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Série-Estudos

versão impressa ISSN 1414-5138versão On-line ISSN 2318-1982

Sér.-Estud. vol.28 no.63 Campo Grande maio/ago 2023  Epub 21-Ago-2023

https://doi.org/10.20435/serieestudos.v28i63.1805 

Artigo

Contributions to professional construction in a collaborative network

Contributos para a construção profissional numa rede colaborativa

Contribuciones para la construcción profesional en una red colaborativa

1University of Minho (UMinho), Braga, Portugal


Abstract

Internship is a central axis in teacher training, forcing the mobilization and articulation of different types of knowledge, both personal and professional. Becoming a teacher is, thus, an individual and collective process that requires the internal symbiosis of action, experience, and emotion, to constitute itself as a total action of a person in the performance of a specific profession. This text is based on an approach to the basic principles of teacher training, and then we proceed to make a report on teacher training courses in Portugal, in the so-called post-Bologna period, with a specific focus on internship. Given the relative autonomy of the construction and development of the courses in higher education, which we will address, we will use the master’s course in Pre-School Education and Teaching of the 1st Cycle, that takes place at the Institute of Education - University of Minho, as a case from which the internship will be explained. This is realized with the support of a collaborative network, constituted by the intern, by the cooperating teacher, and by the supervising teacher, in a process of action and reflection, in which pedagogical research has a very relevant meaning.

Keywords: teacher training; internship; pedagogical research

Resumo

O estágio é um eixo central na formação de professores, forçando a mobilização e articulação de diferentes tipos de conhecimento, tanto pessoais quanto profissionais. Tornar-se professor é, assim, um processo individual e coletivo que requer a simbiose interna de ação, experiência e emoção, para se constituir como uma ação total de uma pessoa no desempenho de uma profissão específica. Este texto começa com uma abordagem aos princípios básicos da formação de professores para, em seguida, apresentar os cursos de formação de professores em Portugal, no chamado período pós-Bolonha, com um foco específico no estágio. Dada a relativa autonomia da construção e desenvolvimento dos cursos no ensino superior, utilizaremos o curso de mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo, que ocorre no Instituto de Educação - Universidade do Minho, como um caso a partir do qual o estágio será explicado. Isso é realizado com o apoio de uma rede colaborativa, constituída pelo estagiário, pelo professor cooperante e pelo professor orientador, num processo de ação e reflexão, no qual a pesquisa pedagógica tem um significado muito relevante.

Palavras-chave: formação de professores; estágio; pesquisa pedagógica

Resumen

La pasantía es un eje central en la formación de profesores, que obliga a la movilización y articulación de diferentes tipos de conocimiento, tanto personales como profesionales. Convertirse en profesor es, por lo tanto, un proceso individual y colectivo que requiere la simbiosis interna de acción, experiencia y emoción, para constituirse como una acción total de una persona en el desempeño de una profesión específica. Este texto comienza con un enfoque en los principios básicos de la formación de profesores y luego presenta los cursos de formación de profesores en Portugal, en el llamado período post-Bolonia, con un enfoque específico en la pasantía. Dada la relativa autonomía en la construcción y desarrollo de los cursos en educación superior, utilizaremos el curso de maestría en Educación Preescolar y Enseñanza del Primer Ciclo, que se lleva a cabo en el Instituto de Educación - Universidad do Minho, como un caso desde el cual se explicará la pasantía. Esto se realiza con el apoyo de una red colaborativa, conformada por el pasante, el profesor colaborador y el profesor supervisor, en un proceso de acción y reflexión en el cual la investigación pedagógica tiene un significado muy relevante.

Palabras clave: formación de profesores; pasantía; investigación pedagógica

1 INTRODUCTION

Internship is a central axis in teacher training, forcing the mobilization and articulation of different types of knowledge, both personal and professional. Becoming a teacher is, at the same time, an individual and a collective process, which requires the internal symbiosis of action, experience and emotion, to constitute itself as a total action of a person in the performance of a human profession.

This text is based on an approach on the basic conceptions and principles of teacher training that we advocate - conceptions of society, of education and school, of the vision of pupils/children and young people, of the role of teachers in the present and in the future; on experience and integral action, on school contextualization of training - to afterwards take into account teacher training courses in Portugal, in the so-called post-Bologna period, with a specific focus on internship.

