Introduction

This study has elements of a field of study which is most expressed, nowadays, on the didactics of History. The strengthening of the dialogue between the epistemological knowledge of History as a fundament to learn and teach history is the strengthening of the methodological field and the pedagogical practice. In teacher education courses in Brazil and Portugal, the debates on didactic questions are done in subjects such as: Methodology of History Teaching, Didactics of History, Practice of History Teaching, Supervised Practice in History and Workshops of History Teaching. According to Maria Auxiliadora ^{Schmidt (2017)}, the didactics of History have a specific theoretical domain:

[…] which enrolls itself into the interface of investigation amongst the epistemology of History, taken as reference to the construction of categories and methodologies of analysis, and its dialogue with other sciences, located “at the crossroad of various human sciences between the ones, on one side, which deal traditionally with learning and, on the other side, the ones that constitute the basis of the knowledge to be taught”. (^{SCHMIDT, 2017}, p. 61).

What would be, in this context, the role of the Supervised Practice subject? To mediate the skills of education and History? To teach about lesson plans, teaching techniques, discipline, using the black board and Microsoft Power Point? The Supervised Practice subject has been fighting for a long time to erase such reductionist and technicist image of its field. We understand that the main characteristic of the subject would be to develop the teaching procedures based on the science of History, such as: to think History stemming from the lack of orientation in practical life; the relation between historical formation, the public and the orientation function of the practical life as something that influences the production of historical knowledge itself (^{RÜSEN, 2015}). Therefore, we thought the supervised practice as a subject of production of the historical knowledge.

The meaning of being a History teacher is closely related to the way individuals are linked to historical knowledge. For this reason, the essence of the contents in the Supervised Practice subject is to understand the production of historical knowledge stemming from the learning of the relation among past/present/future, associating science and practical life. Historical learning as a content of this subject try to find a way of teaching history in order to grant a temporal direction in times of crisis for human beings, as well as to the internalization process of organizing and giving meaning to the individual and collective temporal experiences as a way to insert the person in their experiences.

We have chosen, as the object of study, only one part of History teachers training. This does not mean we are stating that is more important than other parts in education programs. What we have looked for, when focusing our studies on the meaning of the Supervised Practice to graduation students is to understand how History teachers are being trained and which skills are engaged on the teaching practice. Many examples can be mentioned in studies dedicated to investigating the complex net composed when one thinks of the entanglement of curricula in History courses. The Supervised Practice is on the curriculum of all the education license programs in Brazil and Teaching Masters in Portugal. With the Bologna Process (2007), the curricular unity (UC) of Practice exists only in Teaching Masters, the education license lasts three years and is focused on the subject contents of the fields, and it is part of the curriculum tradition, adding a group of skills such as pedagogical and epistemological ones, from the science of reference.

The Supervised Practice, as mentioned above, is part of the curriculum or school program of History teacher education in Brazil and in Portugal. In Brazil, it is fulfilled on the last two years of the education license courses, and in Portugal, is part of the yearly curriculum from the second year of the Masters in History Teaching. It is meaningful to point that both institutions were chosen for they develop remarkable research on History teaching and, consequently, on the training of History teachers.

In Brazil, license courses train teachers on graduation level, and the courses, overall, last four years, under the resolutions from the Ministry of Education (MEC), according to the National Education Council (CNE). In Portugal, teacher training happens only in post-graduation programs, called Masters in Teaching, lasting two years, instituted through the implementation of the decree-law number 43/2007, 22^ndof February, from the Bologna Treaty, teacher education is exclusive from post-graduation programs, named Masters in Teaching, lasting two years.

During the research⁴, two groups of students were followed, one from the History license course – State University of Londrina (UEL), enrolled in the third year on 2019, and fulfilling the Supervised Practice, under the Resolutions 01 and 02 from CNE/CP, 2002⁵, and students from the Masters in History Teaching at University of Minho (UMinho). From this group, we have monitored both students from the second semester, who were editing their pedagogical implementation projects from the subject called Methodology of History Teaching II, and students from the fourth semester, who were carrying out their Professional Practice. At Portuguese universities, the application of the implementation project is guided by the supervisor teacher from the post-graduation course and by the teacher from primary or secondary education at the school where the implementation is happening, and this teacher is called cooperating teacher.

