1 Introduction

In this article, I aim to reflect on the reference groups’ influence on teacher training and performance. It's important to highlight that this article is part of the doctoral thesis in Education from 2008 (^{GABRIEL, 2008}). I carried out research and training with basic education teachers in the North of the country. When questioning myself about these influences, I agree with ^{Josso (2004}, p. 115) when they state that it is “[...] indispensable to reconstitute the network of interior and exterior events that marked my existence as a thinking and reflective being [...]”.

I understand by reference groups the groups to which we belong from an early age, such as the family, school, community, church, among others. These groups structure the way we conduct ourselves, our way of thinking and acting, and are references in our lives for the multiple situations we face in a social context. When we are faced with a problem, we activate one of those referents and we make decisions based on one of the referents of the groups we belong to. According to ^{Ricoeur (1994}, p. 120), “[...] every reference is a co-reference, a dialogic or dialogical reference [...]”.

I will focus the discussion on the mimesis of continued education, a methodology originated in the course of qualitative research based on the (auto)biographical approach in renowned theoretical references, such as Pineau, Nóvoa, Josso, Passeggi, among others, and Ricoeur's hermeneutics. Thus, I found in the autobiographical narrative the appropriate theory and methodology to enable the configuration and refiguration of the teacher identity of the researched teachers.

^{Ricoeur (1997}, p. 139), when constructing meaning around time and narrative, unveils to us “[...] that time becomes human time insofar as it's articulated narratively, and that narrative reaches its full meaning when it becomes a condition for temporal existence” Thus, when interpreting Aristotle's Poetics, he presents us with the theory of mediation between time and narrative, which he called mimesis I, mimesis II, and mimesis III:

[...] It's by building the relationship between the three mimetic modes that I constitute the mediation between time and narrative. It's this very mediation that passes through the three phases of mimesis. [...] To solve the problem of the relationship between time and narrative, I must establish the mediating role of the weaving of the plot between a stage of practical experience that precedes it and a stage that follows it. [...] I propose to un-simplify them from the act of textual configuration and to show the mediating role of this weaving time of the intrigue between the temporal aspects prefigured in the practical field and the refiguration of our temporal experience by this constructed time. We follow, therefore, the destiny of a prefigured time in a reconfigured time through the mediation of a configured time. (^{RICOEUR, 1997}, p. 87, author's emphasis).

According to this author, in mimesis, I, imitation, or the representation of action, corresponds to the pre-understanding of what happens following the human action. In this way, the prefigured time is the unfolding of the narrative action, the evocative act of the narration itself. In mimesis II, it's the act of reading that accompanies the configuration of the narrative and updates its ability to be followed. To follow a story is to update it while reading it. The time configured in the narrative pertains to the process of reflection on itself, made possible by the action of re-narrating itself, which, therefore, allows the subject who narrates and re-narrates themselves to critically analyze their actions, their life trajectory. In mimesis III, the narrative has its full meaning when it's restored to the time of human action because, says the author, “[...] it is in the listener or reader that the path of mimesis ends” (^{RICOEUR, 1994}, p. 110).

Here I want to explain my reading of the author's text to adapt it to the context of this work. Mimesis II marks the intersection between autobiographical narrative and the personal and professional self. Therefore, the intersection of the formation is structured by the narrative of the personal and professional self, in which the effective action exhibits its specific temporality with a revision of the self. For the author: “[...] The complete event is not only that someone takes the floor and addresses an interlocutor, it's also that they aspire to bring to language and share with others a new experience. It's this experience that, in turn, has the world as its horizon” (^{RICOEUR, 1994}, p. 119-120).

Thus, reconfigured in mimesis III, time is the revision of oneself, the construction of a professional profile through the recognition of oneself and the other, in the identity constitution that allows to perceive a world as a horizon in a continuous movement of writing and rewriting of the self in reference groups, involving the personal, social, professional, and institutional dimension in the constitution of personal identity, which, when “[...] considered in its duration, can be defined as narrative identity [...]” (^{RICOEUR, 2006}, p. 116).

