1 Introduction

The main scope of this article is the description of the Rural School Teacher Training Program (Formacampo) developed in 2021, which had the adhesion of 116 municipalities belonging to seven identity territories in Bahia. Formacampo originated from a research project entitled “The educational policies of PAR in rural schools in Bahia (2015-2018)”, carried out by the Group of Studies on Social Movements, Diversity and Education of the Countryside and City (Gepemdecc), linked to the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), whose results showed the need of training for teachers working in the rural areas. In this sense, the aforementioned program observed and considered such a need because, “[...] at the national level, more than 50% of teachers in rural areas still do not have a degree and more than 80% do not have continuing education on rural education. in municipal and state networks” (SANTOS; GUIMARÃES, 2021, p. 2, translated).

The continuing education of rural school teachers is a need that has been debated in the Brazilian scenario for decades by movements led by workers who fight for an Education in and in the Countryside that respects, considers, values and contemplates rural areas as production spaces, rich and diverse, even though such demands give rise to the cry for public policies that meet the particularities of their subjects. This education is contrary, therefore, to the hegemonic and ultra-neoliberal project, whose perspective is based on the denial of the cultural, environmental and social wealth of the countryside, called Rural Education.

As a possibility to direct this study, a description of the development and results of the Formacampo Program was carried out, specifying the scope of the program in relation to the triad of teaching, research and extension.

Aiming at the integration of teaching, research and extension, in the Formacampo Program we intend to involve students enrolled in the Graduate Program in Education - PPGED/UESB and undergraduate students, who are guided by the professors who make up the execution team of the same, as well as members of research groups at UESB. It is intended that this is an extension program that takes place on a continuous basis, being re-introduced in the following years in order to meet the demand of partner municipal networks with regard to the training of teachers in the rural areas. (SANTOS; GUIMARÃES, 2021, p. 1, translated).

It is essential to consider that, when considering and contemplating the integration of teaching, research and extension, Formacampo fulfills what is recommended in the Federal Constitution of ¹⁹⁸⁸ in its article 207 (translated): “Universities enjoy, in the form of the law, didactic-scientific autonomy, administrative and financial and patrimonial management and will obey the principle of inseparability between teaching, research and extension”.

The investigative field is based on the following question that leads this article: how did the Formacampo Program become a protagonist in the continuing teaching training of rural teachers in Bahia? Furthermore, the main objective of the work is to present the results achieved during the execution of the mentioned program, as well as to discuss the impacts on peasant teacher training in its practice, discussing the scope and the results that the mentioned program has achieved.

2 Teacher training in Rural Education

According to ^{Zuin and Dias (2017)}, in order to achieve quality education for peasants, it is urgent to guarantee initial and continuing training for professionals working in rural schools, a training aimed at meeting the specificities and needs of this population.

When we think about teacher training in the countryside, we are inclined to understand an education model that is configured by the struggles, anxieties, social and political organization of its subjects. As ^{Arroyo (2012}, p. 360, translated) points out, “The policy of training teachers in the field of which social movements are authors is a process that forces us to rethink and redefine the relationship between the State, its institutions and social movements”.

^{Caldart (2009)} also argues that the training of professionals to work in Rural Education should focus on the history and culture of these people, valuing the peasant identity, promoting knowledge and dialoguing with their knowledge and experiences. Therefore, the presence of professionals who can best meet the specificities and needs of these subjects and who, in their experience, understand that continuing teacher training is necessary to support the quality teaching process of rural people is a priority.

With regard to the theme, Santos, Lima and Nery (²⁰²⁰, p. 11, translated) mention:

Teacher education is a process that incorporates the initial and ongoing dimensions. Seen in its entirety, it goes beyond the formal teaching offerings and practices originated in public and educational policies, inscribing itself in the daily life of professional practice as an effective teaching practice.

Therefore, the training of rural teachers must be anchored in a process in which the context is understood, supported by theoretical and methodological approaches for this perspective. Despite the knowledge of these attributions, many training courses do not take into account the specificity of Peasant Education to overcome the city conception of old teaching models. In this regard, ^{Libâneo (2004}, p. 45, translated) postulates that: “There is, effectively, a separation, a distance, a wall, between legislation, policies and guidelines, the academic world, the world of militancy, and the effective pedagogical-didactics in the classroom.

