Some considerations on the political pedagogical education of teachers

When investigating teacher unionism in Latin America, ^{Gindin (2011}) declares that teacher education is one of the dimensions that the State assumes in the regulation of teacher work. Throughout his research, he writes that the State has an intimate relation with public teachers, since it has given these professionals a new mission in the 19th century and became the main employer, having teacher education as a commitment and regulating it as a professional activity.

One of the ways through which the power of the State is presented in the regulation of teacher’s work is through the legal framework. This dimension is also highlighted, for example, in ^{Fischman and Razquin (2019}). When analyzing the conflicts of teacher’s education system in Argentina, they highlight the centrality of legal changes on the shaping of the teaching profession and the role of unions in the dispute of this process. In the Brazilian case, it is also possible to observe a broad and continuous dispute over the meanings and ways of implementing teacher development policies (^{Dourado, 2015}; ^{Gatti, 2016}), which has permeated educational policy, such as the most recent clash over the changes of the National Education Council Resolution on guidelines regarding teacher education in the undergraduate level. In Brazil, both union entities and study and research entities in education have been strong actors in the dispute involving the production of legislation and their implementation policies.

The set of guidelines on how teacher education organizes the conditions of professional practice, both in terms of license for professional performance (^{Resolution, 2009}) and the conditions for professional development, with provision for continuing education, as a constituent element to value education professionals, under the terms of LDB 9394/1996.

With the approval of the curriculum Guidelines [Diretrizes Curriculares] for teacher education, ^{Dourado (2015}) highlighted the extent of continuing education in an educational project:

According to the new DCNs, continuing education comprises collective, organizational and professional dimensions, as well as rethinking the pedagogical process of knowledge and values, and involves extension activities, study groups, pedagogical meetings, courses, programs and actions that go beyond the minimal training required for teaching, having as its main purpose the reflection on the educational practice and the search for technical, pedagogical, ethical and political improvement of the teaching professional (^{Dourado, 2015}, p. 312).

The repealing of the guidelines of Resolution 2/2015, which was very criticized by national research entities in education (^{ANFOPE, 2019}) and its substitution for the Resolution 2/2019 of the National Education Council [Conselho Nacional de Educação], responds to a pragmatic reductionist perspective on teacher education by promoting an alignment between education and the National Common Core Curriculum [Base Nacional Comum Curricular] (^{Farias, 2019}). The analysis of this aspect is beyond the scope of this article, but it is important to highlight that, even in the 2019 version, the issue of continuing education is still relevant, as it is defined in the document as part of an education project:

Continuing education should be considered an essential component for teacher professionalization, and should be integrated into the daily life of educational institutions, considering the different knowledges and teaching experiences, as well as the pedagogical project of basic education institution in which the teacher works (^{Resolução, 2019}, p. 3).

The key with which the Resolution presents the issue is different from the idea of appreciation and reaffirms professionalization, another dimension, whose conception of meaning for educational policies is permeated by disputes (^{Oliveira, 2010}). In this context, it is important to consider that teacher continuing education, in addition to having the educational system as its maintainer, can be considered a space to confront the conception between different social groups, among which, teachers’ unions that have disputed protagonism. On the other hand, the initial education courses do not comprise teacher’s political education, hindering opportunities for teachers to understand their profession in the social context or the specificities of their career. Here are some of the principles that guide the national common core for initial and continuing education:

commitment to educational equality and equity, as founding principles of the BNCC;

recognition that teacher education requires a set of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes, which are inherently grounded in practice and should extend far beyond the mandatory internship, being present, from the beginning of the course, both in educational and pedagogical contents, as well as in the specific area of knowledge to be taught;

for the licensee’s right to learn and commitment to their learning as a value in itself and as a way to provide exemplary learning experiences that the teachers-in-training will be able to experience respect with their own students in the future;

recognition of first year students right to learn, expanding opportunities to develop knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that are essential for good performance in the course and for the future teaching performance;

attribution of social value to the school and the teaching profession in a continuous, consistent and coherent way with all the learning experiences of teachers in training;

strengthening of the responsibility, protagonism and autonomy of the graduates with their own professional development;

integration between theory and practice, both with regard to pedagogical and didactic knowledge, as well as specific knowledge in the area of knowledge or of the curricular component to be taught;

centrality of the practice through internships that focus on planning, conducting and evaluating the class, under the mentoring of experienced teachers or coordinators of the internship school, in accordance with the Pedagogical Course Practice (PPC);

