First act - planning

Among the cultural tools subjects use to plan their classes, we highlight the following: oral discourse, WhatsApp groups, and electronic/manual agendas.

We found that teachers mainly use discourse in their interaction with other teachers and school agents at specific planning times. Joana states that

(…) I see planning as a moment of exchange, right? You talk to a chemistry teacher, with another sixth-grade teacher, right? I work with sixth grade 1 but the teacher of sixth 2 and sixth 3 is someone else. So, there is another rhythm… So, we exchange ideas, right? (…). I usually do a lot of practical chemistry classes, right? So, when we work on the chemistry of cells, a teacher will explain one part of the content and I will explain another (…) (Joana)

As mentioned, Joana’s narrative explains planning actions as it describes their performance. She finds that to be a common way to work. It includes exchanges between her peers which set appropriate opportunities for interdisciplinary experiences which she deems the purpose of planning. Dialogue, in this case, enables joint planning, an essential aspect to elaborate and execute interdisciplinary projects, as per ^{Fazenda (2015}). We should mention that Joana’s school belongs to the state public system in which teachers from the same area—e.g., Natural Sciences—have common planning schedules to enable the exchange of knowledge and practices of specific curricular components. As per ^{Ryder (2017}), internal contexts favor joint actions which the educational networks or schools that fail to either designate specific times for it or organize themselves for collective participation in them are often unable to observe.

Although the municipal public school in which she works has allotted time for planning, Ana’s account evinces that teachers fail to engage in dialogue:

(…) we have five weekly hours of planning in municipal schools (…) in the afternoon period, we have a specific day of the week in which science teachers and those from another area suddenly hang out, right? And what I realize is that most of the time I sit there with other colleagues, and you even try to do something different “let’s do something else with the class” [and they often respond] “I don’t think so,” I can’t,” or “I’m tired.” And then we often might end up not planning as we should. This is a space the profession conquered for itself—I’m now talking about the public network—which actually ends up being used very little given what I’m talking about now. (Ana)

Concrete working conditions—similar to Joana’s report—overlap with teachers’ personal contexts, i.e., their beliefs, values, and personal needs.

As per ^{Wertsch (1998}), the tension between agents and tools can change actions. We find that Ana and Joana intend to dialogue with their peers to innovate and plan interdisciplinary work with other teachers, but they face resistance from their co-workers, distancing them from the purpose or sense of collective planning.

Faced with this conflict of purposes, Ana believes that the space public teachers conquered finds itself scarcely used. She sees the act of planning and dialogue between teachers as a space in which they exchange experiences and strengthen their profession. ^{Tardif (2014}) states that the exchange of experiences and knowledge among teachers consolidates spaces of mutual training in which each plays the role of trainer and trainee. We found this aspect in another participant’s narrative:

Planning in my school takes place every Wednesday (…) I was very lucky because, as soon as I came in, there was another biology teacher that welcomed me really well. At first, I had a lot of difficulty as I had gotten into Ufes in 2010 and left in 2017 with a master’s degree with a vision like this. I took the Pibid, which helped me to have a notion of reality but [when] you have your classes, it’s different. Then I would ask him “what do you think of me giving them [students] this assignment?” He helped me a lot. (Denise)

Denise emphasizes the importance of the relationship she established with another science teacher at her school in the face of challenging moments right after beginning her teaching career. To overcome them, Denise shows the importance of listening to the other’s experience to resignify her own experiences, such as those she developed during her initial training when she attended Pibid. According to ^{Rodrigues et al. (2015}), listening to peer practice is an indispensable resource for professionalization since the dialogue between teachers and their knowledge positively change their posture in the face of the challenges of daily school life. Although decisions remain subjective in particular contexts, Denise’s narrative shows the importance of teachers sharing experiences to build the sociocultural space of schools.

