1 Introduction

In a heterogeneous scenery, of many different characteristics, and in constant movement as it is our society, thinking about teacher training requires answering some questions among them: why, for who and, mainly, how to create a Social Development Situation,⁵ that foster stimulations and transformations processes of the teacher’s work.

However, it is known the complexity of the challenges faced in our country, since the initial education of teachers, as pointed out by ^{Gatti (2014}, p. 36) […] “There is an accumulation of obstacles and issues historically constructed.”

Therefore, facing those challenges is necessary and urgent, and go through the continuous education, giving even more responsibilities to the training processes in the teaching career.

^{Nóvoa (2007}) highlights that the continuous education of teachers needs to be centered in the practice and in the reflection of their own practice, supporting ^{Tardif (2007}, p. 223) when he affirms that the professional competences of the teacher are: “[…] connected to their capacity to rationalize their own practice, to criticize it, to review it, to aim it, seeking to ground it in reasons to act”.

Aligned to this critical-reflexive conception of continuous education, it is highlighted the theory about the practical-reflexive teacher presented by ^{Zeichner (1993}; ¹⁹⁹⁵) and the conceptions also discussed by ^{Schön (1995}, ²⁰⁰⁰), ^{Gómez (1995}), ^{Alarcão (2001}, ²⁰⁰³), ^{Pimenta and Ghedin (2002}), in which the teacher is an intellectual able to produce knowledge through the critical reflection about their practice.

That epistemology of the practice encourages the appropriation of the knowledge by the teachers, seeking autonomy and the critical-reflexive practice in many ways (^{ARAÚJO; SILVA, 2009}).

Knowledge produced by a movement of critical reframing, from the confrontation between what is already known - crystallized intelligence, sometimes hard to be abandoned - and the constructed knowledge, as discussed by ^{Sforni and Vieira (2008}, p. 239).

Pimenta and Ghedin deem that:

[...] the experience of knowledge is also those that teachers produce in their workday life, in a permanent process of reflection about their practice, mediated by other people - their coworkers, texts written by other teachers (^{PIMENTA; GHEDIN, 2002}, p. 20).

Besides that, in a historical-cultural context, teacher training, as ^{Araújo (2009}, p. 5) says is necessary to understand some issues: “The interpersonal process is transformed in an intrapersonal process, having as context the relations established among participants constituted historically, which is, quintessentially, a place of mediation”.

The comprehension of how the inter/intrapersonal issue is established is fundamental to invite us to search for the overcoming of the teacher’s training focused only on the individual work of each teacher, fragmented and reductionist, with pre-assembled and specific formats.

Before this context, a variety of proposals appear. And we follow the track of research-action with Michel ^{Thiollent (1986}), with the collaborative research of Ivana ^{Ibiapina (2008}), with the critical collaboration research of Maria Cecília ^{Magalhães (2003}) and Sueli ^{Fidalgo (2006}) and others. Flourishing a dialectical approach of collective knowledge production, that creates and implies a process of search, ultimately, of educational and social transformation, the Trans-Formation-Research (^{MAGALHÃES, 2021}).

Grounded in Dialectical and Historical Materialism and in Socio-historical Psychology, the conception of the research has a study focused on the processes and not on the products. Overcoming dichotomized scopes, seeking the mediations and contradictions that constitute this phenomenon, with the intent to act directly and in collaboration with the studied reality.

To understand the tangible reality, the Trans-Formation-Research understands the search for the core of the phenomena as something that continues. When the research proposes a critical movement of going beyond the appearances in a movement of saturation of the determinations. The substantiality is highlighted by ^{Marx (2008}, p. 1080) when he affirms that “[…] all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided […]”.

Magalhães goes further in the explanation, affirming that:

The Trans-Formation-Research is an academic action with an intention: the production of scientific knowledge through the realization of educational processes of social groups with the goal of provoking reflections, and individual and collective actions that result in transformations. The intention is that one of those transformations would be so deep that revolutionary echoes in the workplace and/or educational place and/or political place (^{MAGALHÃES, 2021}, p. 265).

And follows by discussing the intentionality of the Trans-Formation-Research in its dialectical movement, arguing that:

Praxis, research, and transformation - elements that combined, create our way of research, a movement that happens in the critic of reality, critical that is grounded and supported by scientific knowledge deeper and deeper! Scientific Praxis brings in its intentionality the transformation through educational activities. […] Our intention is explicit in the revolution that we intend to install in the reality in which we research and act (^{MAGALHÃES, 2021}, p. 272).