recognition and respect for basic education institutions as essential partners in teacher education, especially those in public schools;

engagement of the entire teaching staff of the course in planning and monitoring mandatory internship activities;

establishment of formal partnerships between schools, networks or education systems and local institutions for the planning, execution and joint evaluation of practical activities foreseen in the training of the licentiate;

taking advantage of the times and spaces of practice in the areas of knowledge, components or fields of experience, to establish the commitment with innovative methodologies and interdisciplinary projects, curriculum, flexibility, construction of training itineraries, student’s life projects, among others;

evaluation of the quality of teacher education courses through specific instruments that consider the competence matrix of this document and objective data from educational assessments, in addition to scientific research that demonstrates evidence of improvement in the quality of training;

adoption of an intercultural perspective of valuing national history, culture and arts, as well as the contributions of the ethnic groups that make up the Brazilian nationality (Resolution, 2019)

The amplitude listed in these principles is not possible without education in its political dimension. This does not mean that the undergraduate or continuing education courses should exclusively educate teachers from a political perspective, since professionalization implies technical mastery of their field of knowledge. Another opportune consideration about the political dimension of the processes referred is that it goes beyond the conceptual debate, developing it throughout their training. This is what happens, for example, in the experience of social movements, such as the student movement, marking the experience of some of them and contributing to their education. However, these are dimensions that are beyond the strict control of what an initial academic education is. Likewise, it would be very difficult, in a short period of time, to train professionals with full pedagogical and political knowledge. Therefore, it is observed that, throughout teacher career, part of the teachers and education workers notice that the understanding of their working conditions are beyond the pedagogical practice and/or what this knowledge reaches in itself, since political changes are dynamic and the events might not match the time of their education. Therefore, it seems that it can be asserted that, considering the reality’s dynamics, the new educational needs arise in this historical moment.

It is worth considering that each political group that becomes the ruler of the State, and consequently of the educational management, brings with it a project of society and, obviously, of education. The term ruler is used herein according to ^{Gramsci (2004}). The disputes therein have to be understood by those who envision a social quality education for all.

Regarding teacher education, among the interests of different State projects, there is the role that private agents connected to the market have played in the public sector, prioritizing the interests of capital (^{Caetano, 2019}); the fact that networks themselves, in a decentralized system as the Brazilian one, has a diversity of education projects, even when carried out entirely in the public sphere; and, finally, unions, which can be considered private agents that dispute the management of political education in opposition to market interests (^{Andrade, 2017}). After all, there is no education or educational action free of political interest, even though it is not always explicit, as Evangelista e Shiroma have already written.

The concrete measures for the exercise of political-ideological control over the teaching profession involve teacher training and professional performance. That is, the reform of the 1990s, and its continuation in the new century, reached all spheres of teaching: curriculum, textbook, initial and continuing education, career, certification, training locus, use of information and communication technologies, evaluation and management (^{Evangelista & Shiroma, 2007}, p. 538).

From this perspective, considering that the CNTE is a space to build resistance and because its documents, training and debates work in the perspective of defending the interests of its affiliates, the education workers, the Retratos da Escola journal is an instrument for individual education or a guideline for a collective education, comprising essential themes of the last 20 years of education in Brazil. What stands out in this publication, considering that it is a union vehicle, is its scientific-academic editorial differential, which seeks to meet the demands of basic education teachers, keeping an interface with the struggle for changes and transformations in education and society. In this sense, the ESFORCE school and its publications are a possibility to contribute to transformations in education and society as can be observed in the analysis of the articles published in the different issues of the journal. There is a retrospective of the conflicts that the category has faced, as well as the laws that have been implemented and how they are situated in history.

CNTE Training School: ESFORCE

CNTE (ESFORCE) is a virtual school within the structure of this institution, where publications and courses are made to educate union leaders, who, through the unions affiliated to the Confederation, can replicate the courses to their bases since its material is available on the website for consultation and use. ESFORCE was created in 2003, adding its database materials, which had already been produced, such as those of the Education International [Internacional da Educação] and the Mato Grosso Union. Besides these specific educational materials, there are several periodical publications, such as Mátria, a magazine that stands out and focuses on women’s issues (available on the CNTE/ Esforce platform since 2003); the Education notebooks (available on the site since 2009); and extensive political-union training material (research, booklets, subsidies and systematization of meetings). Since 2008, ESFORCE also houses the Retratos da Escola journal, an uncommon type of publication in Brazil, which is why it is the focus of this analysis.