The absence of time to plan and share experiences reinforces its relevance, as in the following reports:

As I work on the private and public networks, I say they are very different. So, in the private network, we do not have time at school to plan (…) our planning is all done outside class hours, although we receive for it in our wages, 15% of our salary is planning, right? So, I usually do my planning at home. (Ana)

(..) teachers do not plan at school, especially because we have set class hours. So, most of the days I go, I give all my classes. I only have recess [for planning]. Naturally, I do my whole planning at home. (Taís)

We found divergences regarding planning when we compared the organization of teaching across several professional contexts. For ^{Wertsch (1998}), “scenarios are a tool to interpret actions and their motives” (p.36). Thus, we found that the organization of planning in each school can interfere in this moment of interaction and dialogue between peers, instigating the production or use of new tools.

We found one way to try to fill teachers’ lack of interactions at school during planning in some participants’ narratives, such as:

I, as I have to leave early on Monday and Tuesday to attend Ufes, I can’t be in all five planning classes with the other teachers. But we always meet in the corridors [of the school]. We formed a WhatsApp group because we (…) are very united in my school, so we always exchange ideas via the group. But there are teachers who have some difficulty with this technology stuff and WhatsApp, and they end up not participating much. (Joana).

We have a working WhatsApp group. In addition to exchanging ideas, when a teacher misses work, they can share their [class] activity via the group. (Joice).

WhatsApp groups enter the scene as a mediational mean that enables teachers to share ideas and support their work. However, Joana’s narrative evinces that some teachers have limited use of this technology, thus failing to use this space as much as others. According to ^{Wertsch (1998}), agents, cultural tools, and the irreducible tension between them always have a peculiar past and always find themselves in a process of change, i.e., individuals have a particular history of experience with cultural tools which can offer an assessment of their development of this skill. For Wertsch (1998), the concept of mastery relates to subjects’ ability to use cultural tools which research can evaluate by how aptly individuals use them, whereas the concept of appropriation refers to the process by which subjects choose and insert these tools in their actions. As the types of tools in subjects’ actions depend on the sociocultural configurations of their environment, ^{Oliveira and Mortimer (2020}) argue that Transformations in the practice of teachers, especially those working with science, occur in the course of the historical evolution of both mediational resources and the development of their own skills in using them.

The situation Joana described also shows that the emergence of new cultural tools both enables and restricts action, as per ^{Wertsch (1998}). WhatsApp enabled the maintenance of dialogue among teachers who were unable to meet at their schools during planning. However, those who failed to appropriate this tool failed to interact in this new space of exchange. Thus, changes in work situations reshape teachers’ knowing-doing, as per ^{Tardif (2014}), but if collective, institutional, teaching training plans fail to consider it, these changes may restrict themselves to individual domains or contexts.

Teachers must also deal with some institutional bureaucracies during planning, as the following narratives highlight:

(…) at my school, everything is very strict. So, we also have to be so and meet deadlines. There is no such thing as you not meeting a deadline. So, for example, lesson planning is done the year prior (…) I have to deliver the 2019 planning all ready and filled out for all classes by December 2018, class by class. So, we have to specify what will be done in each class (…) (Taís)

In my school, it is like this, there are enabling teachers—which we are not—who prepare the course plan for the next year. I do my monthly planning at home based on this course plan, class by class (…) on the first business day of the month, it has to be posted in the system (…). Every day I fill something, manual agendas […] we have manual agendas in the system, so why would I fill out manual agendas if I already fill electronic agendas? And it’s a surreal deadline after another! (Breno)

Breno and Taís work in private schools and show their intense bureaucratic demands. They enforce deadlines and their objectives and often fail to consider teachers’ pace, time availability, and interests. ^{Michel (2013}) points out that the bureaucratic activities of private institutions fail to correspond to teachers’ reality, occupying much of the time they would have for planning.

Other participants also found that the bureaucracy in private schools tends to be more rigid. Listening to Taís and Breno’s narratives, Denise stressed that the requirements they described disagree with her school day-to-day and its conditions for planning classes:

I think it’s kind of weird what you said about planning for the whole year in the previous year without knowing your classes. Because in state schools, guys, something happens every week. Paebes is tomorrow, so the class I planned for no longer exists. The other week I left early because it rained, this is how it goes. (Denise)

Knowing the classes and dynamics of each institution is an essential condition for teaching. Internal contexts determine the specificities of the knowledge proper to the profession, which suffers interference from external contexts, i.e., the norms imposed on teachers’ collective which are subordinate to private schools. Denise defends planning (and its materialization) as something flexible so it can adapt to the reality of each class and to the context of the public school in which she works. We observed, therefore, that agents grasp the meaning of contexts, which directly relates to how a mediational tool is used (Barcelos & Coelho, 2019; Wertsch, 1988;), in this case, their education plan.

