Introduction

The contemporary social scenario is marked by intense and rapid transformations in the most diverse domains like the economy, politics, ethics, and everyday life (^{LIBÂNEO, 2011}). The neoliberal logic cuts across all spheres and intensely affects the subjects' identity construction, demanding from them professional qualifications that meet the capitalist demands. This logic also reaches the educational context, understood as a strategic field to maintain this type of society project.

Schools are formal educational institutions, so they play the role of articulating different issues induced by public policies and the training processes directed at the population, which have principles and values established hegemonically by governments.

Therefore, in recent decades, we have experienced the intensification of different conjunctions between the capitalist society project and the educational training developed by schools, through curricula, evaluation, and teacher training policies. Thus, we observed the expansion of a business management logic that, based on terms such as efficiency and effectiveness, establishes hierarchical relationships in the educational system's corpus (SILVA, 2001), compelling the collectives to shape their work to embody a neotechnicist logic. This logic is based on content technique reproduction designed by groups of specialists, aiming at the rapid and low-resource achievement of goals established by institutions that manage and control the pedagogical work carried out in schools.

The teachers are one of the main agents in the articulation of this set of references, which makes the teacher training process, in addition to their work, prone to disputes. In these dispute fields between the perspective of emptying pedagogical practices, centered on the technical dimension, which strives for the subjects' conformation to the current model of society; and the emancipatory perspective that recognizes the complexity of the educational act, highlighting the political dimension present in it as a form of resistance and overcoming social relations that are oppressing and dehumanizing (^{COSTA; 2018}). In this way, the teachers find themselves stressed on the one hand by the logic and demands of policy outcomes and on the other hand by the ethical and political commitment to human and critical education.

We understand that even in the face of that common reality, each context is marked by specific issues that make it unique and by its unique ways of responding to the challenges present in it. Thus, we ask: how does the teachers' continued education relate to the challenges experienced in their practices as teachers? To answer this question, we devised the present study which has as its general objective to reflect on how the continued training and the challenges faced by teachers in the exercise of their profession in the context of basic education relate to each other. Even though we do not intend to generalize the results obtained, we understand that they can shine a light on different and important aspects and contribute to the debates around the theme.

Methodologically, we opted for a qualitative approach (^{MINAYO, 2013}), defining as the locus of investigation the city of Horizonte - Ceará and as a subject a mathematics teacher who works in the final years in a public elementary school and the final years in a public high school.

We used the narrative interview as a strategy to approach reality, from the perspective presented by Jovchelovich and Bauer (2014), which aims to deepen specific questions related to the central theme of the study, without losing sight of the subject's existence and the contexts marks in which their life, education, and profession are located.

We analyzed the data with the contribution of authors such as Diniz Pereira (2014), ^{Franco (2016}), ^{Alarcão (2011}), among others, and they indicate that continued education can overcome the productivist neoliberal logic and establish itself as a space for critical reading of reality, dialogue and appreciation of teaching the teaching profession and public schools even if is pierced by the tensions and contradictions present in contemporary society.

The public school and the challenges of the current context

Before talking about teachers' continued education, we need to highlight elements related to the context for which and in which teachers are trained.

The 1990s are a historical landmark in which the changes that took place in the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts in different countries became more evident as a result of two intersecting factors:

The globalization phenomena and neoliberalism are present in our lives and pointedly affect the individual and collective construction of our identities. The different institutions are transfixed by principles and values that affect the economic, political, ethical, and quotidian spheres (^{LIBÂNEO, 2011}). Those reaching the subjects in the form of training necessities, related to knowledge, skills, and attitudes are considered necessary for inclusion in the “labor market” to which efforts to adapt individuals should converge.

This scenario pushed the school to reconfigure itself through educational policies, aligning itself with the hegemonically prevailing society project, assimilating work perspectives based on a strictly business and managerial logic.

For ^{Krawczyk (2018}), the Brazilian educational reform in the 1990s instituted a new organization and management model, which in the 21st century arrived even more deep and vivid in the perspective of the fetish related to the binomial modernity-democratization. In this context, consultancies, foundations and institutes linked to business became references to shape educational policies in terms of curriculum, assessment, and teacher training, among others, inspired by other countries' experiences, especially the United States.