Given the relative autonomy of the construction and development of courses in higher education, which will be discussed here, we will use the Master’s course in Pre-School Education and Teaching of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (MEPEE1CEB), realized at the Institute of Education - University of Minho (UMinho), as a case from which we will explain how internship is developed.

This course certifies for the teaching exercise in childhood education and in the 1st cycle of basic education, therefore, it aims to train childhood educators and teachers2 with a profile of a mono-docent professional, that is, someone responsible for the teaching-learning process of all curricular areas of his/her group. The training is realized with the support of a collaborative network constituted by the trainee, by the cooperative advisor, and by the supervising teacher, in a process of action and reflection, in which the initiation to pedagogical research provides a very relevant meaning in the training of the reflective teacher and researcher. According to Decree-Law (DL) No. 79/2014, of May 14, article 23 (PORTUGAL, 2014), the cooperating advisors are teachers of the cooperative schools who collaborate in the training as mentors of trainees and who must meet, cumulatively, the following requirements: a) have adequate training and experience in the tasks to be performed; (b) have experience of teaching practice in their respective level and cycle of education and a teaching practice for a period not inferior to five years. The supervisors3 are teachers of the institution of higher education who follow up the trainee, meeting with him weekly, analyzing his/her pedagogical documentation (weekly reflection, which is the basis of the construction of the internship portfolio), and guiding the pedagogical research to be realized by the trainee, which will be defended in a public examination, on the basis of the submission of a final report. The training network, which is expected to work collaboratively, is thus constituted by the trainee, by the cooperative advisor, and by the supervisor.

2 REFERENCE PRINCIPLES FOR TRAINING

Teacher training is intrinsically linked to the conceptions of society, of education and of school, to the vision of pupils/children and young people, as well as to what is thought about the role of teachers in the present times and in the future, in line with what Nóvoa (2017, p. 1117) argues, “It is not possible to train teachers without being open to society, without a knowledge of the diversity of cultural realities that, nowadays, define education”.

The vison of the teacher, as stated by classical sociology, as a social actor whose norms, awareness of duty, knowledge and moral obligations, are dictated externally, to ‘guarantee’ what was understood as appropriate for the society of that period, without agency or voice in his/her training process is nowadays surpassed. Currently, in a plural school, characterized by cultural diversity and by the multiplicity of modes of interaction and social action, in the face of a present and of a future laden with uncertainties, teachers cannot be reduced to a mere social role previously programmed, working according to a unique logic determined by others. The complexity of today’s society, of schools as organizations, and of the teaching action in a world of uncertainty requires teachers with their own identity, with authenticity, capable of assuming the authorship of their own lives, who are able to work collaboratively with professional peers and communities, hence, subscribing to Nóvoa’s (2017, p. 1122) statement, “[…] it is not possible to train teachers without the presence of other teachers and without the experience of school institutions”. Teacher training is a vocational preparation; the relationship between training and profession is biunivocal, that is, the importance of the profession for training or of the training for the profession cannot be neglected, which requires collaborative processes between the different actors in the training process (trainees, teachers of training institutions, and teachers of primary and secondary schools).

The internship is an integral component and, perhaps, a central one, in teacher training courses, depending its training value on the way it is organized and, above all, experienced by each subject. That is, the internship is an essential core of training, which requires opportunities for the trainee to experience ways of being a teacher, therefore, to experience his being teachers and acting as such.

Dubet (1994, p. 15) understands experience as fundamental to give meaning to social practices, defining this concept as “[…] individual and collective conducts dominated by the heterogeneity of its constitutive principles and by the activity of individuals who must build the meaning of their practices within this heterogeneity”. This author disassembles this concept into three traits, which allow us to expand the analysis of the focus under study:

  1. Heterogeneity of cultural principles - the social identity (in this case, of the trainees who are preparing themselves for the teaching profession) is constituted by their doing, their work, their experience. That is, the determinant their means that the social role of teaching is constructed by the subject during specific formation;

  2. Subjective distance of the individuals (trainees) from the system (school education) - in the planning and reflection process trainees deal with different logics of action, feeling the need to explain to themselves how they build their practices by reference to the set of values and knowledge of a professional field;

  3. Construction of the collective experience - the construction of autonomous teachers, integrated in a collective of which they are a part, enables a participatory and dynamic process of professional construction.

