Introduction

Thinking of the Supervised Internship in the context of teaching degrees, in order to overcome the teacher training models aligned with technical rationality (Diniz-Pereira, ²⁰¹¹), is a challenge that permeates the academic, school, social, and political fields. Works such as the one by Pimenta and Lima (²⁰⁰⁶) reflects and proposes ways to develop an internship aligned with the critical perspective of teacher education and indicates the need to overcome the disarticulation between theory and practice that remains in some conceptions of internship developed, or reproduced, in the shadow of reflection. Thus, these authors indicate the internship as a theoretical activity that instrumentalizes the teaching praxis.

The concept of praxis is understood from the Marxist conceptualization that understands it as a theoretical-practical attitude of individuals in the transformation of nature and society, that is, an attitude in which knowledge and interpretation of the world are transcended and one acts in its transformation (Pimenta, ²⁰¹²). In this way, praxis in the Marxist conception is about the association of objectivity and subjectivity of human activity, about the thought and the transforming action on reality, inseparably. Within this perspective, Pimenta and Lima (²⁰⁰⁶) conceive of education as a social praxis, in which theoretical and practical activities are inseparable. The authors state that “the curricular activity internship is a theoretical activity of knowledge, foundation, dialogue and intervention in the reality, which is an object of praxis” (Pimenta & Lima, ²⁰⁰⁶, p. 14, our translation). They also point out that the internship can be developed as an investigative attitude involving reflection and action in the school life of teachers, students, and society, that is, they consider the internship as research, and the research in the internship as a way for practice and theory to be articulated in the teacher training and internship.

The investigative internship, or as research, assumes different perspectives of contribution in the initial teacher education, such as the one explored by Rabelo and Abib (²⁰¹⁸), in which, based on the research developed in the supervised internship process, interns can overcome their previous conceptions about teaching and learning. In this work, the authors identify the change in the intern’s view, from teaching as content transmission to a conception of the teaching activity permeated by the production of knowledge and constant reflection on students’ teaching and learning. Works in such a perspective, which contribute to the analysis of distinct possibilities and dimensions of an investigative internship, are of inestimable relevance for the understanding and development of the internship as a field of knowledge (Pimenta & Lima, ²⁰⁰⁶).

In this essay^[1] , we will focus on the following analytical bias: overcoming the disarticulation between theory and practice through praxis, based on an organizational proposal for the Supervised Internship with an investigative bias.

Given the above, some questions and reflections are necessary: when proposing an Investigative Supervised Internship (ISI), which research concept are we talking about? Is there a difference between proposing a research activity during the internship and an internship intrinsically organized as research? How do the relations between theory and practice appear and how could possible disarticulations be overcome in this type of proposal? What is the role of the elementary school in this process?

Such questions will be structuring in this essay. From them, we will discuss the need for a research conception that permeates the collaborative dimension and for partnership between institutions and subjects so that, effectively, theory and practice are inseparable during the training process provided by the supervised internship, more specifically an ISI. Furthermore, based on the structuring elements of this essay, we propose guidelines for an ISI in line with a critical perspective of teacher education. Therefore, we use the principles of dialogicity and problematization as discussed in Freire (¹⁹⁸⁷) and systematized in a dynamic widespread in the field of Science Education, which are the Three Pedagogical Moments (Delizoicov et al., ²⁰⁰⁹; Muenchen & Delizoicov, ²⁰¹²), more specifically in the configuration that assumes this dynamic when used as a curricular structure: Study of Reality, Knowledge Organization, and Knowledge Application.

In this proposal, we organized, for each of the pedagogical moments, general guidelines for the activities of the teaching internship assumed as intrinsically investigative in a perspective that is close to the concept of participatory research inspired by the ideas of Freire (¹⁹⁸⁷). In the Study of Reality, we propose a joint action with the school community to recognize and produce data about the reality where the ISI will take place. In Knowledge Organization, the research problems on which the interns will deepen their investigation are defined in line with the collective and collaborative data undertaken in the first stage and the training purposes and specific needs of the school and university institutions. In Knowledge Application, the research and performance activities with the school community, collectively planned in the previous stages, are developed through an intrinsic process of empirical data production, analysis, reflection, and action permeated by theory.