^{Freire (2005}, p. 118) also alerts us to the importance of self-reflection to act critically: “Men are because they are situated [...]. This reflection on situationality is a way of thinking about the very condition of existing”. It was intending to reflect on the sit tionality of the teachers, concerning the formation and the teaching performance, to which Freire (2005) refers in the epigraph, that I chose to develop a research-education that is characterized, according to ^{Josso (2004}, p. 113), by the way the subjects are invited to participate, because “[...] each stage of the research is an experience to be designed so that whoever is involved in it can participate in a theoretical reflection on the training and the processes through which it makes itself known”.

In public schools, the educational practice has proved to be increasingly challenging for those who intend to understand it and who want to promote significant changes, and transform it. For more critical performance in this space, where the majority of students from the popular classes of our country study, it's of fundamental importance to broaden the understanding of the formation and performance of teachers in the school routine. So, it's necessary to listen to what teachers say about their educational practices and the reflections they produce on these practices.

2 Methodology

The letter from the International Association of Life Stories and Training (2005) advocates that one of the ethical and deontological principles for working with life stories is that the researcher experiences the formative experience of having written of themselves. It's also important that they master the theoretical-methodological principles and foundations of autobiographical narrative. For ^{Josso (2020}, p. 46), “[...] the instructors must work their own narrative and, thus, acquire a first level experience in rules to be respected [...]”.

The research was carried out in Roraima, whose population is 605.8 thousand inhabitants (IBGE, 2019). It's the Brazilian state with the largest indigenous population. It also has migrants from all over the country and more than 100,000 Venezuelans who have taken refuge since 2013 as a result of the economic, political, and social crisis in Venezuela.

Regarding the teachers, to differentiate the training phase - whether initial or continued education -, I made the following distinction: teachers (A.B., A.Q., E.) are those who already have finished their degree; student-teachers (A.L., E.R., J.) are those who are in the process of completing Higher Education, studying Pedagogy. The total number of subjects is six: three student-teachers and three teachers. The teachers' age varies between 29 and 47 years old. All of them corresponded to the criteria listed for the research-education: professional teaching practice and interest in continued education. It's worth mentioning that the teachers were invited due to my prior knowledge of their successful educational practices as reflective teachers (SCHÖN, 2000), who carry out the reflection processes and find continuing education strategies aimed at improving educational practice and teacher professionalization.

Nóvoa (1988) highlights the research axes that serve as a guide for the writing of the autobiographical narrative and the reports of teachers' successful experiences. In Ricoeur, I found the clarification that narrative is a re-construction, a revision of the events that were requested to be reported:

[...] Since we want to mark the difference between fiction and history, we always invoke the idea of certain correspondence between the narrative and what actually happened. At the same time, we are well aware that this re-construction is a different construction from the course of events reported [...]. (^{RICOEUR, 1997}, p. 255).

The biographical sources' construction took place in three stages in three years (2005, 2006, 2008). The first stage was the elaboration of autobiographical narratives and reports of successful experiences. In total, 11 meetings took place during three months (February, March, and April 2005). In the second stage, the teachers analyzed in writing and in a group the repercussion of the biographical work, three months after it was carried out (July 2005). The year 2006 was dedicated to reading and complementing the information in the research corpus. Finally, the third stage consisted of the individual analysis of the repercussion of the biographical work on the teachers' personal and professional lives. This last stage took place in July 2008.

It's worth mentioning that, at the last meeting, the teachers submitted the final version of the narratives and experience reports. They signed an authorization for the total or partial use of their autobiographical narratives and their experience reports, for presentation in congresses and/or publications. They also received certification issued by the Pro-Rectory of Extension and Pro-Rectory of Research and Graduate Studies for participating in research-training.

The formal learning process provided by the research allowed the teachers to model the experiences through what I called mimesis of continued education: prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration.