For Silva (2001), it's necessary to broadly understand the neoliberal logic present in the movement to reconfigure educational policies. To the author:

The construction of politics as manipulation of affection and feeling; the transformation of the space for political discussion into strategies for advertisement persuasion; the celebration of the supposed efficiency and productivity of the private sector as opposed to the inefficiency and waste of public services; the redefinition of citizenship in which the political agent becomes an economic agent and the citizen into a consumer, are all important central elements of the global neoliberal project. The redefinition of education in terms of the market is inserted in this global project [...]. (SILVA, 2001, p. 15).

The elements presented lead us to the necessary reflection on the political and pedagogical commitments of the public school with democratic principles, the appreciation of diversity, humanization and emancipation as indicated by the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 (BRASIL, 1988), and the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education nº 9394 (BRASIL, 1996). Over the years, these legal guidelines have been threatened by the productivist logic and are, therefore, excluding, and ingrained in neoliberal thinking. This movement has yielded significant setbacks in terms of the broad conception of education as “[...] the right of all and the duty of the State and the family [...] aiming at the full development of the person, their preparation for the exercise of citizenship and their qualifications for the labor market (BRASIL, 1988, Art. 205).

The perspective of curricular policies, aligned with the external evaluation process implemented over the last two decades, has been treating the conception of the curriculum in a reductionist way. The curriculum is seen as a bureaucratic artifact whose central function is the alignment and control of the pedagogical work developed by teachers to the reference matrices that constitute the evaluation instruments systematically applied by the Education Departments and by the Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anisio Teixeira (INEP) in large-scale tests.

The dynamics established by educational policies for the organization of the school's pedagogical work is a problem to be addressed in during the teachers' continued training. It would then be like an invitation to a critical reading of the challenges posed in the context of professional practice that, gradually, negatively affect the autonomy of educational institutions and the educators who work in them.

If we understand the curriculum from the praxis perspective, as suggested by ^{Sacristán (2000}), we will verify the need to compose a different logic from that induced by government agencies that manage public education. The work perspective in a curriculum that is made of an inseparable relationship between theory and practice, must be reflexive so it can lead to the perception of the formative horizons established by the school and in them the disputes that relate to the models of society and subjects. The question about who are the real beneficiaries of the school can guide action strategies towards resistance and non-conformity of subjects to neoliberal power projects, articulated to collective actions to transform reality.

The school as a space for continued teacher training

In the previous section, we discussed the disputes that are established in the social, political, economic, and educational fields, based on disputed society projects, seeking to situate the context of tensions and contradictions in which the teachers are formed and work.

When discussing continued education, we must also approach the theme from its various meanings, indicating the different foundations and commitments that support it, as well as the different types of training to which these lead educators. In this way, three training paradigms are references that can elucidate our discussion:

When we think about how each of these paradigms views teachers, we have: in technical rationality, seeing the teacher as a content consumer, produced by specialists; in practical rationality, the teacher as a reflective professional and a researcher of their praxis; and in critical rationality, an intellectual politically engaged with emancipatory, humanizing, and inclusive demands.

Currently, the training proposals offered to teachers are ambiguous. Due to the contradictions in the professional field, which can be expressed through clashes between the discourse of inclusion and the perspective of merit; the appeal to innovation and the defense of tradition; theory deviated from practice and practice deviated from theory; total quality and socially endorsed quality; teacher professionalization and deprofessionalization. Such ambiguity emerges from the ever growing distance between the legal requirements that make education a right and the structure of contemporary educational policies that reduce education to a consumer good.

^{Franco (2016}, p. 519) helps us to better understand this issue by recounting what teachers experience today concerning their training processes:

[...] considering that the teachers are feeling weakened by the sharpness of the contradictions of the Brazilian school; with the complexity of the social relations established there and with the theoretical-practical inability to act in the situation, this space-time of reflection allows a new perspective of the experiential situation. The ready-made texts they receive to serve as class guides, within the perspective of apostille teaching, lead them to work with the ready script and give up the possibility of creating didactic-pedagogical means and ways to deal with the situation.

Based on the above, the author points out the need for a dialogic posture between the subjects who lead the training processes and the subjects who are being trained. Thus, changing the logic that sustains the relationship between them, leaving a prescriptive perspective that subordinates to a critical perspective that problematizes reality and recognizes educators as bearers and producers of knowledge. It's through this change that the formation processes can become significant for the subjects and the institutions.

In the same direction, we find the contributions of ^{Lima (2001}), who presents a concept of continued training capable of collaborating with the unveiling of the determinants that cross the daily life of the school of teaching work and with decision-making. The author points out that “[...] continued training is the articulation between teaching work, knowledge and professional development of the teacher, as a possibility of reflective posture dynamized by praxis” (^{LIMA, 2001}, p. 29).

