherent to the reality in which they live.

The analysis of this context leads us to understand rural education as a right of peasant subjects and a duty of the State, a situation to be consolidated through various public policies, with emphasis on the initial and continuing training of teachers, for the mediation of knowledge committed to social transformation and the constitution of students who recognize the countryside as a place of culture, existence, resistance and production of life.

Such investments gain visibility on the national scene and point to several obstacles that still need to be overcome. It is understood that many difficulties have already been overcome by the organizers of the course and by the teachers who work in this program. However, many other challenges are yet to come in the face of political and social changes that are occurring in Brazilian society and that reconfigure investments in public higher education, in the training of teachers to work in rural schools, in the offer of vacancies and in the quality of teaching in these schools.

This scenario, permeated by struggles, but also resistance, reflects the importance of fruitful dialogues and interactions between the university, social movements and rural people, with a horizon of public, secular and quality education for those who deal and live in land, subjects with knowledge and rights.