Developed in this perspective, the ISI represents a critical formative possibility that fosters praxis in the activity of individuals when acting in reality, as well as in promoting horizontality between school and university, hegemonically polarized as to the production of knowledge.

Investigative Supervised Internship: what notion of research are we talking about?

Take by definition an Investigative Supervised Internship (ISI), or Internship as Research, as something designed, organized, and intrinsically developed in an investigation concept aligned with the training needs of the interns. Thus, in this conception of internship, the investigative movement structures the learning of teaching in the school context by future teachers. In this essay, we take as different from this conception the proposal of an internship with research. In the latter, implicitly, teaching activities and research itself can be taken as distinct dimensions during the training process. In this case, the investigative action can assume the character of an isolated activity in the Supervised Internship program.

Between the proposal of an ISI and an Internship with Research, we defend the first, because we understand that, in it, the possibilities of articulation between practice and theory become more relevant when thinking about critical training models.

The idea of ​​research in teaching is not new “and is rooted in the very constitution of the teaching profession” (Garcia, ²⁰¹², p. 239, our translation), but what notion of research are we talking about? The conception of research is not homogeneous, but it fits the models according to interpretive biases, which, in turn, are permeated by elements from the historical, social, and political context (Garcia, ²⁰¹²). The relationship between research and teaching is also linked to the idea that one has of the very nature of teaching and research practice, being, in the end, illuminated by epistemological understandings or misunderstandings from the most diverse roots. Without intending to exhaust the countless research possibilities and perspectives that have permeated investigations in the educational field, it is worth reflecting on what kind of rationality, training model, and conception of education is congruent with research carried out in an investigative internship. In this essay, we do so by contrasting the notions imbricated in the conceptions of technical rationality with the notions that characterize critical rationality in teacher education (Diniz-Pereira, ²⁰¹¹).

According to Diniz-Pereira (²⁰¹¹), the beginning of the movement of teachers-researchers took place from the application of research designed by external subjects to the context of the teachers’ performance, more specifically, the application of research carried out by universities. Although this beginning is not necessarily linked to the supervised internship, one can reflect on the concept behind this movement that dialogues with the idea of a teacher who reproduces knowledge, even being in “contact” with the research, in a perspective aligned with the technical rationality of education.

Research on technical models of teacher education - related to models of technical rationality - is imbricated with a positivist notion of science and, concerning education and teaching, aims at the instrumentalization of teachers for the application of techniques created in the light of theory in “given realities”, in which these professionals find themselves. This implies the conception of education as applied science and the neutrality of the researcher who acts free of values ​​on the investigated object (Diniz-Pereira, ²⁰¹¹). In this perspective, the school, at best, is a static object, the target of an investigation, and, at other times, it is configured as a laboratory for the application of ready-made techniques in search of predictable results. Theory determines the instruments and actions that must be implemented in practice. Given this conception of research, we ask a question: is it in this direction that one wants to go, with teacher training structured in investigative processes?

In opposition to the models of technical rationality, there are critical models of teacher education - associated with critical rationality - that see education as a socio-political and historically located activity. From this perspective, research is carried out in and for education, and no longer about it; the teacher is conceived as a critical and problematizing agent of situations that involve educational practice, the understanding of education and the socio-political structures that structure the pedagogical action, producing knowledge and transforming reality. According to Diniz-Pereira (²⁰¹¹), despite the contributions of John Dewey and Piaget to the collection of problems, it is from the contributions of Paulo Freire that the conception acquires a politicized bias. It is in line with this perspective that we direct our reflection.