That is, in their experiences, trainees deal with a combination of logics, situations, professional postures, ways of being and dealing with which they are faced; they make choices, trace paths, thus promoting the process of constitution of their identity. Social experience is the activity through which every person builds an action whose meaning and coherence are no longer given by a homogeneous system and by unique values (DUBET, 1994). The trainees are, in the perspective we advocate, critical subjects, whose subjectivation, understood as the subject’s logic (DUBET, 1994), is present in the actions they develop in this future of being teachers, hence the internship process needs to attend to who are the people who decided to access the training, how their life histories and expectations can be mobilized in a process of constitution of themselves (DELORY-MOMBERGER, 2008) as teaching professionals. Experience, as Delory-Momberger (2019, p. 81) so well explains, “[…] is at the heart of the processes according to which we biograph the situations and events of our existence, in which we give them a shape and to which we give a meaning” (translated by the author)4. The author explains this concept by pointing out its three premises: 1. experience is what happens to someone and the way that someone subjectively experiences what happens at the core of his life; 2. the experiential process is that of an implicit or explicit elaboration, of a cumulative and integrative construction, involving the application and development of new resources; 3. experience consists of a set of knowledge, of learning and of skills associated with the exercise of an art or office - to the ‘exercise of living’ - set that is in permanent recomposition and evolution. The researcher reinforces the conception of the construction of the I from experience, but that only gains importance, in the professionalizing field, because it occurs in interaction with the other:

Experience is always what «I» have as an instance of my being in composition and cannot be assimilated or identified with any other as such; but experience is also always built and rebuilt, composed and recomposed, according to the multiple and cumulative configurations of which my existence (my «existing») is woven in its interactions with the world and with others. (MOMBERGER, 2019, p. 85, translated by the author) 5.

That is, in the focus that we approach in this text, we highlight the value that each trainee experiences, shapes, subjectively appropriates the situations in which he/she is fully immersed, in a relationship with others (children/students, advisors, supervisor, community), with the specific knowledge of the profession, with a pedagogical intentionality that is clarified, strengthened, reconfigured and reconstructed over time. The internship experience is not something external to the individual, it is not an ‘object’ that the trainees find on their path, but rather something that occurs within the subject, to which everyone, in the intersubjectivities that they realize in a context, attribute a specific shape.

The teaching profession has an absolutely central relational basis, in which everyone has everything he is, that is, as Nóvoa (2017, p. 1121) tells us, “In the professions that concern the human condition, there is a strong connection between personal dimensions and professional dimensions. In the case of teaching, between what we are and the way we teach”.

Shulman (1991, p. 394) argues that, to be teachers, individuals must not only have some skills, but also make constant reflections about their work, understanding that professional knowledge goes through a process of self-construction, to which we add, a shared process. In a work developed by the author in conjunction with Grossman and Wilson (1989), we are told that the teacher needs to possess a substantive knowledge (body of general contents of subject matters of specific areas of teaching, definitions, conventions and procedures), a syntactic knowledge (ability to interpret and to attribute meaning to knowledge) and beliefs, referring to the importance of the construction of knowledge and its transmission to be accompanied by positions of awareness of the social usefulness of knowledge and the values that are at play in these processes. In a later text, Shulman (2005) states that there is a pedagogy transversal to all professions, which integrates three kinds of learning: a) cognitive (learning to think as a professional); b) practical (learning to act as a professional); and c) moral (learning to think and act responsibly and ethically).

This logic sustains a paradigmatic change in the internship process, moving from the perspective of the trainee who implements it to the trainee who builds and investigates from his own experience (SUÁREZ; OCHOA, 2005). In this line of thought, the reflections they produce throughout the internship, as narratives of practice, by their reflexive character, potentiate trainees as researchers of their own experience. Narrative documentation enables subjective transformation (SUÁREZ; OCHOA, 2005), in which everyone, as a total being, subject of training, in the relationship with others, constitute him/herself as a pedagogical subject, with specific knowledge and discourse, enabling his/her entry into the professional field of teachers.