According to ^{Santos and Nunes (2020)}, the finding that the training process of Education professionals still presents a mismatch between the proposed and the daily reality; there is also a certain distance between theory and practice, which does not materialize an education aimed at social transformations, but an imaginary education, which contributes to the perpetuation and legitimation of the capitalist system. ^{Libâneo (2004)} also points out that teacher training needs to consider real demands, with the main objective of guaranteeing quality education. Thus, the training of rural educators is a demand of those who historically fight for the right and guarantee to the education of rural people.

It is worth noting that the initial and continuing education of rural teachers is already a topic that has been debated and legitimized in several normative frameworks that were the result of struggles and claims. According to Resolution No. 2, of April 28, ²⁰⁰⁸:

The admission and initial and continuing training of teachers and teaching support staff must always consider the pedagogical training appropriate to Rural Education and opportunities for updating and improvement with professionals committed to their specificities. (BRAZIL, art. 7, § 2, 2008, translated).

On the other hand, Decree No. 7,352, of November 4, 2010, states:

Rural education will take place through the provision of initial and continuing education for education professionals, guaranteeing infrastructure conditions and school transport, as well as didactic materials and books, equipment, laboratories, library and leisure and sports areas suited to the political-pedagogical project and in accordance with the local reality and the diversity of rural populations. (BRASIL, art. 1º, § 4º, 2010, translated).

In this sense, it is worth noting that the aforementioned decree, which institutes the National Program of Education in Agrarian Reform (Pronera), the result of struggles carried out by social movements in defense of Rural Education, marks a relevant achievement in terms of teacher training, after all, it comes to guarantee, in the face of this same decree, as a principle of Rural Education, the “[...] development of training policies for education professionals to meet the specificity of rural schools, considering the concrete conditions of production and social reproduction of rural life” (^{BRASIL, 2010}, art. 2, translated).

It is also important to highlight that Rural Education, as an acquired right, which seeks a new paradigm of society, is supported by the struggle and claim for a society with social justice and quality education for all, whether in the countryside or in the city. This struggle is also for teacher training, whose logic meets the specificities and considers and values the reality and diversity of the peasantry.

In this sense, ^{Arroyo (2012)} warns about the importance of Rural Education professionals to appropriate local history and culture in order to multiply this knowledge in educational spaces. Therefore, the need for continuing education for teachers who work in the peasant reality is legitimate.

If the teaching-educators professionals understand this tense history, they will be able to work this understanding with children and adolescents, with young people and adults who work in the rural areas, in indigenous, black and quilombola communities, and even in the popular public schools where the different arrive, made and treated in our history as unequal. The incorporation of this wealth of hidden knowledge will bring greater theoretical density and radicality to training curricula. (^{ARROYO, 2012}, p. 362, translated).

As ^{Freire (1997)} advocates, teacher training based on reflection and educational-critical practice is essential. In this way, the training of rural teachers is a legitimate need, which must be supported by the liberating and emancipatory concept, in order to materialize the aspirations and objectives of Rural Education.

3 Teacher Training Program (Formacampo)

The Formacampo Program is an extension action that took place from April to December in 2021, linked to the Department of Human Sciences, Education and Language (DCHEL) of the State University of Southwest Bahia (UESB) and also to the Postgraduate Program in Education (PPGEd) of UESB, having as main partners the National Union of Municipal Education Directors (Undime) and the Municipal Education Networks of the cities that joined the program.

This is a proposal made by Gepemdecc of UESB. Through this extension action, research, teaching and extension activities were carried out, with the objective of executing continuous training of professionals who work in rural schools and helping them in the construction of the Political-Pedagogical Project (PPP) of the educational institutions located in the Identity Territories of the UESB's coverage area.

The aforementioned program includes several actions with the active participation of the students, undergraduate and graduate professors in the proposals developed, as well as in the articulation with the municipalities. Initially, the program had the adhesion of the municipalities of the following Identity Territories¹ of Bahia: Litoral Sul, Vale do Jiquiriçá, Southwest of Bahia, Middle Southwest, Sertão Produtivo, Velho Chico and Médio Rio de Contas.

The Formacampo Program originates as a vector of changes and ruptures in the midst of the construction of an emancipatory education project with rural educators in the interior of the state of Bahia, materializing itself in a unique strategy in continuing teacher education.

As for the methodological instruments, the technique used was qualitative, through participatory research. Formacampo consists of different actions that interface with institutional policies for teaching, research and extension, which mobilizes undergraduate, graduate and professors at UESB to participate in teacher training, as well as assists in articulating with managers and basic education professionals in the municipalities, involving the municipal and state levels.