As a way of overcoming the technical conception of teacher education and, therefore, positivist of research, Rabelo and Abib (²⁰¹⁸) highlight the need for critical reflection in the training process, through which interns can reflect on their previous conceptions about teaching and learning. Agreeing with the indispensability of critical analysis, we add that analytical criticality should not be limited to the subjects’ initial conceptions, but also encompass the context of practice, the school context, and the cultural and socio-political dimensions involved. In this way, we move from a reflexive teacher conception to that of a critical-reflective teacher (Pimenta & Lima, ²⁰⁰⁶), in line with the critical models of teacher education.

Some possibilities seem promising to support this perspective during the ISI, among which we highlight participatory research, which, according to Diniz-Pereira (²⁰¹¹), consists of an action-research model developed in Latin America and inspired by the ideas of Paulo Freire. Research of this nature articulates the macro and micro context in the problems faced, understanding the social issues linked to the educational practice - which is historically located - and assuming a perspective that does not take the research subjects as objects, since the relationship is made through dialogue and to produce critical knowledge to transform the reality with the other (Diniz-Pereira, ²⁰¹¹).

Participatory research is a research design that seems to be promising for an ISI. Once aligned with critical rationality, its object of study transcends the dimension of the teaching practice, articulating itself to the social contexts and the school community. Furthermore, it is a research concept that seeks to break with the dichotomy in the relationship between the investigating subject and the research object, a relationship that, as we will discuss, may be related to the understanding of theory and practice as distinct and disjointed dimensions in the investigative process of the ISI.

How are the relations between theory and practice designed in the ISI? Theory, practice and implicit disarticulation in relationships

Assuming that the ISI can be a way to overcome the disarticulation between theory and practice in teacher education, we defend that this overcoming is subordinated to the understanding of research and the very conception of education that is defended, since in the positivist perspective, in line with the technical rationality of training, for example, theory and practice are dissociated, corroborating the idea of dissociability in training and teaching.

We will now focus on a specific aspect of how the disarticulation of theory and practice can remain and be strengthened even in the process of an ISI based on the verticalization of relations between school and university.

Historically, the internship has been related to the practical moment of the training courses, even in teaching degrees (Pimenta & Lima, ²⁰⁰⁶; López & Nardi, ²⁰¹⁷). Thus, the practice would be in opposition to theory - one does not discuss or create theory, there is only its application in the context of practice. The historical hegemony of such is aligned with a conception of the internship as an imitation of models or technical instrumentalization (Pimenta & Lima, ²⁰⁰⁶). The idea of ​​teaching as a transmission of knowledge and the teacher as a reproducer of scientific knowledge prevails in these perspectives as well as the countermovements that end up falling into an excessive appreciation of the practice. Furthermore, universities are taken as the true and only producers of knowledge, they are the genesis of theories, and basic schools and their subjects are reproducers of this knowledge or research objects (Garcia, ²⁰¹²). The disarticulation between theory and practice extends and materializes in the understanding of a university that produces knowledge and a school where practice occurs.

Let us focus on the risk of naturalization of this controversial understanding that takes place in the relationship between these two institutions and their subjects. Such naturalization is dangerous because of the historical hegemony and it takes root in individuals more or less (un)consciously. What we mean is that if this relationship is not studied and developed with constant criticism and reflection, there is a risk of a superficial overcoming of the view that insists on the thesis that theory and practice do not mix. Even in an ISI that aims to overcome technical training and, for this, understands research from a perspective opposite to that positivist, the disarticulation rooted in relationships can act as a background.

Within this perspective, it is necessary to constantly ask oneself: “how is the school being considered in the ISI?”. If the school does not participate actively and collaboratively in the process, is it not a more than concrete possibility for it to be just an object on which the university acts? Wouldn’t it be an internship where the teacher in training learns to research, but in a research conception that objectifies (turn into an object) the subject according to vertical interests and visions? An ISI that does not assume a perspective of partnership and collaboration with the school, would be training someone who - as teacher Tânia Maria Figueiredo Garcia puts it in her Round Table presentation entitled “Research with/about/in the school and the researcher teacher: mediations since the internship”, promoted by the Center for Articulation of Teaching degrees of the Federal University of Paraná (Ceali UFPR, ²⁰²⁰) - research “the school, in the school, with the school or for the school”?