The categories “teaching work”, “professional development” and “praxis” presented by the author, indicate a critical, emancipatory, and political position that trainers need to have regarding training proposals. Consequently, the challenges experienced by the work collective constitute the main references from which the definition of training guidelines arises. From them, the junction of theory and practice in the perspective of praxis, accompanies the problematization of reality, of broad understanding of the problems through the study of diverse themes, the construction of alternatives for actions, and the establishment of collective agreements with the materialization of the proposals.

Based on concrete experiences developed in the school context, ^{Alarcão (2011}) recognizes this institution as a locus of teacher training and invites us to understand how the concepts of reflective teachers and the reflective school can collaborate with empowerment and with the humanization of subjects. According to her:

The reflective school is not remotely controlled from the outside. It's self-managed. It has its own project, built with the collaboration of its members. This school knows what it wants to achieve and it's constantly evaluating itself. It's contextualized in the community it serves and interacts with it. It believes in its teachers, whose capacity for thought and action are always encouraged. It involves students in building an increasingly better school. It doesn't forget the contribution of parents and the whole community. This school onsiders itself as an institution in constant development and is open to learn. It is continuously thinking and evaluating. Building self-knowledge (^{ALARCÃO, 2011}, p.40).

The challenges recently faced by humanity due to the covid-19 epidemic have led educational institutions around the planet to reorganize their ways of mediating the students' training processes. The search for alternatives by workgroups showed us the need to develop the school's ability to think about itself and the challenges that are specific to its context.

To ^{Nóvoa (2020}, p. 9):

[...] the best responses to the pandemic didn't come from governments or ministries of education, but rather from teachers who, working together, were able to maintain a connection with their students to support them. In many cases, it helped families to understand the difficulty and complexity of teachers' work. This can cause an appreciation for the teaching work and create the conditions for greater social recognition of the profession.

The reflection brought by the author invites us to evaluate the relevance of the criticisms about the training models based on pre-made bundles composed of generic formulas elaborated by specialists. Since the finished works are not able to dialogue with the needs and particularities of educational institutions and school communities, as well as help them to overcome the challenges they face. It also invites us to undertake efforts to materialize training proposals that pursue meaning and significance in the understanding of education as a situated social practice (^{PIMENTA, 2011}); of the school as a reflective institution (^{ALARCÃO, 2011}), and of teachers as subjects and intellectuals capable of producing relevant knowledge about their profession (^{FREIRE, 1996}; ^{FRANCO, 2016}).

In the next section, we will present the analysis of narratives produced by a teacher who works in two different public school systems, based on his experiences of continued education aimed at elementary and high school.

And now the teacher

Final considerations

Throughout the present study, we reflect on the articulations established between continued education and the challenges faced by teachers in their profession in the context of basic education.

Initially, we talk about training and teaching in the contemporary society. Thus, we analyze the complex relations between globalization and neoliberalism and its reflexes in the subjects' identity construction, in the formative demands that seek to adjust subjects to the job market and to the hegemonically prevailing model of society where principles such as performativity, productivity, and competitiveness. These elements reach education through educational policies that have, over the last decades, assimilated neoliberal values, aligning curriculum, evaluation, and teacher training to the incessant search for results.

The critical reading of reality allows us to visualize, in the contexts of teacher training and professional practice, clashes between different perspectives. These can be systematized into three distinct models of rationality - technique, practice, and criticism - which are based on different conceptions of teachers and different relationships of these subjects with knowledge about their profession.

In the current context, contact with the life trajectory, training, and profession of public schools teachers reveals the prevalence of technical rationality. This can be translated into meetings focused on the debate about the reference matrices of external evaluations and the control of teaching work through the recurrent application mock tests and diagnoses that produce quantitative reports of proficiency, indicating how to achieve the goals established for the educational institutions.

The narratives observed in the interview in the present research reveal the experience of a reductionist perspective of continued education throughout the subject's trajectory. But they also indicate displacement and resignification of the relationships established between the collective of teachers; the knowledge, reflections, and challenges they bring; the characteristics of the contexts where they develop their work. Interestingly, the pandemic period and the lack of technical references to deal with emergency remote teaching allowed subjects to exercise protagonism in their professions.

Thus, we understand that, like contemporary society, the continued education processes have tensions and contradictions and can be politically committed to emancipatory education, overcome the productivist neoliberal logic and collaborate with processes of valuing teaching and public school through the recognition of teachers as intellectuals.