In Brazil, the CNP/CP Resolution number 2 from 2002 established the length and the hourly load of the license courses, defining that the Supervised Practice has 400 hours to be fulfilled starting from the course’s second half (third and fourth years), 200 hours per year, divided into observation, participation and teaching. In the History course at UEL, practice orientation happens in a direct way⁶, and the student is guided by the supervisor teacher inside the basic education facilities where the practices are carried out.

The work proposal presented by the trainees must fulfill the program content from the teaching plan provided by the basic education teacher from the school where the practice is being carried out. The students from the History course follow, mostly, the theoretical foundation of History Education, and they must, after observing and participating from lessons of the class they are going to teach, come up with a content unity based on the classroom-workshop perspective (^{BARCA, 2004}). This material must contain basic introductory texts and development activities with debates on historical sources.

Class-Workshop (^{BARCA, 2004}) has a method of analyzing the reality through the principles of History, developing historical thinking starting from the use of various sources. The educational paradigm is focused on social constructivism, developed on the Class-Workshop, and proposes that the students should be seen as agents of their own knowledge, and “[…] the classroom activities, diverse and intellectually challenging” (^{BARCA, 2004}, p. 132). Class-Workshop is characterized by exploration and analysis of the students’ previous ideas and the process of forming concepts in class, located in a constructivist environment (^{BARCA, 2004}).

Masters in History Teacher at University of Minho (Portugal) operates since 2015, and it was instituted by decree-law number 79/2014. The course can be attended by anyone who has a degree in History or related areas with 120 credits in History (for example, Archeology, Art History), and its purpose is to educate teachers for the Third Cycle of Basic Education and Secondary Education. In the first year of the course, the subjects called Methodology of History Teaching I (first semester) and Methodology of History Teaching II (second semester) intend to develop a debate about the educational challenges and about the official curricular orientations on History in basic and secondary education, supported by the theoretical and empirical contribution of the investigation in History Education. They also seek to promote learning acquisition of knowledge and skills that allow a personal reflection about moments from the teaching-learning process develop inside the classroom and value the practices of History teaching and learning in non-formal contexts such as museums, sites. On all those contexts, there are knowledge and competences attached to the investigation field of History Education.

On second year, on the subject Classes Observation and Project Design (1st semester), included in the curricular unity (UC) of Practice, the master’s student must elaborate a Project of Supervised Pedagogical Intervention (PIPS), which will be implemented during the Professional Practice. Its main purpose is investigation, education and teaching, which demands a certain amount of control over the procedures to build and implement the instruments of data collection on the contexts of intervention and the pedagogical practices developed, and the analysis and reflection on the evidences found.

To Vieira et al (2013, p. 2644):

The model intends to grant the pedagogical practice a transforming and emancipating nature, and we can say it approaches the creation of a “third space” (ZEICHNER, 2010), one of multidisciplinary and theoretical-practical nature, where future educators and teachers must educate researching and research educating, and where the educative action involves the confluence of disciplinary and educational, experiential and theoretical, substantive and procedural knowledges. That way, the trainee is understood as a critical consumer and creative producer of the knowledge, and the pedagogical supervision must lay on the principles of critical inquiry, critical intervention, democratization, participation and emancipation, supporting the development of intervention plans, which are conceived referring to a democratic vision of school education.

Therefore, the Project of Supervised Pedagogical Intervention (PIPS) represents a model that values the investigation as the educational focus, seek to train a History teacher who investigates and helps to create an investigative profile on their students from basic education, helping to develop “conditions to develop a praxeological epistemology to promote thoughtful professional competences”, as noted by Flávia ^{Vieira et al. (2013}, p. 2654).

Design of the study (theoretical and methodological framework)

The steps of our research were the observation of orientation meetings between practice supervisors, university students responsible to follow the work carried out on the basic education institutions both in Brazil and Portugal and trainees, supervisors and basic education teachers or cooperating teachers, as they are called in Portugal, observation of classes taught by license History students from UEL and master’s students of History Teaching from UMinho, and also guidance to develop the practice on both institutions, besides the application of surveys to the future teachers. These research steps were important to deepen the knowledge about the role of Supervised Practice or Professional Practice on the education of History teachers.