Although private school teachers reported bureaucratic issues more often, some state public school teachers’ narratives have shown that this issue negatively affects planning time at their schools. Joana points out that:

Bureaucracy takes up too much planning time. Is it important? Of course, it must exist (…) but there’s got to be a moment reserved for that, not during planning. Having to keep filling out electronic agendas, weekly plans (…) some weeks I don’t have time to look for something cool to do with my students. (Joana)

We found that one of Joana’s purposes when filling out plans, agendas, etc. includes responding to an external demand, as in the private school teachers’ reports above. Although she highlighted the importance of bureaucratic procedures, her experience indicates that the essential thing would be to have a time reserved for such procedures since she is unable to achieve the main objective of her work—organizing and improving teaching and learning processes. On this aspect, ^{Russo (2016}) stresses that school planning in public institutions has configured a “bureaucratic procedure emptied of the meanings it could assume in schools” (p. 210), especially as a catalyst for collective reflections on themes permeating teachers’ practice.

Second act - classroom practices

Among the cultural tools participants used in their classroom practices, we highlight multimedia resources (such as Datashow), materials for practical classes, and school curricula.

Multimedia resources clearly differ across public and private schools in view of the availability of financial resources of the latter, as in Breno’s statement:

The school has a notebook for teachers who want to use in their classrooms, a Datashow, resources for us to use. Private schools always have them, right? So, if we want to do something unusual with Datashow, a different class, we can. (Breno)

However, teachers’ ownership, mastery, and appropriation of these resources fail to guarantee their adequate mediation, as Taís points out:

Parents will argue about it, just like in Linhares, parents do not like (…) they do not like that you are using Datashow in your class because, for them, teachers who use Datashow do not know their subjects (…) but there is school in which I work much more with Datashow ([a] much more visual [resource]), I find Cariacica much more visual than Linhares. Now, in Linhares, parents like the student there with the blackboard, blackboard, as do students. (Taís)

^{Oliveira et al. (2019}) state that “for teachers to succeed when using mediation, it is necessary that they offer real opportunities for the production of meanings and sharing of meanings” (p. 271). In the situation Taís described, we can claim that the relationship between the agents both in classes and also the school community (including family members) either enhances or restricts tool use. Teachers find that the use of a tool in their classrooms depends a lot on internal contexts, i.e., relationships between subjects and the social context of the those with whom they coexist in schools (which are based on their values, beliefs, and purposes).

^{Wertsch (1998}) stresses that “the use of a particular mode of mediation generally depends on other factors related to history and cultural or institutional power and authority” (p.76). Hence the importance of always considering scenarios in the analysis of agents acting with cultural tools given the inseparable relations among these elements. Thus, despite the availability of a cultural tool (Datashow) in the private schools in which Taís works and her ability to use them, Taís uses it in a context (the school in the municipality of Cariacica) and refrains to do so in another (the school in the municipality of Linhares) mainly due to her students and their parents’ opinions. This shows that dominating a cultural tool often fails to entail its appropriation (Wertsch, 1998) and that, when acting, teachers consider several conditions to structure and guide their professional practice (^{Tardif, 2014}).

For Taís, using this cultural tool is associated with adapting to institutional contexts. This agrees with ^{Gama (2015}), who stresses that teachers often seek to maintain the teaching practices already inherent and characteristic of the institutional culture around them due to the opinion of the school agents involved in their actions, such as co-workers and students and their families.