The construction of professional learning (ROLDÃO, 2001; CANÁRIO, 2001; IMBERNÓN, 2006) takes place in a dynamic relationship with children/students, with the different members of the educational community (teachers, parents, community), with academic knowledge, with educational contexts, in a process that begins in initial training and is developed throughout their professional career. Roldão (2001) emphasizes that teacher education should provide the production of knowledge articulated with professional knowledge generated in action and in reflection on the action, theorized, questioning and questionable, communicable, and appropriated by the community of professionals. Canário (2001) highlights the value of learning from experience and its relevance when this occurs in processes of collective discussion. Professional learning is a continuous process of advances and setbacks, in which the subject builds and reconstructs his/her personal and professional identity in a constant go back and forth dynamics (NÓVOA, 1995).

One of the strongest scaffolding in the training of educators/teachers, in our view, is the approach to the conceptions of the child /student and the pedagogical relationship that follows. In the process of acquiring and constructing teachers’ knowledge, the knowledge that every person develops about the group in which his/her action falls is mediated by the idea of a child, knowledge that will tend to have a multidisciplinary support. The individualization of the educational action, the ability to assist each student with his/her unique history, knowledge, difficulties, and reactions, will thus be one of the foundations for the construction of professional teaching knowledge. In the day-to-day, teachers experience situations either with their children or with their parents and/or with other members of the communities, as well as with other members of their work context, situations that can be enhancers of professional learning if they are subject to a shared critical reflection involving both peers and the sciences of education and the specialized sciences.

As I advocated in a previous text (SARMENTO; MARQUES, 2007), the relationships between children/young people and teachers have changed over time, a reality that mirrors what happens in society in general. In families, the relationship will always have a less formal basis, with greater continuity and affective support, while in schools the interaction is more formal and demarcated in time. The instructional purposes prevailing in the school and the sense of possibility of social ascension that it, symbolically and materially, has represented, with a heavy tradition of vertical relationship from the teacher to the student, in a closed and isolated structure of the social whole, may have postponed, in many cases, the perception of the child as a human being (SARMENTO, 2017, p. 291). The school has been the context that has most integrated a sense of ‘student craft’ (PERRENOUD, 1995; SIROTA, 1993), which appears translated almost exclusively into the development of children as learning beings of the universal knowledge socially regarded as fundamental, often ignoring their global development as human beings. In counterpoint, another vision of a child/student, holder of his/her own opinion, as a thinking social actor, and competent to make choices and express ideas has been establishing itself. This change becomes especially demanding in teacher training, as it requires to call into question representations and practices still very established, according to which the decision-making power was strictly up to teachers (a situation still very common in the experiences of trainees while regular school students, of which greater evidence was gathered in periods of social confinement), requiring a reconceptualization in order to ensure the understanding and effectiveness of the participation of the child/student in his/her educational process. That is, in view of a new understanding of the student, it is necessary to implement a teacher training congruent with these new postures.

In summary, from the perspective of training presented in this text, the internship is understood as a dynamic process, in which the experience is recognized as a constitutive scaffold, necessarily shared among various social actors, with the purpose of promoting the autonomy of the aspiring teacher and the professional development integrated with the personal development. Based on their reflexivity (what I am, what I do, the reasons I do it, the way I evaluate what I do, how I feel in the role of teacher), progressively, trainees build their authorship as a subject. It is expected, with the training that we advocate, that in the relationship between the ‘I’ (intern) and the ‘other’ (children, teachers, school, educational system), in a process of critical reflexivity based on the choices and evaluation of the processes, supported by the vigilance of the cooperative advisors and of the supervisors, trainees construct authentic and structuring professional knowledge.

3 TEACHER TRAINING COURSES IN PORTUGAL

The initial training of teachers for the first cycles (childhood education and 1st cycle of basic education), in Portugal, has been the responsibility of higher education since 1986. From 19866 until the present day, professional qualification has been changing, from bachelor’s to graduate’s degree to, with the Bologna process, master’s degree. Corresponding to an integrated model, professional certification thus requires that the new teacher carry out two training cycles - the Degree in Basic Education (three years of training) and a subsequent master’s degree (one year and a half or two years of training)7.