About Supervised Practice, ^{Ramos and Cainelli (2009}, p. 157) say:

It’s the moment when the graduation students are put before the structures and codes that will guide their professional statute, whether these are disciplinary, scholar or bureaucratic codes. The situations lived by the teachers in training during practice are the only reference of a theoretical/practical relation during the History course.

The Supervised Practice analyzed here, developed at State University of Londrina, is linked to an investigative principle, and that means thinking the teaching practice stemming from the research on History teaching, which incorporates the concern to discover the many senses children, young people and adults build about History.

The study was carried out on the perspective of History Education, which intends to understand how historical thinking is constituted on individuals. Portuguese historian Isabel ^{Barca (2007)} defines the field of investigation called History Education as researches where the objectives would be the principles, sources, typologies and strategies of historical learning, seeking the systematic knowledge of the ideas and the development of historical thinking in students and teachers. The theoretical framework of these investigations is the nature of the historical knowledge, and its objective is to develop the historical thinking. ^{Barca (2007)} thinks that the investigations on History Education are anchored in several fields, such as Epistemology of History, cognition and Methodology of Investigation on Social Sciences.

Thereby, Isabel ^{Barca (2007}, p. 6) argues, when referring to History Education as a field of research:

History education is a field of investigation that assumes and does not authorize that, in History, each and every past interpretation is valid: the commitment to the available sources and the consistency with the context constitute principles in which the validation of a historical ‘conclusion’ is based (…). Mobilizing such principles will help to distinguish among discourses about the past – speculative, historical or common sense. Young people, such as adults, need to exercise these competences to select and evaluate information based on rational criteria, without forgetting the human sense of life. (^{BARCA, 2007}, p. 06).

The empirical data collected by the project was analyzed methodologically, based on the study carried out by Marilia Gago on the article Being a history teacher in the color pallet of a complex professionalism, published by the Ibero-American Magazine of History Education in 2018, which presents conceptions about the teacher’s professional knowledge and its designations, such as flexible professionalism, practical professionalism, extensible professionalism and complex professionalism (^{GAGO, 2018}).

One of the groups participating on the research is composed by nineteen students from the third year of graduation from the license course of History at State University of Londrina/Brazil, and they participated on the Pedagogical Residency Program⁷ as scholarship holders and carried out their pedagogical practice with classes from elementary school II (sixth to ninth years) on public schools in Londrina. The other group was composed by eight students from the master’s in history Teaching at Uminho/Portugal and carried out their practices on classes from the third cycle of Basic Education on public schools, in Braga.

To understand the Supervised Practice inside History teacher’s education, we applied a survey composed by ten questions to the eight students enrolled on the second semester of second year of the master’s in History Teaching at UMinho/Portugal, at the end of their practices, and to nineteen students from the third year on the license course of History at UEL, on second semester and beginning the practice. Among the questions, three of them intended to understand the meaning of being a History teacher to the people interviewed and the other seven were specifically about the experience during the supervised practice.

Data analysis

Data was collected through the survey, analyzed, and categorized. Some categories and descriptors were based on researches already performed, for example the category management professionalism, discussed by professor Marilia ^{Gago (2018}, p. 111):

Management professionalism has as its culture of origin an agenda of performance and accountability, defending that, if there is an efficient administration, everything is settled. Therefore, in this conceptual framework, the teaching profession lays on bureaucracy, justified by ideas of decentralization, and by practices evaluated regarding measurable results, quantified and presented, often, in rankings of performance. Teachers on this professional framework answer to external and predetermined goals and document in details their professional action.

And regarding the category named democratic professionalism:

Democratic professionalism is characterized by an activist identity, sharing values and a culture of equity and social justice on a development logic. Teachers build alliances with each other and act in a cooperative and mutual way, and the practice communities shape the collective professional identity. Therefore, many narratives are shared, discussed and contested, promoting the debate of policy and practice. Teacher’s responsibility is understood in a broad way and feels like a catalyst of a fairer society. Thus, this teacher has a transformative attitude regarding the future, engaging in research and promoting collaborative classroom where democratic experiences are allowed. (^{GAGO, 2018}, p. 113).