Regarding materials for practical classes, we note that they feature more often in private schools due to their space and resource availability, as Breno points out:

At my school (…) there is a microscope, and it’s easy to give practical classes. (…) There is glass equipment, behind it, reagents. There was a new laboratory with thousands of reagents (…) what I think is important in having all this is that we can instigate students’ curiosity in addition to this issue of relating theory and practice. (Breno)

As ^{Wertsch (1998}) points out, “the quality of the action is implicit in the quality of the scenario (context)” (p.36). So, according to contexts and objectives, actions acquire specific contours (^{Roldi et al., 2018}). Breno thinks it is important to arouse students’ curiosity, finding practical classes an effective way to do this. ^{Andrade and Massabni (2011}) highlight that practical school activities to promote students’ scientific thinking is a pedagogical decision that depends not only on teachers but also on institutional conditions. However, these authors believe that if teachers value practical activities and believe they promote the effective learning of sciences, they will possibly seek ways to develop them in schools and overcome possible obstacles. Regarding this, we highlight Joana’s narrative:

(…) I was a teacher before my master’s degree. After I came [into the schools in which I work] I changed as you start to see other things, to talk to other people. So, that opens our mind, and we start thinking more about our practice. Today I try to promote more investigative practices with my students, even if the schools lack recourses as we do not have a laboratory, but I know that we do not need this for a practice to be investigative, it facilitates it, but it is not necessary. So, I try to innovate (…). (Joana)

For ^{Tardif (2014}), when teachers develop their classes, they make personal judgments about how they should act, evaluating the beliefs, values, and knowledge they acquired in their initial or continuing training and in professional practice. Joana states that having entered a master’s degree course made her rethink her daily practice and understand the importance of promoting investigative practices with her students, an aspect which made her overcome some difficulties, including the absence of a laboratory. Her attitude shows the influence of personal contexts, i.e., in their pedagogical practice, teachers resignify the several formative experiences they experience throughout their professional career (^{Roldão, 2005}; Tardif & Raymond, 2000; Tardif, 2014). Thus, we agree with ^{Nóvoa (2017}) , who argues that teaching should be built within the profession.

The situation Joana described also shows that, as per ^{Wertsch (1998}), new mediational tools can transform mediated actions. The new cultural tools Joana introduced to her classrooms and agents’ use (teacher and students) changed her teaching practice. However, this fails to mean that the only way to introduce change is via new cultural tools since these can also arise by “a variation in skill levels and other facts related to agents” (Wertsch, 1998, p. 77), i.e., the resignification of the use of mediating objects in science/biology teachers’ actions can enhance the real capacity of resources to participate in the process of knowledge construction (^{Oliveira et al., 2019}).

Teachers also use school curricula as a tool to guide their practice, as below:

I think the issue of pedagogical practice is also very motivated not only by what you care about, your students learning but also by what is objective, the mission of the school, what is in its curriculum. I see that a lot in the contrast between public/private schools. In public schools, if you (…) want to play a movie, that’s fine, if you want to use a very cool practice for them to learn more, that’s fine too, because you have more autonomy. Not so in private schools. In private schools, you are under great pressure (especially from families), and you have to find a way to account for all the content in the curriculum. (Guilherme)

So, I find public schools differ from private ones because I work in both. In the public schools, it is like this: “I do not know botany, so I will not teach botany” (…) Now if I’m on the private network and management comes to you and says, “you’re going to teach genetics,” girl, you either handle it or you’ll get fired. If a student asked you a question, you have to know the answer, if he realizes that you do not know it, a month from now (…) you will lose your job (…) But, at the same time, in the public school, I can work more often how I think best, adapt what I think I have to, private schools do not have as much flexibility. (Ana)

The comparison between public and private schools evinces the internal aspects affecting teaching; in this case, curricula. Teachers’ narrative contrast their autonomy to teach programmatic contents. While in private institutions teachers need to fully comply with the content provided for in curricula, especially because family members exert pressure toward it, in public schools, teachers report greater autonomy, enabling them to make the necessary curricular adaptations to contemplate the particularities of their classes. Similar to the results in ^{Oliveira and Mortimer (2020}), teachers’ narratives shows that their concern with students’ learning is one of the reasons transforming their pedagogical actions, although again under tension due to internal contexts, represented especially by families and what teachers understand as autonomy. Ana believes that teachers, by using this autonomy in public schools, can compromise the learning process to the extent that they choose on their own to avoid working certain contents in school curricula.