The mimesis of continued education is a formative and performative process for teachers both pursuing their initial degree and after grad school situations, intending to foster the revision of their self-knowledge (^{RICOEUR, 1997}), personally and professionally through autobiographical narratives. This activity involves a personal, social, professional, and institutional shift as well as the alternation of training at the three levels mentioned by ^{Pineau (1988}, 2004): hetero-training, eco-training, and self-training. These processes jointly contribute to the awareness of the process of teacher identity constitution and its implication in educational activities.

In this sense, the mimesis of continued education has three phases:

I adopt ^{Ricoeur's hermeneutics (1994}, 1997, 2002a, 2002b, 2006) as a base theory to interpret the teacher training process and their professional performance. In the biographical work carried out with his autobiographical narratives and the accounts of successful experiences, it was of fundamental importance to be clear about the fact that:

[...] The task of hermeneutics [is] to reconstruct the set of operations by which a work rises from the opaque background of living, acting, and suffering, to be given, by an actor, to a reader who receives it and thus changes his or her activity. [...] Hermeneutics, on the other hand, is concerned with reconstructing the entire arc of operations through which practical experience is given to works, authors, and readers [...]. (^{RICOEUR, 1994}, p. 86).

Aware of this author's warning that “[...] we cannot replace each other in our absolutely unique quality [...]” (^{RICOEUR, 2002b}, p. 42), I extracted from the research corpus the thematic axes that guided understanding and interpretation of data. They are a) Reference group - The prefiguration and refiguration of the teacher's identity constitution; b) Reflective group - The configuration of teachers' continued education.

In the first thematic axis, the reference group, I analyzed the constitution of the teaching identity in the light of the reference groups that were/are part of the teachers' life history. Thus, I identified the different groups that influenced the constitution in the different spaces-times and dimensions of the teachers' professional training. ^{Halbwachs (2006}, p. 170) reminds us that collective memory takes place in a spatial context, and it's in this space that thought has to be established so that the memories categories can reappear:

[...] So, space is a reality that lasts: our impressions follow one another, nothing remains in our mind, and we wouldn't understand that it's possible to return to the past if it weren't preserved in the material environment that surrounds us [...].

This way, from the teachers' narratives and the attentive look at the material environment surrounding their past/present, I identified, through biographical mediation, the reference groups that influenced their teacher identity constitution since they started their schooling and childhood. These are the groups: family group, community group, religious group, school group, professional group, and academic group.

In the second thematic axis, the reflective group, the analysis consisted of the interpretation of the formative experience of continued education that the biographical work fostered. According to ^{Passeggi (2006}, p. 1-2), the reflexive group corresponds to “[...] a group of people who recognize their engagement in a common research-education project, through the practice of autobiographical narratives [...]”.

Working with teacher narratives today is an epistemological challenge for researchers and instructors. According to ^{Ricoeur (2006}, p. 123), “[...] the analytical problems characteristic of a rational approach to narrative texts are absolutely legitimate”. For the author, the problem is not to establish what is correct or not, but the self-understanding of the object examined.

In addition to ^{Pineau (2004}) and ^{Ricoeur (2006}), for the analysis and interpretation of narratives and experiences reports, ^{Barbosa (2005}) and ^{Szymanski (2004}) were also useful since they helped me to identify the thematic axes, categorization, and organization of individual files. The steps of the analysis were the following: 1. A systematic reading of the narratives and reports of experiences to identify the thematic axes; 2. Organization of individual files - these files contained the identification of the subjects; 3. Data triangulation - data triangulation arose from relating the fragments of narratives and experience reports. For Pineau (2004, p. 203), “[...] It's simply a matter of trying to conjugate in the first person singular and plural all conjugations with all moods and tenses. In this attempt, there are two main conditions: taking the word in the singular, but also triangulation [...]”.

3 Results and discussion

Although I present all the participants in a two-dimensional analysis (^{WELLER, 2007}), I will focus the discussions on the reference groups, family group, and professional group that influenced the educational practice of two teachers (A.Q. and A.B.) and two student-teachers (J. and E.R.). The letters correspond to their pseudonym.

Teacher A.B. and student-teacher E.R. aren't from rural areas. All are married: one has no children, and five have two or three children. The teachers continued their education through formal learning processes in post-grad courses. Regarding their teaching time, they have between nine and 19 years of professional experience.