The non-horizontalization of the relationship between university and school is a way to support the separation of theory and practice in the training of future teachers, which is why we defend research models that encourage participation and collaboration between subjects and institutions in the investigative action.

What is the role of the elementary school in this process? Institutions, their subjects, and knowledge

The partnership relationships between school and university are an emerging theme in the field of research in education and transit between different interpretations and proposals, covering different interests. Foerste and Lüdke (²⁰⁰³), for example, indicate three different forms of partnership: directed^[2] , in which schools and their professionals appear as a resource to be used in initial teacher training, in projects that are designed and conducted solely by the university in harmony with a perspective of technical training; the official partnership, in which tasks are previously defined by the government and distributed among the participating institutions, that is, through decrees; and finally, the collaborative partnership, which creates conditions for the negotiation of common goals and specific interests of both the school and the university.

The sense of partnership adopted in this essay is closest to what Foerste and Lüdke (²⁰⁰³) present as a collaborative partnership. In this sense, partnership and collaboration are part of the ideas defended here, as they unfold in a more horizontal relationship in the training processes that involve the school and the university. Similar to Cyrino and Souza Neto (²⁰¹⁷), it is understood that partnership means teamwork, common values, joint decision-making, besides the clear definition of roles and responsibilities.

Within this perspective, it is necessary to recognize the formative role, although not institutionalized, of the supervising teacher^[3] of the basic school in this internship process. As well as Pagliarin and Silva (²⁰¹⁹), we understand that the supervising teacher of the elementary school also acts as a trainer in the internship process, however, transcending the dimensions of content, encouragement, and interaction, listed by these authors based on Illeris (²⁰¹³).

For Galindo (²⁰¹⁴), one of the aspects necessary for the technical rationality of training to be overcome is to recognize the school as a training space. If the school is a formative space, it must have a clear role in the initial teacher education. In the same way, recognizing that knowledge is also produced at school, moves towards overcoming this perspective and provides important elements so that knowledge can be produced with the school, at the school, and for the school, and not about the school.

Similar to Cyrino and Souza Neto (²⁰¹⁷), we defend that, for the internship process to be meaningful and towards an ISI that supports the overcoming of the dissociated theory and practice view, a horizontal relationship between university and school is essential, without, however, confusing or unifying the role of both.

The elementary school and the university have different roles and responsibilities that must be considered in the internship process. While the university is concerned with the training of future teachers and produces long-term knowledge, the school faces issues related to teaching and learning that demand knowledge, solutions, or actions, in some cases, immediate, as they emerge from the needs in the exercise of the teaching profession (Galindo, ²⁰¹⁴).

In order to consider each institution and its subjects, with their own specificities and demands, partnership and collaboration take place in an environment of dialogue, of horizontalization in power relations concerning knowledge, understanding that university and school can produce, signify, and re-signify theory in practice that is done with reality, while it also undergoes a process of resignification.

According to Garcia (²⁰¹²), research from a collaborative or cooperative perspective enables the conception of the university as a producer of knowledge and also includes subjects from elementary school who, in another view, are considered unqualified for the research and knowledge production activity. It is not about mischaracterizing the formative role or the role of production of knowledge of the university in the field of education, on the contrary, it is about strengthening this role in the relationship it establishes with the basic school.