This indicates that, in teachers’ opinion, autonomy is a “doing by yourself.” However, as ^{Monteiro et al. (2010}) point out, “one cannot analyze autonomy from an individualistic or psychologist’s perspective” (p. 119) since, as moral values, autonomy should not be considered an individual capacity but rather a collective construction. From this perspective, ^{Nóvoa (2017}) deems it important to recognize the collective dimension of the teaching profession to find that some knowledge and responsibilities avoid ending in an individualized understanding of teachers’ work.

Third act - the evaluation of teaching actions

Among the cultural tools participants and other school agents use to evaluate teaching actions, we highlight self-assessment and students’ discourse.

Regarding self-assessment, all volunteers reported reflecting on their own practices to find failures and improve their attitudes and methodologies in their classrooms, as per the following excerpts.

I reflect, I try to recognize my flaws. So, I reflect really deeply, including what I think worked. (Joana)

(…) I always evaluate myself throughout the day and reflect on what was good or bad to try and always grow as a professional and improve my practices. (Taís)

I also have this thing of evaluating myself, of also acknowledging what I have to change in my practices (…). I have to do my job as best as I can (…) because I know the responsibility and weight of my work. (Breno)

I try to evaluate myself by the feedback my students give me. I shape myself as I reflect on that. (Clarisse)

^{Cassettari (2014}) claims self-assessments consist of a process in which teachers evaluate themselves and must offer value judgments about their own actions. Thus, as teachers critically analyze their pedagogical practices, they become aware of the required improvements in their work.

We should also stress that moments of reflection culminating in teachers’ self-assessment often take place collaboratively, i.e., with their co-workers. We can see this in Guilherme’s narrative.

Self-assessment is also a collaborative work, at least I find it so. (…) Among biology teachers, one can help another see things in practices that we alone can’t. (Guilherme)

Guilherme shows an openness and receptivity to criticism or suggestions from colleagues and vice versa, enriching this moment of shared reflection. For ^{Lima and Santos (2017}), spaces of collective reflection among science teachers is a way to highlight different possible solutions to problems common to the group, developing teaching knowledge (^{Tardif, 2014}) and strengthening their profession (^{Nóvoa, 2017}).

Teachers also use students’ discourse to evaluate their work. When using it, teachers mainly seek to identify which aspects of their practice students deem good or bad, as per the narratives below. We also observed that some teachers seek to create a relationship of exchange and trust with their students and give them more autonomy:

In terms of evaluating my practice, I do this to the extent of the bonds that we create with students. We can see their reactions (…) (William)

They take 10 students, and they evaluate the teachers. (…) Then, we see what they like or not and that dictates a lot of our work in the private network because, like, they talk about the good and bad things in our practice and coordination and direction know. (Breno)

The students do polls and when a teacher poll pops up, the first thing they say is “teacher with a good blackboard, gives a lot of content on the blackboard, content within the schedule” and so on (…) “The teacher only teaches with Datashow.” From there, I see what they consider good or not in practice and this interferes a lot because it is private school, right? (Taís)

The movement I make is like this: I ask students to evaluate me (…) and I leave possibilities open (…) I think this is important because students start to see that we care about what they think and it’s a way for us to establish a relationship of trust with them. (Joana)

An interesting aspect in Breno and Taís’ narrative is that they highlight the idea that students’ assessments of teachers dictate their work. This agrees with ^{Naiff et al. (2010}), who claim that:

What we see in private schools is students as the center of the process; satisfying it is the origin and result of all actions. Private schools are also attuned to market demands. In this type of school, the field of forces always tends in favor of the clientele (p. 59).

Thus, the situation teachers reported informs us of how power and authority forces surround mediated actions. For ^{Wertsch (1998}), the question of power and authority may relate to a certain authority agents enjoy to discuss a particular subject in the context surrounding them. Thus, the two teachers’ narratives seem to describe this property of mediated action as they show that students use a discourse of power in the private schools in which they work.