The survey we applied to both groups of interns consisted of ten questions, three connected to the impressions about being a History teacher and about the subject, and the other seven where related directly with the experience of the Supervised Practice. Here, we analyzed the answers to the following questions: How do you describe a good History teacher? Discuss about the relationship with the teacher of the class you carried out your practice and What was your biggest difficulty in the execution of your intervention project? Why? Our intention was to analyze the meaning of being a History teacher for both groups.

To analyze the answers given to the question How do you describe a good History teacher? (Table 1), we based on the categories proposed by ^{Gago (2018)}. On the category management professionalism, there are six interviewees from UEL and five from UMinho, saying that the good teacher is the one available to motivate, help, identify and meet the students’ needs, seeing the teacher as the one who manages the class, fulfilling the demands imposed to them – most of the times, the imposition is external, with protocols, most of the times created by the state, of how the teachers should fulfill their part in classroom, without identifying if they meet demands presented by their students.

On the category democratic professionalism, the “teacher’s responsibilities are amplified in order to build a fairer and more democratic society through investigation and innovation” (^{GAGO, 2018}, p. 111). Therefore, the good teacher must have a great knowledge on the History teaching area and be a researcher with great didactics. On this category, there are thirteen students from UEL and three from University of Minho.

Both categories were also evidenced when we analyzed the answers to the question about the relation with the teacher from the class where the intervention was carried out (Table 2). 47,37% of UEL students answered that the good relationship happened because the class teacher showed great knowledge about the teaching area (History), guiding the interns about the pedagogical questions on teaching and learning during the execution of the practice, fitting on the category Class teacher with scientific knowledge and democratic didactic-professionalism, and the teacher has a great knowledge about the teaching area (History), guiding the interns about the pedagogical questions on teaching and learning during the execution of the practice. Seven students from UMinho considered that the good relationship with the cooperative teacher happened because they received pedagogical aid during the practice and the affectivity existing between the cooperative teacher and the trainee.

The future teachers were asked about the biggest difficulty they had on the development of their intervention proposal at the schools (Table 3), and 89,47% of UEL students had their answers categorized as Pedagogical difficulties: development of material, and the descriptor points out that the difficulty dwells on creating didactic material to develop the class-workshop, they consider the production to be laborious and difficult to contemplate the theoretical-methodological model. The struggle presented by the trainee teachers from State University of Londrina can be characterized inside the perspective presented and criticized by Isabel ^{Barca (2004)} regarding the conference class and the colloquium class. On the trainees’ opinion, a class designed inside the didactic spectrum of the expository class does not present the struggles of a class-workshop, especially regarding the choice of sources to develop the didactic action. To think the historical didactics beyond the exposition of substantive contents is a great challenge for the trainee teachers from the History course at State University of Londrina.

Regarding this item, two trainee teachers from UMinho said that was it their biggest struggle, and three are in the category Pedagogical difficulties: related to students, describing how their biggest difficulties are related to the students, because they do the activities in a careless way, revealing lack of interest. Here, we can see that the students from basic education are blamed for the difficulties presented by the trainee teachers. On the trainee’s opinion, it is up to the students to be the protagonists of their own learning, taking, from the teacher, the responsibility to act, to propose, revealing, still, a traditional view about teaching and learning.

When asked about their biggest facility during the execution of the intervention project (Table 4), the answers were the following: thirteen students from UEL answered inside the cathegory Pedagogical facility: methodological – classes observation, the trainees talk about the facility, on methodological level, to observe the classes, which helps on the other steps. That information clarifies about their biggest difficulty, because the trainees observe the class teachers and try to identify things that could help them to design their classes. Another data that contributes to thinking about the struggle mentioned above is that four scholarship students are in the category Pedagogical facility: methodological and class presentation, in other words, they talk about the facility on a methodological level, in the expositive part of the class-workshop, but inside the proposal of the class-workshop, this is not the most significant part for learning.