According to Juçara Vieira, CNTE’s president from 2002 to 2008 and a member of the journal’s editorial board, Retratos da Escola was an initiative that resulted from the entity’s perception of the need to organize a systematized training process in and by CNTE. According to her, the journal is

[...] aimed at basic education professionals. I still collaborate with Retratos da Escola, which was an initiative of the time I was the director, when I thought that it would be fundamental to have an educational process in CNTE through a school called ESFORCE, with different elements, among which, a scientific journal, aimed at basic education professionals, as valid as other scientific works, but with shorter texts for the urgencies that basic education professionals have (^{Vieira, 2019}).

For the creation of the union academic journal it was necessary to establish a link with the Academy, which happened with the National University of Brasília (UnB). Professor Luiz Fernandes Dourado, from the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), was the first editor of the publication in this format, working on it from 2008 to 2014, the year in which professor Leda Scheibe, from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), who was already a member of the editorial board, took over the editorship. The journal is organized around thematic dossiers. In the first edition in this format, there is the following explanation in the editorial text:

Retratos da Escola will house studies, analysis, research that focus on the school and the protagonism of its professionals. The editorial line, therefore, has a specific axis, including: (i) professional education; (ii) educational work, conditions and practices; and (iii) school and system organization [...]. In the new editorial proposal of the scientific journal for basic education, Retratos da Escola was structured according to the following sections: Interview, Article, Review and Document (^{Dourado, 2008}, p. 7).

Throughout its existence, Retratos da Escola maintained this structure with a few changes regarding the distribution of the themes. From 2018 onwards, the journal became four-monthly and maintained a version in Portuguese and Spanish, which is articulated with CNTE’s action in the scope of Education International. The titles of each dossier in its union academic format are shown in Table 1.

As shown in the table below, the journal’s titles follow the educational events in the country, comprising both a union agenda focused more specifically on the category’s conditions, in a corporative sense, as well as presents themes related to the content of educational policies, focusing on the pedagogical disputes, educational system management, organization of the different steps and modalities. Therefore, they provide access to scientific subsidies for the educational debate. The access to the journal is free and it is only available in electronic format.

Based on the editorials of each journal issue, we can map the purposes and an organization of the recent history of the policies and educational demands in the country. Without intending to exhaust the discussion, a thematic analysis of the editorials (^{Lapadat, 2010}) is presented below, comparing them with the history of the journal.

Editorial

The editorials tell the history of the journal, which, in turn, tells the history of education in the last twenty years. Therefore, the journal deepens the discussion on Brazilian education, as presented in its first issue. This new format and the new editorial line, with renewed content, intends to take the reflection on Brazilian education to a higher level. Thus, this is how Retratos da Escola seeks to structure itself, by promoting its institutional consolidation through important changes in its graphic design and deepening the density of the analysis (^{Dourado, 2008}).

Each dossier in the journal discusses essential issues of the Brazilian context. In the first issue (2008), in a union academic format, a dossier was published in the second year of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government, the year of the emblematic approval of the National Salary Floor Law and of intense debates about education workers in the scope of CNE and CAPES. The first dossier is dedicated to the specific issue of teacher education, a choice that the editor justifies:

Our objective is to contribute to the discussion and evaluation of the current milestones and policies that have as object the education of Brazilian teachers itself, vital to trace an auspicious future for national teaching and, as a consequence, to improve the quality of education in the country (^{Dourado, 2008}, p. 13).

The second issue (2009), with two dossiers focused on the debate on funding and education management, when municipal and state preparatory conferences for the first National Education Conference CONAE/2010 were happening. The editorial highlights the event as an instrument of popular participation and the intention of the dossier is to contribute to the debates in the context of local education conferences. It is important to point out the fact that, in 2009, the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and Appreciation of Educational Professionals (FUNDEB) and the debates about the need to broaden the resources for education were intense (^{Pinto, 2009}).

The second dossier from 2009, volume 3, entitled “School Employee: identity and professionalization”, is dedicated to a specific category of actors in the school, the school employees. This edition analyzes the construction of identity and professionalization of this segment of workers in the schools, a debate linked to the context of important achievements in union movement regarding appreciation of school employees with the approval of the amendment to the national Education Law (LDB) that established the basis for the recognition of school employees as education professionals, as long as they were duly qualified.