How can possible dichotomies be overcome in this type of proposal? Dialoguing and problematizing the world in the collaborative construction of knowledge

So far, we have supported the defense of an organic relationship between theory and practice, essentially in the initial training of teachers in the context of an ISI. The investigative internship does not necessarily guarantee articulation between theory and practice, and an aspect that can contribute to maintaining the idea of separation and even strengthening it is the verticalization of the relationship between institutions and subjects involved. So, how could an ISI be organized in order to promote horizontality in relationships, while still being in tune with the critical perspective of teacher education?

Paulo Freire, thinker renowned for his contributions in the educational field, defends an education in a critical-liberating perspective, where men and women are encouraged to recognize themselves in the ontological and historical vocation of “being more” (Freire, ¹⁹⁸⁷, p. 27). For him, the participation of the subjects involved in educational processes is fundamental (Oliveira, ²⁰¹⁷). A non-passive participation, not supporting an imposed act, that is, the subject with which the educational act will be developed - teaching and learning - should not be merely a depository of information, which would configure the practice of “banking education” (Freire, ¹⁹⁸⁷, p. 37). The active participation of subjects in teaching and learning, in a movement that opposes banking education and moves towards liberating education - as characterized by Freire (¹⁹⁸⁷) - implies, along with other principles defended by him, in a horizontalized relationship between who teaches and who learns. The horizontality is strengthened and is sustained by the dialogic posture that implies intercommunication, the authentic thinking of the educator and the student, mediated by the world. Therefore, Freire (¹⁹⁸⁷, pp. 41-42, our translation) highlights that:

[...] the thought of that cannot be a thought for those nor imposed on those. Hence, it should not be thought in isolation, in the ivory tower, but in and through communication, around, let us repeat of a reality. And, if thinking only like this makes sense, if it has its generative source in the action on the world, which mediates consciences in communication, it will not be possible to superimpose men on men.

Thus, deverticalizing the relationship between educator and student is moving towards overcoming an education rooted in a technical perspective. Problematization and dialogicity are some of the principles defended by Paulo Freire (Lambach et al., ²⁰¹⁸), principles that corroborate the idea of horizontality in the relationships in educational processes, because “in the Freirean dialogic theory, the subjects meet to know and transform the world in collaboration” (Oliveira, ²⁰¹⁷, p. 232, our translation). If we agree that research is an act of knowing and learning to know and, therefore, it is formative, we must think about the relationships between subjects and institutions as they know, learn and transform.

Even if, initially, Paulo Freire’s works did not explicitly deal with teacher education, they carry a conception of education consistent with that defended in this essay, offering us elements to think about the ISI - an educational act when thinking about the formation of teachers - in a manner also consistent with these same principles. The problematization and dialogicity in the Freirean perspective can provide interesting guides if we expect a critical formation and a more horizontal relationship between school, university, and their individuals during an ISI.

Sales (²⁰¹⁴), dealing with teacher education from the Freirean perspective, draws attention to the risk that these concepts and principles become discourse without materialization or changes in the context of the action of students and teachers. Therefore, she states that it is important that future teachers experience these principles during training so that it can be more fruitful in the perspective of education that has been defended in this essay. According to the author, developing experiences in this perspective during initial training is also characterized as a challenge for trainers. Therefore, it is much more in order to encourage reflection than to find a solution that we will seek to systematize guidelines for the organization of an ISI that seeks consonance with these principles in the initial teacher education.

As previously discussed, a critical education aimed at overcoming the idea of dissociation between theory and practice must be coherent with a notion of research that transcends empiricist methods and at the same time promotes a more horizontal relationship between school and university - two institutions essential in the process - and even among advising teacher, supervising teacher, interns, students and, why not, the school community.

We will present a proposal for the organization of an ISI, based on Freire’s principles systematized by the dynamics of the Three Pedagogical Moments (3PM) as structuring of the curricula, a configuration that incorporates the foundations of the investigative process proposed by Freire (¹⁹⁸⁷) for working with the generator themes (Delizoicov et al., ²⁰⁰⁹; Muenchen & Delizoicov, ²⁰¹²).