In a synthetic way8, we can say that the Bologna Process stems from the Bologna Declaration, a document signed on 19 June 1999 by the Ministers of Education of twenty-nine European countries, in a commitment to promote reforms in their countries’ higher education system, according to common criteria. In the course of the that treatise, a revision of the Basic Law of the Educational System was carried out, obliging, from DL No. 49/2005 of August 30 (PORTUGAL, 2005), to require the training of teachers with the academic level of master’s degree, therefore integrating a research component, in a research perspective at the service of improving pedagogical intervention, the regulation of which was presented in DL 74/2006, of March 24 (PORTUGAL, 2006). Subsequently, with DL No. 43/2007 (PORTUGAL, 2007), of February 22, the basic structuring of the different training profiles is defined: childhood educators and teachers of the 1st and 2nd cycles of basic education with the mandatory certification in a bachelor’s degree in Basic Education and subsequent professionalizing master’s degree; teachers of the 3rd cycle and secondary education, who are required to graduate in a specific area of knowledge and to obtain a teaching master’s degree in one or more curricular areas. This configuration of the initial training, according to Mesquita and Roldão, “brought as main transformations, to the initial training of teachers, the transition from a system based on the idea of transmission of knowledge to a system based on the development of competencies […]” (2017, p. 13), here understood as an intertwining of knowledge, capacities and attitudes that allow effective social action in diverse contexts.

It should be noted that universities have relative scientific and pedagogical autonomy to, based on the one referenced in their own decree, design their study plans; higher education institutes - higher education sector without university status - follow a common model, drafted by them.9

Initial training of teachers of any degree of education, from childhood education to secondary education, as presented here, is the responsibility of higher education, so this system has great responsibility “in the projection of teaching as a knowledge-based profession” (NÓVOA, 2017, p. 1116), a knowledge that has to be (re)elaborated in convergence and collaboration between university teachers and teachers at regular schools. Internship is the context in which this convergence and collaboration can take place, being aware that “The encounter of 1 + 1 produces a new reality, different, distinct, from the sum of the parts. In this locus, a third reality is produced, with new meanings” (NÓVOA, 2017, p. 1116), meanings that constitute the new teacher.

The preparation for the practice, embodied in stages of observation and progressive intervention, in the courses of UMinho, begins with the Degree in Basic Education (LEB),which integrates two disciplines - one in the second year of the course and another in the third year - that ensure the approximation to educational contexts, school or non-school, such as nurseries, kindergartens, schools of the 1st and 2nd cycles, pedagogical farms and others, in a very short time, about 15 to 20hrs per year, allowing the first opportunities for access to specific contexts of professional learning.

The organization and development of the internship has as compass, in addition to the legislative references stated by us, the General Profile of the Professional Performance of the Childhood Educator and of the Teachers of Basic and Secondary Education10, and the subsequent specific profiles for teaching at each of the educational levels11, the first of which enunciates references common to the activity of teachers of all educational and teaching levels, defining the requirements for the organization of projects and training and for the recognition of professional teacher qualifications, and in the second of which it is evidenced what is expected of the pedagogical action of educators /teachers at each of the educational levels.

The organization of the internship process, at UMinho, is done in accordance with the General Regulation of Teaching Masters’, which provides for

[…] the scope, nature, and the whole process of evaluation and coordination of activities of initiation to professional practice integrated therein, namely those that imply contact with the professional contexts in which the internship takes place. (IE, 2015, p.1).

In the specific case of the master’s degree under study in this text (MEPEE1CEB), taking into account the relative pedagogical autonomy that each master’s degree possesses (direction and faculty), in the first year of the course students perform an intensive week of observation in context, in the first semester in kindergartens and in the second semester in schools of the 1st cycle, for observation of pedagogical practices, in which they are commonly challenged to carry out small interventions, which are the basis of analysis in the curricular disciplines of the respective semester. In times of pandemic, period of time where we are writing this text, direct access to contexts was very difficult to any member external to the institutions, so an alternative to this training component was found, the indication to the trainees to visualize practices reported on selected pages in social networks, having as reference of choice the principles advocated in the course. Previously, we contacted educators and teachers who are the administrators of the pages, to get their permission to access their groups and to make themselves available to participate in occasional synchronous sessions for clarification and debate with the students, mediated by teachers of their courses. This collaborative practice had very positive effects, being very motivating for students, and generating in them promising questions to be deepened at theoretical-practical levels.