The teachers studied in public schools; student-teacher A. L. and teachers A. Q. and E. studiedmultigrade classroomsooms. They were all influenced by their families in their school experience and the schooling process. Religious influence was also present in their lives, giving them eternal values. All teachers participated in the community where they developed the spirit of comradery.

Teachers A. Q. and E. have had experiences in education with people with disabilities (BRASIL, 2007), and among the student-teachers, J. was the only one who had a student with a mental disability included in her literacy class. The teachers and student-teachers had experience with Early Childhood Education. Regarding the professional experience with Adult Education, teachers A. B. and E. and student-teacher E. R. had the opportunity to teach this group of students outside the regular school age group. The student-teachers worked in Elementary School from 1st to 4th grade and the teachers, in addition to early elementary school, also had taught 5th to 8th grades, High School, and worked with teacher training.

All of them claim to have faced challenging experiences in their professional trajectory. In face of these situations, they mobilized what they learned from the reference groups, but they needed to look for new alternatives; to look at the problem from the outside. ^{Vygotsky (2005}, p. 119) says the following to address the development of the child, here I adapt to the challenges faced by the researched teachers, “[...] the level of development of the [teacher] shouldn't be evaluated by what they learned during their instruction, but rather by the way they think about subjects about which they haven't been taught [...]”.

In this sense, challenging experiences are the experiences that mobilize my thinking and my actions on subjects about which I have not been taught anything. In this way, it's possible to state that these challenging experiences are close to ^{Alheit and Dausien's (2006}) understanding of informal learning processes, which don't have a clarified intention about the object but incidentally accompany everyday life. It's also possible to infer that the challenging experiences that the teachers had in their educational practices made them reflective teachers because the socio-educational context instigated and provoked them insistently and daily to seek answers to the problem/situations that surrounded them. Therefore, these challenging experiences are formative and form us into reflective teachers (ALARCÃO, 1996; SCHÖN, 2000), through the reflection processes that we undertake in the educational activity.

Now I present the discussions of the reference groups, family and professional group, that influenced the educational practice of two teachers (A.Q. and A.B.) and two student-teachers (J. and E.R.), as I mentioned earlier.

5 Final considerations

In this research, I aimed to present the influences of reference groups on teacher training and performance. My choice to work with two groups of teachers - the student-teachers and the teachers - revealed that continued education is an indispensable process for the constitution of professional identity. The constitution of the teachers was due to the influence of the reference groups.

One of the relevant data of the research is that the understanding of the meaning of education was forged more specifically in the family group. The teachers revealed that family members, such as the father and mother, for example, fought for their children's education. Thus, I inferred that the fact that they didn't have a school education and that they had a hard time being illiterate was the engine that drove them to remain firm in the project for their children's lives and in the persistence to educate their kids.

The biographical work made it possible for the teachers participating in the research to look at their educational practice, questioning it and seeking explanations for the educational work they developed/develop with the students. This immersion allowed them to identify the mistakes, contradictions, and attitudes that brought them closer to or distanced them from their objectives and also helped to identify the intervening factors of the school system itself that limit or favor the achievement of these pedagogical objectives.

Since their academic training, the teachers have shown a strong inclination towards innovative practices and theories that focus on the historical-social subject and the construction of knowledge. This theoretical approach, therefore, provided a more questioning pedagogical action.

Faced with the difficulties, the teachers reflexively sought to reverse the schooling situation of students considered to be difficult, and in educational contexts and scenarios that limited meaningful learning. The insurgency in the face of such challenges, however, made possible a clinical attitude in solving the problems.

It's important to highlight that when following the teachers in their accounts of experiences that they considered successful, listening/reading their life stories, I inferred that their pedagogical choices and continuing education aimed to minimize educational gaps experienced both in the personal and social fields.

Therefore, given the emergence of new educational paradigms, which seek to understand educational practices in the school environment, the biographical approach presents itself as an important contribution to teacher training, because it involves personal and professional dimensions.