Freirean principles and the 3PM: articulating possibilities for a transforming ISI

The didactic-pedagogical dynamics of the 3PM arises in the context of the transposition of Freirean principles to formal education, being initially proposed by Demétrio Delizoicov in his master’s dissertation (Muenchen, ²⁰¹⁰). Based on the perspective of the thematic approach (Delizoicov et al., ²⁰⁰⁹), such dynamic is widespread in the area of ​​Science Education as an organizer of activities in the classroom and consists of three distinct moments: the Initial Problematization, in which are presented and problematized with the students’ real situations that they know and witness; the Knowledge Organization, which includes the systematic approach to the knowledge needed to understand the themes and initial situations; and, finally, the Application of Knowledge, when the knowledge that has been built is systematically approached to understand the initial situations and others that can be understood with that same knowledge.

Without going into the specifics and possible contributions of the 3PM in the organization of didactic-pedagogical activities, it is important to clarify that this dynamic transcends methodological issues and can be used in different contexts, standing out as an organizer of teaching programs and structuring curriculum. For example, the 3PM dynamic was used to structure programs and curricula in projects in which its proponents were involved, such as in the projects “Teaching Science based on Community Problems” - which took place from 1984 in Rio Grande do North - and “Interdisciplinarity via Generator Theme” - developed in the city of São Paulo, between 1989 and 1992, when Paulo Freire was secretary of education in that capital (Muenchen, ²⁰¹⁰). It is from the 3PM as a curricular structure that we intend to explore a proposition for the ISI field.

Due to its origin in the transposition of Paulo Freire’s conception to formal education and the context of its proposition, the 3PM incorporate the principles of dialogicity and problematization of that author, especially if developed on a dialogical basis and from the reality of individuals (Muenchen, ²⁰¹⁰; Giacomini, ²⁰¹⁴). When used as a curriculum structure, the 3PM assume the following configuration:

Reality Study (RS): The school community together with a support team investigates the most significant cultural, political, and social situations in the local reality of the school, organizing a set of preliminary information. This information is categorized - or coded - in a collective and interdisciplinary process, seeking a comprehensive view of reality. From a consensus on the significant situations, a generating theme that will guide the construction of the curriculum is defined.

Knowledge Organization (KO): Based on the data built in the RS and collective work, the teachers of each discipline define the generating questions, which, in turn, should guide the specific contents to be taught by subject area.

Knowledge Application (KA): The third and last pedagogical moment in the construction of the curriculum, is both the implementation of programmed activities in the classroom and the evaluation of the program itself, where teachers plan evaluative activities consistent with the construction of knowledge during the development of activities in the classroom (Muenchen, ²⁰¹⁰; Muenchen & Delizoicov, ²⁰¹²).

The particularity of these moments for the proposition that we seek to build for the ISI is the inclusion of an essentially collaborative investigation and coherent with critical teacher education, in addition to enabling collaboration between institutions and subjects to occur mediated by the concrete reality that surrounds them. Based on critical reflection on this reality, theory and practice are articulated, remade, and transformed in the action of subjects and in the deverticalized relationship between institutions.

This idea converges to the conception of praxis in the formative context (Pimenta & Lima, ²⁰⁰⁶) in agreement with the proposition of Freire (¹⁹⁸⁷), who places praxis as the essence to overcome the oppressor-oppressed contradiction, since, also according to the author, praxis “[...] is men’s reflection and action on the world to transform it” (Freire, ¹⁹⁸⁷, p. 25, our translation). If so far there has been coherence, corroborating the idea that the arguments we use and the principles we seek to defend can offer contributions to the teaching internship, we suggest for each pedagogical moment a proposal that we have been reflecting on in the context of the ISI.