The year of 2009 ended with the approval of the Constitutional Amendment 59, which expanded the obligation of education in Brazil. Therefore, the 2010 themes were articulated by the central axis of the CONAE/2010 debates, which had intensive discussions and participation of different social segments. The result from this conference was the national Education Plan (2011-2020).

The first dossier in the 2010 issue, ‘Estado, Políticas e Educação: o novo PNE’ (State, Policies and Education: The new PNE), sought to bring subsidies to the discussions on this theme, it is composed of themes that aimed at presenting reflections, evaluations and propositions related to the document. The purpose was to achieve a wide participation of society, in a moment of the intense democratic process. The second dossier, from the 2010 issue, presented a debate related to the right to education. The discussion was based on the constitutional amendment n. 59/09.

As it changed the Federal Constitution, deliberating on the annual reduction of the percentage of the Disentailment of Union Revenues (DRU) on the funds for the maintenance and development of education referred in art.212 of the Federal Constitution; mandatory and free education from age 4 to 17; the expansion of the scope of supplementary programs for basic education; the definition that the federated entities should establish ways of collaborating, in order to ensure the universalization of mandatory education; the definition of the ten-year duration of the National Education Plan and the establishment of goals for the application of public funds in education as a proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP) (^{Dourado, 2012}, p. 179).

Thus, the texts in this volume encompass the contribution to the debate towards the improvement of education as a social right aiming at deepening the discussion and subsidizing political educational dispute in the construction of the PNE.

In 2011, the journal keeps the same intents of the previous year, with texts about high school and professional education in the first volume, presenting a balance, some limits and the possibilities of this level of education in the sense of overcoming the structural duality, which historically marks it. At the time, the law project PL n. 8035, from 2010, was being debated in the National Congress. It proposed 20 goals and 170 strategies, besides 2.915 amendments to be forwarded to the same law project. The goal was to guarantee the universalization of social quality basic education. It is worth reminding that the constitutional amendment, E.C n. 59 (2009), proposes the universalization of education from age 4 to 17, until 2016, besides the decree n. 5.154, from 2004, that dealt specifically with high school and professional education. The second volume (2011) gave specific attention to primary education, focusing on the legislation and implications of the public-private relation offer, the great tension in the process of expansion of this modality of education, which has a significant weight on municipal networks.

In 2012, the journal celebrates its 10^th issue and starts with a Spanish publication, in addition to being indexed by the Library of Congress (USA). In this issue, the dossier follows the dialog between the National Education Plan (PNL), focusing on federalism and education, problematizing the urgency of the institution in the National Education System.

In this special issue, the goal is to contribute to the debate on the advancement of the current organization and decentralization of Brazilian education, from a perspective of a State policy in planning, funding and management, in line with constitutional provisions, involving democratic management of the systems and institutions and its autonomy. In short, the guarantee of objective conditions for an articulated action of the Union, states, Federal District and municipalities in favor of education as a social right (^{Dourado, 2012}, p. 8).

The following issue, still in 2012, inaugurates the 5th year of the journal and proposes the analysis of studies and research on the working and health conditions of education workers. In this year, the reference document for the second CONAE, that would happen in 2014, was approved. Therefore, in 2013, the municipal, district and state conferences were organized. Thus, since the objective was to articulate the discussion around the axis of professional appreciation, the dossier kept the focus of its discussion on the health and working conditions of education professionals, in addition to the appreciation issue.

The year of 2013 starts with a discussion on assessment of basic education, its interfaces, processes and national organization, showing the need to create a national subsystem of evaluation that articulates CONAE’s deliberations. The debates are in the context of education universalization, which should take place up to 2016, considering education from age zero to three and the expansion of mandatory education from age four to seventeen, as recommended by Amendment 59.

In the second semester of 2013, the ‘Education and Diversity’ dossier opens a specific debate on the journal about the pedagogical process. The tension regarding issues related to diversity were intense in the PNE process. The objective of the dossier was to discuss the relation between diversity and human rights specifically, considering the inequalities and regional specificities and was approved by the public selection of the National Association of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Education (ANPED), as a result of a partnership between the Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion Secretary (SECADI) of the Education Ministry (MEC). This is an important acknowledgement from the academic context received by Retratos da Escola gaining space among A set of scientific journals.