The aforementioned program has theoretical contributions from critical authors, as well as master's and doctoral dissertations from the Postgraduate programs at UESB, the State University of Santa Cruz (UESC), the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB), the State University of Bahia (UNEB) and from the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), which presented topics on teacher training. The target audience of Formacampo comprises teachers, managers and coordinators of rural schools, located in the countryside, or even of urban schools that serve rural students.

The course took place remotely, with a virtual structure established in partnership through Undime and UESB. It is important to highlight that 40% of the activities were synchronous and 60% asynchronous. The first ones happened through group lives; and the second took place through activities presented in advance to the course participants by the trainers and territorial coordinators (SANTOS; GUIMARÃES, 2021).

The importance of this program is justified by the need to insert the university based on the triad: teaching, research and extension, in order to support interventions that can contribute to improving the quality of basic education (kindergarten, elementary and secondary education) in the municipalities that are in the Identity Territories of Bahia that were served. According to the design of the Formacampo program, the choice of Identity Territories is due to the fact that the research carried out by Gepemdecc in these spaces has demonstrated the lack of continuing education.

Several activities were developed and had general and territorial coordination teams. In addition to providing thematic notebooks that addressed the content discussed and worked in those lives for the teacher training, meetings were held online with coordinators and teachers to clarify doubts.

The themes that led to the lives, the dates and the mediators are described in Table 1.

4 Outlining the methodological course

Regarding the methodological aspects, the qualitative-quantitative approach was used. Based on ^{Minayo (1997)}, it is understood that, in a scientific research, the analysis and quantitative and qualitative presentation of the results, which are complementary, enhance the argument of the discussions and final considerations.

Data analysis methods that translate into numbers can be very useful in understanding various educational problems. Furthermore, the combination of this type of data with data from qualitative methodologies can enrich the understanding of events, facts and processes. Both approaches demand, however, the researcher's reflection effort to make sense of the material collected and analyzed. (^{GATTI, 2004}, p. 13, translated).

Furthermore, were analyzed the website of the Formacampo Program, materials available on the website, lives, thematic notebooks available and the answer forms of the course participants available on Google Drive. With the information accessible in the forms, the quantitative data were tabulated and the qualitative data were interpreted in order to approach the reality experienced and experienced by the program participants.

5 Results and discussion

Formacampo had the participation and adhesion of 116 municipalities, divided between the seven Identity Territories, and four more municipalities from other territories, which, although they had not signed the adhesion term, had registered participants, totaling, thus, 6,933 course participants. The themes studied in the training, shown through lives, had great repercussion and reached more than 79 thousand views. Regarding the fulfillment of asynchronous activities sent by course participants, there were 9,493 activities received by Google Forms. Regarding the thematic notebooks, 51.6% of the course participants considered the material good and 44.4% considered it excellent. It is worth noting that these reading materials and studies were made available on the website² in the Formacampo tab.

When the program was finalized, the coordination sent the course participants an evaluation form in Google Forms, in order to verify the fulfillment of the objectives, mainly with regard to “Contributing to the construction of the Political-Pedagogical Project of the partner municipalities from the training carried out”; in all, 1,201 responses were obtained.

According to the data collected, for 80.03% of the participants, Formacampo was the first specific training to work in the rural areas. The same questionnaire points out that, at the end of the training, with regard to the construction of PPPs for schools belonging to the municipalities that participated in the aforementioned program, 42.8% had the reformulation underway in the year 2021; 11.3% still did not have a PPP and had already planned its construction; 23.2% already had a PPP, which had not yet been reformulated; 14.9% already had a PPP, which had been reformulated in 2021; 4.5% still did not have a PPP and had not planned its construction. These data show that the Formacampo Program contributed greatly to the planning of Rural Education in the municipalities that joined it, since, if we add those municipalities that have already reformulated their PPPs in 2021 with the help of the program, those that are undergoing reformulation and also those which already have the reformulation programmed based on the guidelines of the training carried out, totaling 69% of those which adhered to the program.

Still on the construction of PPPs, 97% of course participants stated that the program's training contributed significantly to the construction of this instrument in their respective schools. Below are reports from the course participants, evaluations and inferences about the Formacampo Program:

I believe that the Formacampo Program was extremely valuable to everyone who had the privilege of being a part of it. It changed the way we looked at the rural school, the methodology used until then, the role of the manager within this gear, what it says or is put in the PPP as the development of a critical citizen awareness. (COURSIST A, translated).