1- Reality Study (RS) - in partnership with supervisory teachers and advisors, interns begin the investigative process with the school staff and the community in which the school is inserted. At this stage, possible problems in the school context and/or in the community are raised. Information obtained through interviews, informal conversations, questionnaires, infrastructure analysis, among other instruments appropriate to the local reality are organized by the research group. The results of this stage provide support for the discussions held at the university and the elementary school. From the discussions held in each institution - where the intern in his/her training process can move in a dialogical and critical movement - the initial guiding principles are defined, which dialogue with their needs and potentials (educational and social interests, availability of time and space, resources and aspirations). With the specific guiding principles of each institution defined from the problematization of the investigated reality - which already contemplates a dialogical process and, therefore, deverticalized -, school and university, represented by the subjects involved, get together to organize a range of general principles that meet the specificities of the institutions to perform the ISI. Considering the general principles and the elements apprehended in the initial investigation, the significant situation is defined – similar to the Freirean generating theme (Freire, ¹⁹⁸⁷) - from which the second and next pedagogical moment will unfold. It is noteworthy that, with the specificities of the institution, there are the specificities of its subjects, who make the “voice of dialogue” based on the analysis and problematization of the results of the initial investigation. The investigative relationship here is no longer just subject-object, but knowing subjects investigating a reality that becomes common to them, and that, through critical action in this reality, build the knowable object on which they act.

2- Knowledge Organization (KO) - This is the moment when interns, supervisory professors, and advisors (the latter two as specialists) plan the continuity of the investigation and define the research problems that will guide the educational-investigative practices of each intern. The issues investigated are unfolding of the significant situation defined in the first stage so that the planning of the investigation is no longer unconcerned to local issues, which can be the direct object of the research activity, or serve as guides for the actions that are intended during the process. The intern’s participating presence in the decisions of this stage offers greater possibilities of engagement in the proposed activities. However, here the training interests must be explicit in the programming, concerning the institutions represented by the trainers (including the supervising teachers), the interests of the basic school in the training of its students, and the school body as a whole. Educational-investigative activities can include training actions with the community, from the preparation and development of disciplinary or interdisciplinary classes, counter shift actions, special classes, actions with the local community, among others. The investigation in this ISI proposal is not restricted to classroom practice situations. The teaching performance is understood as a historically located social activity, a concept that is reflected in the issues that guide the investigation. Several activities may be articulated in the same process. The form of guidance regarding the continuity of the investigative process, conducted and shared between guiding professors and supervisors, is also defined at this stage.

3- knowledge Application (KA) - Here, the planning defined in the previous moments is developed in/with the school and more or less explicitly - as defined in the second moment - in/with the community. The 3PM, as a didactic-pedagogical dynamic that organizes teaching-learning activities, can be used by interns in order to enhance greater possibilities that the collective principles established at the first moment remain in the development of educational-investigative activities, in addition, of course, to those fundamental principles that support the construction of this proposal. In this last stage, the production of empirical data for the investigative process that began with the Reality Study is complemented. This third moment is also the last in the organization of the ISI and demands more systematic feedback of the process carried out, to the community, the school, and the university. At the end of this stage, the various research problems investigated by the interns are rearticulated in a collective process of reflection that initially brings together the university supervisory professors, the basic school supervisor teachers, and the interns. Based on the results found in each investigation, a general result is reached for the significant situation defined in the first stage. This result can be more systematically worked with the school community. This feedback should be more systematized than those that can and should take place during the ISI and can be elaborated in different ways, according to the development of the training process. In addition to the traditional production of articles and reports, there are other ways to systematize and communicate an investigative training process, such as, for example, in video format, creation of digital or physical materials, presentations, inclusive actions, among others. After all the work with/at school, including reflection/action based on the synthesis of research results, the knowledge application stage ends with the intern completing his/her educational-investigative process in the supervised internship.