In the following year (2014), the title of the edition was ‘Basic Education: policies and worldwide processes’. As the title of the dossier itself suggests, the intention was to analyze Brazilian education considering the agenda for world education, more specifically, the principles proposed by the Jomtien Conference, which took place in 1990. The discussion was aimed at characterizing and problematizing public policies, especially mandatory education, registering, among others, the processes of organization, management and educational indicators, as well as the regulations that give them contours (^{Dourado, 2014}). In the same volume, the interviews are about the guarantee to expand the rights in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Spain, France, Portugal and Uruguay, offering important contributions to the educational analysis of Brazil, also in comparison with other countries. This was the last publication of the journal edited by professor Luís Dourado.

The second journal, published in 2014, had professor Leda Scheibe as its editor-in-chief. With the title ‘PNE 2014-2024: Challenges for Brazilian Education’, she intended to bring to light the disputes at stake in the National Education Plan (PNE), instituted by the Law n. 13005, and delimit its perspectives. Revisiting the theme of the PNE is interesting insofar as it is considered a perspective of continuing education. Potentially, the debates that took place during the course of the plan can now be resumed in light of the legislation approved.

The theme of 2016 Retratos da Escola edition is ‘Diversity at school: gender and sexuality’. Again, it is an issue intensely dedicated to a pedagogical project contrary to conservatism. The proposal announced in the journal was to contribute to the reflection and reaffirmation of inclusion in education and society, as well as the fight against prejudice. In the editorial, Leda Scheibe and Roselane Fátima Campos state:

Joining efforts is particularly important at this time, when we are experiencing setbacks in the Brazilian education motivated by conservatism - dominant even in the National Congress - which culminated, for example, in the modification of the final text of the PNE (2014-2024), by replacing the expression ‘promotion of racial, regional, gender and sexual orientation equality’ with ‘overcoming educational inequalities, with emphasis on the promotion of citizenship and the eradication of all forms of discrimination’ (^{Scheibe & Campos, 2015}, p. 7, author’s italics).

The last 2015 issue, entitled “National Common Core: curricular projects in dispute”, intended to offer subsidies for the debate, which was foreseen in the Federal Constitution, in LDB 9394/96 and reaffirmed in the PNE 2014/2025 (Law n. 13.005, of June 25, 2014). The editorial shows the whole trajectory of the National Common Core and its content, pointing out its limits and possibilities since it is not a consensus. As is known to all, curriculum is always a terrain of historical disputes.

In 2016, issues 18 and 19 dealt, respectively, with teacher’s salary floor and the 20 years of the LDB. In the first issue of the year, the discussion revolves around the national professional salary floor for teaching professionals in public Basic Education, since Law n. 11.738, 2008 had already been approved, and now needed to be observed, it was - and still is - necessary to take actions that value education professionals. This issue basically presents two fundamental axes for the debate on professional appreciation: decent salary and appropriate career, as stated in the editorial.

Issue 19, 2016, presents an analysis of the changes, especially the changes brought about by PEC 241/55, which froze public expenses for twenty years, and by the Provisional Measure (MP) no. 746, 22 September, 2016, which modified the LDB and changed high school education. The editorial also announced the projects that were being carried out.

Likewise, there are many bills being debated in the National Congress, in legislative assemblies, city councils and District Legislative Chamber, which aim to establish the “School without Political Party”, violating the principles governing Brazilian education, provided for in the Federal Constitution and in the LDB. Such projects aim to define what teachers can or cannot work in the classroom, thus injuring the freedom to teach and learn (^{Comitê Editorial, 2016}, p. 362).

In 2017, the journal’s 10th year, the first volume debates the secondary education reform, in addition to the other losses and setbacks described in the previous volume. The threats at that time, also brought about by the advance of conservatism, were worrying, as shown in the editorial text.

The current moment - June 2017 - leads us to a serious reflection on yet another threat to the educational future that we have been building. On 04/27/2017, the Ministry of Education (MEC) published Ordinance n. 577, through which changes in the management and composition of the National Education Forum (FNE) were made, excluding traditionally combative representations and changing previous democratic and collegiate deliberations of the FNE Plenary (^{Scheibe, 2017}a, p. 8).