In the second year, the master’s degree includes a period of internship, the first semester in kindergartens and the second semester in schools of the 1st cycle, in which students, inserted in real work contexts, with the continuous support of the cooperative advisor and with the weekly support of the supervisor of UMinho, realize their pedagogical practice. The pedagogical intervention is initiated with a flexible period of observation, articulated, throughout the semester, with progressive leadership in pedagogical intervention, during which they have to develop a pedagogical research process that supports knowledge construction at the service of improving practices.

The selection of the cooperative members is guided by criteria that require them to have five years of professional experience, and preferably have experience in supervising internships and have some training or investigative connection with UMinho. Since the knowledge built with many years of experience shows that voluntariness is a basic condition for a proper supervising exercise, strategically, there is a direct identification of educators and teachers, who are aware of their willingness to accompany trainees, and only after their consent it is established a contact with the directions of the institutions to authorize such cooperation. Between UMinho and the schools, a protocol is then concluded, in which rights and duties are defined. The internship is regulated by a General Regulation of Internships in Teaching, internal to UMinho, which is contextualized to the specificity of each master’s degree. In order to support the action of the cooperating advisors, at the beginning of the school year, it is offered a certified training action in supervision, of voluntary access, realized by teachers assigned to internships. The goal is that the monitoring of the trainee’s training process is carried out in a collaborative process between the cooperative advisor and the supervising teacher, realized in periodic meetings, being the responsibility of the supervisor the final classification of the internship, after cooperative teacher and trainees are auscultated. In order to dilute any classification differences of the various supervisors (each supervisor guides, on average, three trainees), at the end of each semester pedagogical days are realized, open to all supervisors, in which each trainee shares his/her internship experiences, which, in addition to their training value, aspect which is the main purpose of the event, allows a reasoned assessment to be achieved at the teachers’ meeting.

Throughout the internship process, the trainee prepares his pedagogical documentation, which integrates a weekly written reflection, the basis for the elaboration of the portfolio. This reflection constitutes a pedagogical work device, which, as a narrative of the lived experience (MOMBERGER, 2019; SUÁREZ; OCHOA, 2005), allows trainees to reflect on the individual meanings of situations, on the construction of their personal knowledge (How am I building myself as a professional? How did I mobilize theoretical knowledge? Was I able to start from the children’s motivations and challenge them on their learning path? How do I feel in this process? Can I find answers to my questions? and others) in the context of their preparation as teachers. By promoting the central role of the trainee’s reflexivity, thus being self-formative, it is created a basis for the supervisory session to be held in weekly meetings with the supervisor, making room for co-training. When narrating, the trainee distances himself from the action, describes it, analyzes it collaboratively, and builds professionalizing knowledge.

Weekly reflections are the basis for the elaboration of the individual portfolio, which must comply with the following general principles: 1. flexible structuring and continuous construction - allowing the trainee to make a coherent and intelligible reformulation throughout its elaboration; 2. representative selection - the documents selected for inclusion in the portfolio should be representative of the diversity of the training tasks realized, so that their reading allows access to situations, experiences and relevant products of the trainee’s training path; 3. authenticity - it is expected to be illustrative of a unique career development path because experienced by him/herself; 4. reflexivity - should include evidence of critical reflection, demonstrating the capacity for analysis and problematization of different dimensions of professional practice.

The educational practice is based on a research process, understood as research at the service of improving practices, according to the principles of action research, based on a specific dimension of educational practice, identified, in principle, from the observation that the trainees realize in the initial phase of the internship, taking into account the interests or needs expressed by children. The ‘in principle’ induced reservation means that there are a number of factors that make the selection of the topic for investigation not always fulfill this purpose. The responsibility for guiding the research component is a responsibility of the supervisors. Thus, the supervisory team integrates teachers from different disciplinary areas, whether in the area of didactics and the social sciences of education, expressions or curriculum, and their distribution by trainees is made at the beginning of the year, so that they can support the integration in the internship and the preparation of the pedagogical intervention project, that is, when trainees have not yet identified a research question. Therefore, the main tendency is for each trainee to seek to develop a project that is as closely as possible to the area of expertise of their supervisor, expecting that in this way they will be able to feel more security in the process, a posture that is well backed by supervisors. This research component comes to a conclusion with the production of a report, which is defended in a public examination, and whose classification has a very significant weight on the final grade of the course (20.8% of the total), which increases the value attributed to it.