^{Wertsch (1998}) stresses that the cultural tools subjects use are material. Although the materiality of items such as computers, books, and objects for practical classes is quite evident—since they constitute physical objects we can manipulate —, this same property is less obvious when we consider cultural tools, such as discourse and language (^{Oliveira, et al., 2019}). For ^{Wertsch (1998)}, materiality characterizes all mediational means as their form of use changes the agents participating in the actions, as per teachers’ narratives.

Given the above, we found that agents use cultural tools in our three proposed acts - planning, classroom practices, and evaluation of teaching actions - to achieve several goals. This agrees with ^{Wertsch (1998}), who stresses that the mediated actions and mediational means agents use follow an organization into multiple purposes, rather than a single one. The author states that finding a single purpose in an act indicates that researchers used a single point of view during their analysis and failed to consider the context (scenario) in which acts took place since, for ^{Wertsch (1998)}, “scenarios usually suggest or delimit the objectives which will be pursued in them” (p.60). Thus, as teaching actions are performed, they gain multiple goals (purposes) according to the forms of use of each cultural tool within institutions.

For ^{Tardif (2014}), experiential knowledge encompasses teachers’ knowledge, competencies, skills or abilities, and attitudes from which they interpret, understand, and guide their profession and daily practices. The author also states that one of the main research strategies associated with this assessment of knowledge is to create possibilities for subjects to talk about “their reasons for actions or discussions, that is, ultimately of the knowledge on which they base themselves to act or discuss” (Tardif, 2014, p. 200). The author adds that studying the reasons for acting enables research to reach subjects’ knowledge. We argue that teachers’ goals reflect their experiential knowledge since they show why agents use certain mediational means in the tensions within their work contexts (^{Wertsch, 1998}), constituting the knowing-doing and the teaching knowledge mobilized in these institutions (^{Tardif, 2014}).

The following table summarizes and relates the experiential purposes/knowledge in the narratives of the teacher subjects in this research as they use mediational tools in the three analyzed acts.

As we argue that experiential knowledge stems from the irreducible tension between agents and their cultural tools within their institutions, we highlight the interactive character of this knowledge, as ^{Tardif (2014}) states:

Rather than constituting intimate objects populated by mental representations, teachers’ knowledge is always linked to a work situation with others (students, colleagues, parents, etc.), a knowledge anchored in a complex task (teaching) within a workspace (classrooms, schools) and rooted in an institution and in a society (p. 15).

Thus, from our analysis of the knowledge we found, we stress that teachers’ educational acts encompass several ways of acting which they mobilized in their practice. ^{Roldão (2007}) deems the action of teaching an intelligent one, founded on a secure domain of knowledge, i.e., knowing how to teach. She defines knowing how to teach as “making someone learn something” (^{Roldão, 2005}, p. 117). For her, recognizing that teachers have specific knowledge is an important element to develop their professionality. Roldão (2007) also points out that knowing how to teach, as a professional knowledge, is a composite knowledge, rather than a singular one.

It emerges from several forms of formal and experiential knowledge, which a few professionals further develop and question. It only becomes a professional knowledge when and if teachers recreate it by mobilizing a transformative process in each pedagogical, contextual, practical, and singular act. In each single situation, professionals must know how to mobilize all the knowledge they had acquired, transforming it into the foundation of informed action, i.e., teaching as a process to build learning in others and by others, constituting an art and a technique based on science (p. 101).

For the author, experiential knowledge makes up teachers’ knowing-doing. This agrees with ^{Tardif (2014}), who points out that “what we call the knowledge of teachers or knowing how to teach should be considered and analyzed according to the types of action present in practice (…) knowing how to teach refers, therefore, to a plurality of knowledge. (^{Tardif, 2014}, p. 177), as evidenced in this synthesis. For our focus group, teaching seems under tension due to how public and private schools differ regarding norms defining time for planning and that for bureaucratic procedures; their resources to conduct their classes; relationships between teachers and their peers and with students and their families; and teachers’ mastery and appropriation of new mediational tools.