The second 2017 dossier is entitled “Privatization of and in Education: corporate projects in dispute”. This was the first year in which the effects of the media juridical parliamentary coup, suffered in 2016 (^{Jinkings, 2016}), were increasingly evident, for example, by dismantling spaces for social participation, as well as the social policies themselves. CONAE, for example, which had its third edition legally scheduled for 2018, was mischaracterized by the government at the time, as explained in the editorial:

A new Conae, coordinated by the National Education Forum (FNE), was planned for 2018, but was mischaracterized by the current government through authoritarian exclusions and inclusion of new entities, in accordance with the interests of the new anti-democratic order. Entities excluded from the FNE, gathered in a National Committee in Defense of Education, decided to promote the National Popular Conference on Education, Conape-2018, which will continue the previous initiatives, with the goal of ensuring the improvement and implementation of the National Education Plan (PNE), the implementation of the National Education System that enables the strengthening of public education and the regulation of private education (^{Scheibe, 2017}b, p. 385)

The objective of this volume of the journal was to help reflect, subsidize and organize that very difficult moment in which projects of society, and, consequently, of education, were imposed on a country in a conservative and harmful manner, hindering the construction of a democratic education of social quality.

Issue 22, of volume 12, had some editorial changes. The journal had then three issues per year, thus meeting the requirements of a qualified scientific journal. In this volume, the focus was on resistance, emphasizing the results of CONAPE 2018: Belo Horizonte Letter. The letter is a historical document, in which there is a plan of struggle, aiming at the fulfillment of the PNL 2014-2024, as well as the construction of the SNE in a democratic perspective. “It also demands an end to the interference of the Ministry of Education in the National Education Forum, defending the reconstitution of this space in its original composition, among other manifestations” (^{Scheibe, 2018}).

In the 2018 volumes, resistance and the need for a diagnosis on the conservative wave that had developed in the country are presented, first, in the dossier “(Un) Democratization of Education”, which portrays the national backward policy movement towards education and reaffirms the basic principles of public education. The whole journal is articulated in the sense of analyzing and understanding the situation at that moment in which a social project contrary to the one defended by the CNTE was elected. The last issue of the same year marks the 30^th anniversary of the Federal Constitution approved in 1988 and its importance for education. The journal analyzes the achievements and the advancements still needed, as well as the challenges posed at this moment in history. This was the last issue printed; the following became exclusively electronic.

From 2019 onward, the 12^th year of the journal, it became four-monthly, that is, an annual volume divided into three dossier to meet the indexing criteria of journals, but also evidencing the consolidation of an academic vehicle with community interest. Issue 26, entitled “The cost of students: who cares? discusses issues related to the title of the dossier. In the editorial text, the authors draw attention to the movement that advocates the removal of children from school under the pretext of protection and point out some possible implications of school militarization, among other ideas postulated by the School without Political Party Movement.

The last issue of the year ‘Attacks on Education: A Balance of the Losses and Damages’ presents a synthesis of the post 2016 cycle. In concluding this editorial, the authors affirm:

Since the 2016 coup, we have witnessed the meticulous dismantling of a social project aimed at improving the conditions of the Brazilian people - and particularly of those most in need - built with a lot of effort in the country since the struggles for the 1988 Constitution. What we are witnessing now is an avalanche of calamitous neoliberal policies, initiated in the 1990s governments, with the overthrow of consecrated labor rights, increased unemployment, delivery of important slices of the national treasury to the greedy international market, the privatization of state assets, which transfer what belongs to the Brazilian people to a privileged minority of billionaires in cahoots with international conglomerates (^{Comitê Editorial, 2019}).

This description of the editorials does not intend to exhaust the possibilities of interpreting the role of Retratos da Escola in the Brazilian educational context, but to resume some elements announced in the theoretical framework of this article: the need for teachers to have material available that allows them to articulate their daily professional life to the great educational issues, using it as a tool to combat isolation, as well as the perspective that the union movement has a proposal for continuing education, presenting itself as a strong interlocutor both for the construction of specific educational policies of workers’ projections, that is, corporative, and for the disputes to come regarding the right to education and the reach of the educational project. In its editorials, the journal transits from proposition to resistance, with an intense capacity to give visibility to the debates of the conjuncture through the set of thematic dossiers.

Considering the dismantling and the oppression that the social project suffers, previously described by the journal editorial committee, it seems necessary to refer to the lessons found in the first and last page of the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire.

Once again men, challenged by the drama of current time. […] From these pages I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love (Freire, 2000, p. 40).