4 CONTRIBUTIONS OF COLLABORATIVE NETWORKS TO THE PROFESSIONAL CONSTRUCTION... A SYNTHESIS

Explained the guiding principles of the training that we advocate, and presented the course of MEPEE1CEB realized at UMinho, according to the references of Bologna, it is now important to synthesize some ideas around contributions that collaborative networks can make to the professional construction, firstly, in internal terms to the courses in which we are involved in Uminho, then in the articulation with international networks to which Uminho belongs, which allows us to broaden our gaze, denaturalizing what permanence can lead us to seem evident.

The first training network in internship is composed of the student, of the teacher and of the supervisor, in which the main protagonist is the trainee. Initial professional training thus requires the existence of a process of co-responsibility among various social actors, in the recognition of the training role of each one of them, which is not always easy. António Nóvoa, in a recent text (2017), in a perspective that we fully endorse, addresses in a very clear and critical way some problems that currently arise in the desirable partnership between supervisors and cooperative teachers, stating that it is necessary to assign basic education teachers a role of trainers, along with university professors, and not to transform schools in a mere field of application of distinct and shared disciplinary areas. The function of each of the elements is differentiated, but necessarily complementary to the other links of the system, which requires renewing and reinforcing co-participatory practices in the process, based on significant experiences and for the sake of the consistent training of the young teacher.

The teaching profession, as already strongly advocated in this text, has to occur within a collective, because the teaching action is developed in schools (contexts of multiple teacher interactions), and because children/students, throughout their educational process, deal with many teachers. Organizing the internship based on strategies (seminars, reflective sharing of experiences, and others) that promote professional socialization between trainees and teachers makes it possible to create thoughtful and questioning communities of new knowledge. Bologna has seriously called the attention to this pillar in teacher training, pointing to European internationalization as a facilitator, however, the implementation of international internships during the master’s course, both the departure of Portuguese trainees and the arrival in the UMinho of other European students has been very residual. This low mobility is justified, in addition to difficulties in economic conditions, by the current perception among trainees that there is a specific way of being a teacher in their country of origin, thus preferring to prepare themselves in local school contexts. It should be noted that this opportunity to know other training realities often occurs through the interaction with Brazilian teachers who are involved in training processes at UMinho, who are invited to participate in classes or other events, which is highlighted by the trainees as very relevant and instigating of new learning.

Bologna highlights the pertinence of the construction of professionals as (self)co-builders of free, responsible, autonomous, and supportive citizens, dimensions that are approached transversally throughout the course, and experienced in the relational climate existing between teachers and students in these training courses at UMinho. We verify, however, that critical thinking and spontaneous participation are aspects that need to be further worked; taking the floor, expressing an opinion, or contradicting an argument are fundamental skills for the would-be transforming teacher that we hope for. The internship is very focused on didactic aspects, on classroom action, on the development of knowledge and academic content, based on participatory strategies, based on the interests and needs of the child/student, and on their understanding as agents in the process of knowledge construction. Enhancing conditions for training experience in the mesosystem, in the departments of teachers, in the school as a whole, in the interaction with families and with communities, urges if we want to support training in these areas and to consolidate the conception of the relevance of collaborative networks for teaching as a socially compromised action.

The promotion of the digital world as a way to support the processes of interaction and of teaching action, has had, in these times of pandemic, room enough for the strengthening of collaborative networks. The young generations have a training in the digital field that overshadows the knowledge that many teachers have in that area (it must be taken into account that, in Portugal, the average age of the supervising teachers is above 50 years of age, so they belong to a generation digitally different from that of the trainees), which means that trainees have had an important role in supporting their advisors, for example, in the preparation of teaching support materials. In addition, the multiplication of training actions, the sharing of practices among professionals, and the implementation of international webinars, enabled the creation of opportunities for access and, in some cases, the insertion in new collaborative training networks.

Finally, it is important to highlight the importance of our insertion, as researchers-trainers, in (inter)national collaborative networks, which was a fundamental support in this unusual period, which allows us to broaden our gaze, to expand the problematization of issues, denaturalizing what proximity can lead us to neglect, and deepening knowledge that can underlie teacher training for this world of uncertainty, but a world where, so we believe, education plays a very significant role in fueling new hopes.

FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was financially supported by Portuguese national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) within the framework of the Research Center for Child Studies (CIEC) of the University of Minho projects under the references UIDB/00317/2020 and UIDP/00317/2020.

2 In Portugal, the designation of teachers working with children from 0 to 6 years of age - ‘childhood educators’ - is differentiated from those who teach at other educational levels - teachers. This designating difference aims to demonstrate that childhood education is more open, seeking to promote the development and integral learning of the child, from a perspective of EDUCARE, in an unquenchable integration between care and global education, with its own identity, respecting the childhood time that children are living. In the legislation, despite what the reference research advocates, by transmitting an idea of strict preparation for the next school cycle, this stage is identified as preschool education. ‘Teachers’ is the designation of all teachers who work from the 1st cycle to higher education, led by curricula and programs prescribed by higher instances.

3 It should be noted that all the teachers who teach in these courses at UMinho have a PhD in the areas in which they teach, a large part of them have previous experience in the educational cycle for which they are training new teachers, and all of them produce research in these areas.

4 Momberger's citations were translated by the author of this text. “[…] est au cœur des processus selon lesquels nous biographions les situations et les évènements de notre existence, dont nous les mettons en forme et dont nous les faisons signifier”.

5L’expérience est toujours celle que «je» fais en tant qu’instance de mon être en devenir et elle ne peut à ce titre être assimilée ou identifiée à aucune autre; mais l’expérience aussi toujours se fait et se refait, se compose et se recompose, selon les configurations multiples et cumulatives dont se tisse mon existence (mon «existant») dans ses interactions avec le monde et avec les autres”.

6 DL 46/1986, of April 14 - Basic Law of the Educational System (PORTUGAL, 1986).

7 According to DL 43/2007, of February 22, there are five sequent1ial master's profiles to the Degree in Basic Education: Master in Preschool Education (three semesters, 90 ECTS); Master's degree in Teaching of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (three semesters, 90 ECTS); Master's degree in Pre-School Education and Teaching of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (four semesters, 120 ECTS); Master's degree in Teaching of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education and Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education (four semesters, 120 ECTS); Master's degree in Teaching of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education and History and Geography of Portugal in the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education (four semesters, 120 ECTS). ECTS is the acronym of European Credit Transfer System, a credit system that translates the working time performed by students in each scientific area and curricular unit; it is estimated that 1 European credit corresponds to about 25 to 28 hours of work carried out by the student, between the hours of face-to-face contact in the context of classes and the hours of autonomous work of the student within the scope of each curricular unit.

8 In previous texts (SARMENTO; ROCHA, 2017; SARMENTO; ROCHA; PANIAGO, 2018) have already presented in detail the principles of the Bologna Process and their influence on teacher training courses.

9 Currently, it is in force DL No. 79/2014, of July 14, substitute for a previous decree, which defines the percentages to be distributed in the following training areas (Chapter III, Articles 7 to 11): a) Teaching area - aims to complement, strengthen and deepen academic training, focusing on the knowledge necessary for teaching in the content areas); b) General educational area - covers the knowledge, skills and attitudes common to all teachers relevant to their performance in the activity room or classroom, institutions for childhood education or school, and in the relationship with the family and the community; c) Specific didactics - integrates the knowledge, capacities and attitudes relating to the areas of content and teaching of the subjects of the respective teaching group; d) Cultural, social and ethical area - ensured in a transversal way, within the framework of the other training components; e) Initiation to professional practice - internship of a professional nature.

10DL n. 240/2001, of August 30 - defines the General Profile of Professional Performance of The Childhood Educator and of teachers of primary and secondary education (PORTUGAL, 2001a).

11DL n. 241/2001, of August 30 - defines the specific profiles of professional performance of childhood educators (Annex 1) and of teachers of the 1st cycle of basic education (Annex No. 2) (PORTUGAL, 2001b).

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Received: June 23, 2023; Accepted: June 23, 2023

Teresa Sarmento: PhD in Socio-Educational Studies of the Child by the University of Minho (UMinho). Associate Professor, -member of the Department of Social Sciences of Education and -researcher of the Center for Research in Child Studies, Institute of Education. E-mail:tsarmento@ie.uminho.pt, ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2371-399X/

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