The Formacampo Program came to reaffirm our struggles, advances and setbacks […]. (COURSIST C, translated).

It was an extremely important program that served to subsidize the construction of the PPP. (COURSIST D, translated).

A program that significantly contributed to the reformulation of education in my municipality, as I am sure that all PPPs will be reformulated with a closer look at the reality of each subject, of each school. We have closed several schools in the municipality and only through Formacampo I discovered that there is no number of students to close schools nor a law that determines this. I also didn't know which rural schools exist in the city if the percentage of rural students is higher. It was undoubtedly an extremely important and necessary training for us educators. (COURSIST E, translated).

In view of the excerpts above, as suggested by ^{Martins (2013)} on how the training processes and courses of professionals in the field should be, it was observed that the Formacampo Program has shown to develop training capable of (re)signifying and qualifying the action of the subjects who are involved (educators from and to the rural areas), as the course participants signaled a maintenance in the essence of an education capable of going beyond the hegemonic borders of established knowledge.

Another relevant aspect to be highlighted concerns the understanding of the course participants about the existing contradictions in the reality of rural schools, which still maintain urban-centric curricula. Perceiving such a circumstance is significant as it indicates a rupture of thought and the construction of new knowledge.

It is necessary to admit that the Formacampo Program, as advocated by ^{Freire (2007}, p. 44, translated), is capable of promoting training based on the perspective of an “Education that, stripped of the alienated and alienating guise, is a force for change and liberation”. After all, the program offered a training based on the logic of humanization and appreciation of the peasant population, recognizing and valuing the countryside as a fertile, rich and diverse space.

Regarding the conceptions about PPPs, the considerations of the course participants also showed a new look at the importance of their construction and/or reconstruction, legitimizing the potential of these instruments to implement an education that actually meets and respects the specificities of the field and, thus, enable quality education.

The need and importance of the construction and reconstruction of PPPs according to the reality of the field are evidenced in the thematic notebooks developed by the collaborators. Still on the PPP, ^{Santos and Guimarães (2021}, p. 11, translated) point out that: “The Political-Pedagogical Project expresses the autonomy and identity of the educational establishment being supported by current legislation, the historical needs of the public school and the rights guaranteed constitutionally to the entire population”.

In view of this, it is possible to say that Formacampo also achieved the objective of contributing to the construction of the PPP of the partner municipalities, based on the training carried out, now listed in the project, after all, the data point to concrete movements of construction, reconstruction and also recognition of the need and importance of PPPs.

6 Final considerations

Through the research data of the article, it is possible to affirm that the Formacampo Program assumes significant dimensions and becomes a protagonist in the scenario of continuing education in the reality of Rural Education. In addition, it contributes to the construction and reconstruction of PPPs in the municipalities participating in the training.

Based on the discussions raised by this study, the importance and necessity of continuing education that contemplates the human dimensions and that values the rural areas, its way of organization and life is ratified. It is known about the advances and challenges of contemporaneity, which happen in an intense and fast way, so it is urgent and necessary for the teacher to constantly seek the acquisition of new knowledge, in order to enable an education designed with and for the subjects, so that both the student and the teacher are protagonists of the educational process.

In this sense, it is worth noting that Formacampo played a leading role in making Rural Education “seen and noticed” with all its particularities, peculiarities, cultures, histories, beliefs and struggles, giving new meaning to teaching in the context of rural schools, in which undergraduates, basic education teachers, undergraduate and graduate teachers and all participants in the extension project can reflect on the training process, taking into account the difficulties faced on the school floor.

It is worth emphasizing the relevance with which the program materializes and develops significantly in continuing education and, thus, contributes to a sensitive look at rural schools, as well as the teaching-learning process, given that it is important that teachers find ways to continue their teaching training.

At the end of the analysis, taking into account the facts of the analyzed program outlined here, as well as the proposed problem, it is understood that it contributed significantly to the quality of teaching, corroborating a role validated in the results presented in this study and legitimized in the reports of the participants.

In short, it is understood the importance of continuing education, mainly aimed at rural teachers, which is effective in the research area of this study, in a process in which rural subjects become aware of their rights and that public policies take place in its practice, in an assiduous and diligent way, in the struggle, in the sweat of the countryside, for a quality public education.