In the perspective of the outlined proposal, university and school are in a horizontal relationship, where the particularities, needs, knowledge, and potential of both institutions, and their subjects are permeated by the dialogical problematization in the constitution of the ISI. The structuring of the educational-investigative activities to be carried out arises in the collaborative context of the institutions and subjects involved, always mediated by the reality of the school community, culminating in the production of knowledge from the organic relationship between practice and theory, through a critical problematization of the experienced reality in light of theory. In this relationship, not only the university produces knowledge, but also the elementary school with its individuals, and in the very dialogic relationship between the institutions, it is possible to build genuine knowledge that comes closer to the investigated situations with greater care.

Amid such a proposal, there is an investigation, reflection, and action that takes place about the practice itself, since the practice is now an element inseparable from the theory and the problematization of the reality in which the school, which opened the doors to contribute to the training of the intern, was inserted. The reflection becomes critical, contemplating a broader context, which was known through praxis and permeating macro and micro situations. Based on the pedagogical moments, we systematized a challenging and, therefore, transforming training process.

Final Considerations

The internship as research can be a valuable strategy and concept for the training of future teachers, as it makes it more fruitful for the production of knowledge to be considered a constitutive aspect of teaching and, therefore, of the formative processes in teaching (Garcia, ²⁰¹²). It carries the potential to culminate in the gradual overcoming of the disarticulation between theory and practice in initial teacher education, as it is structured in an investigative process. However, the articulation between these dimensions is not certain, and even less is the overcoming of the dissociability between them guaranteed during an ISI process. To argue in this sense, we used elements that, we hope, have, to some extent, contributed to problematize that the research conception itself is not a consensus and that the understanding and defense of this or that conception may imply in a greater or lesser possibility of articulation between theory and practice.

Seeking coherence with the notions that permeate participatory research, understood as an action research model based on the ideas of Paulo Freire (Diniz-Pereira, ²⁰¹¹), we sketched an organization proposal for an ISI based on the 3PM dynamics that systematizes in the process of thematic investigation of curriculum structuring, the principles defended by Freire (¹⁹⁸⁷) (Muenchen, ²⁰¹⁰; Muenchen & Delizoicov, ²⁰¹²). Such principles intertwined in the educational-investigative activity during the ISI, are coherent with the conception of education we defend and with the critical perspective of teacher education, which emerges almost as a need, a path, and a hope in contrast to still hegemonic technical conception of training and teaching-learning.

The school, in its relationships, presents itself as a rich field for research, for being a vast field of investigation, but also for the potential to produce knowledge from these relationships and their individuals. As argued by Garcia (²⁰¹²), the constituent elements of teaching practice can be a privileged focus of research, including the possibilities they offer for the relationship between the university, the school, and its individuals.

ISI will take place in the context of a historically defined, socially organized school. It will happen in the relationship with subjects immersed in cultures that are often different. The intern will find a reality in his/her investigative process, but that is not static or impossible to be modified. Considering this concrete in decision-making and paying attention to the problems that emerge from this reality, working in partnership and collaboratively with the school institution and its subjects, is not to impose a theoretical reality on a concrete reality that is unknown; it is to assume in conception and action that theory and practice are inseparable in the production of knowledge and in the transformation of reality from a critical-reflective perspective.

The proposal outlined here, one possibility among other existing ones, aimed to systematize, through the dynamics of the 3PM, some principles of critical education at the ISI, whose essence we seek to defend and sustain in this essay. It is important to emphasize that, in a proposal like this, decent conditions for teaching work are essential, both for the university supervisor and for the supervisor in the elementary school, in addition to the general conditions of institutions and education workers as a whole. It often depends on factors beyond the will of the subjects involved, it is even said, the condition of interns in undergraduate courses, who are often workers who study - or student workers - with all the limits and possibilities that such a condition imposes on them. Let one (or several) criticisms be made of the utopia of this proposition. It will be valid! However, in this regard, the position that cannot be abandoned is that principles such as problematization, dialogue, horizontality, and collaboration are not only necessary for an articulation between theory and practice, but also the foundations of praxis itself, which seems to be the essence of a genuinely critical and transformative training movement.