There were five answers from UMinho’s students that fit in the category Pedagogical facilities: related to students, and the descriptors point how the students cooperated, participated, and fulfilled the responsibilities presented to them, easing the development of the class. Here, the success regarding the execution of the project, the responsibility of learning is attributed to the students, and the trainee teachers recognizes themselves as facilitators and monitors of the student’s learning. Two Portuguese trainee teachers emphasized the Pedagogical facility: methodological and material design, saying that it was easy for them, on a methodological level, to identify the students’ previous ideas and to develop materials, and this category was not pointed out by any Brazilian graduate students.

When asked if the experience of the project implementation fulfilled their expectations, five Portuguese trainee teachers answered affirmatively, and four of the answers were categorized as positive process of teaching and learning: success assigned to the students, because they consider that their expectations were met by the way students corresponded positively during the process of teaching and learning, and this confirms the positioning already seen in other answers. There is an implication on the guidance of the class’s pedagogical act: it is placed on the student, not on the teacher. Two of the interviewees answered that their expectations were frustrated because of the students’ bad behavior, and this reinforces the tendency described above.

Twelve of the Brazilian interviewees answered that their expectations were frustrated. Two of them said it was because the students misbehaved, and did not fulfill they scholar duties, and the other ten were categorized as jeopardized expectations: little practice time, insufficient relationship with the class teacher, lack of orientation, a lot of extracurricular activities, in which the trainees consider that the difficulties and the failed expectations were related to the little time they had to develop the practice, few orientations, conflictive relationship with the class teacher, excess extracurricular activities. Expectations were met by seven trainees, divided into three categories: three positive process of teaching and learning: success assigned to the students, three consistent theoretical-methodological orientations and one process of teaching and learning achieved, and their respective descriptors were: the trainee teacher considers that their expectations were corresponded by the way students responded positively during the teaching-learning process, the trainee teachers consider that the success they obtained on the implementation of the intervention project was due to the good orientation they received from the supervisors and the trainee teacher consider that their expectations were met because they could put into practice the knowledge they acquired during their academic education.

Considerations

^{Gago (2018)} highlights that management professionalism is the most common type of professional scenario among the teachers, according to research “Latin-American Network of Studies about Teaching Work (REDESTRADO) and Teachers Exercising Leadership – TEL, in Portugal” (p. 112). During our research, it was possible to notice that five answers from UMinho students point to that direction, because they consider a good teacher the professional who is available to help and motivate, identifying and meeting the students’ needs. Teacher must know how to manage the class in an efficient way, responding to political imperatives imposed by the school’s exterior, […] indicating a teacher who controls the process (^{GAGO, 2018}, p. 111). Only 37,5% claim that a good teacher must have a good scientific and didactic knowledge, fitting on democratic professionalism.

In Brazil, students step back from this picture, and thirteen students consider that a good History teacher must have a good scientific knowledge on the teaching area (History), being a researcher and also having good didactics. The teacher must fit into the constructivist paradigm, leading the students to learn how to think, question, research, relate, in other words, promote historical competences on students. This data catches our attention, even when the class points out a great struggle to put the class-workshop’s theoretical-methodological indications intro practice, and their ideal teacher is close to the professional who develops this kind of class.

We must consider a significant point when thinking about teacher’s initial education: the distancing from the act of being a teacher when applying the intervention project. When blaming the students for the success and failure of a class, the trainee teacher imposes on the students a total control of the pedagogic act going on inside a classroom. Learning to be a History teacher means understanding clearly why History is taught, and this means understanding that the authority of knowledge and argumentation is what distinguishes it from the common sense, and teaching about the past is not an ability, but knowledge you can share with others, and it is not possible to pass the responsibility of the learning process to another.

The students’ expectations towards the development of the Supervised Practice indicate that they consider it to be an important moment of learning, in all its steps, including the initial part when they observe the class teacher, or cooperative, in the Portuguese case, intending to acquire experiences that could help them during the graduation and, after that, in their professional activities, indicating that we must pay attention to teachers receiving trainees, so they can be aware of their importance and meaning.