In the dialectical tension between research-train-transform, it is made, with methodological rigor, explicit activities of research, information production, and purposes, simultaneously, training activities that help critically the teachers’ development.

It uses different teaching and pedagogical strategies and in every moment, there is a deep connection between theory-practice-method-technique-analysis, reinforcing the dialectical base of the proposal.

The Trans-Formation-Research gives the opportunity for active participation of the research and of the researcher himself since he intends a horizontal relationship. The research considers the participation of the researcher as a piece of the process of transformation and not just a subject that describes the reality, understanding the participants as co-producers of the whole process, as explained by Magalhães and Aguiar (2001):

[...] We have (as scholars) an explicit role, for example, about the decision-making related to the research, about its making, the theoretical-methodological option, operational alternatives, etc. On the other hand, through the process, the knowledge, and the experience surround and change the research making. In some moments, our knowledge can be determinant; in others is the participant’s knowledge. […] we let it clear that all participants of the research produce, ask, and modify the theoretical-practical dialethic […] guided by this reality, it has an essential role in the research. The roles are asymmetric, because each person has one, has a purpose, an intention, beyond the roles, purposes, and collective intentions of the group. […] Our effort is that the participation can be really democratic, and the decisions be shared. People see us as scholars, but the ownership of the best knowledge is not only ours! (^{MAGALHÃES; AGUIAR, 2021}, p. 124)

In that way, collaborative spaces of discussion and critical analysis of the participants' experiences are created to produce local knowledge, new possibilities, and reframing.

2 Aim

In that way, this paper aims to discuss the Trans-Formation-Research as a strategy for teacher training from the scope of the produced data in the ongoing thesis research that has been developed by the authors of this paper.

3 Methodological Procedures

This qualitative and critical study was conducted with ten Elementary Physical Education - Early and Final Years teachers of the municipal education system of a Vale do Paraíba Paulista’s city.

Teachers-participants were chosen by recommendation between pairs, those teachers had their names recommended by other Physical Education teachers from the educational system they work in. A formulary was sent to all teaching staff of that subject with the following request: Recommend one teacher that you consider has a good evaluation practice. In that way, the ten most recommended teachers were invited to participate in this research.

The production of information was made in many ways. Teachers-participants answered a questionnaire, an auxiliary tool of the group profile, with questions about gender, age, years of teaching, work conditions and with specific questions about evaluation, to comprehend since the beginning some conceptions about that theme.

Lately, ten training online meetings were done every fifteen days, with one hour and a half duration. Seeking to, from the formation needs, produce information and knowledge about the Evaluation for Learning in Physical Education, refreshing the critical reflection about the evaluation practices and bound theory and practice giving emphasis to both.

The chosen themes for study and reflection were defined in collaboration between the researcher and the teachers-participants.

We tried to avoid the misconception of content-based instruction and the mechanical practice of teaching, seeking to give the opportunity to an embodiment of the dialectical tension of reality. ^{Magalhães (2021}, p. 336) explains with some sarcasm that “it is a very easy recipe and just needs a few ingredients.” The author provides us with the “ingredients”: a group of teacher(s), in a dialogical perspective training, in which all of them can speak and be listened to after a trigger question. Ready! That can be one of the ways to open space to materialize contradictions of the real when the participants were sparked to bring to discussion conflicts and contradictions that pervade their activity (^{MAGALHÃES, 2021}).

We highlight that an effort of the research technique is necessary to participants feel available to get out of their comfort zone, to talk about what bothers them, and their conflicts in their teaching development.

Therefore, it was used different teaching strategies, among them: a case study of teaching, slides, and training with experience exchanging, presentation of practices, collective critical reflection, collaborative construction of an evaluation for learning in Physical Education, and others.

In this paper, the produced information - especially, those produced in this ongoing thesis- was analyzed following the proposal of content analysis of ^{Bardin (2011}). Based on that, the following categories were created: Reflection about the practice itself; Learning about evaluation in Physical Education; and Change in evaluation practice. Each one of them will be discussed subsequently.

4 Presentation and Discussion of the Results

In the chart below, it is possible to verify, stemming from the teachers’ answers, that the meetings had filled their collaborative role in the perspective of transformation. The group clearly indicates that important exchanges happened between them, and everybody could talk and be listened to.

It is also perceptible that the strategies that have been used fostered a critical reflection on the practice. At the same time in which knowledge about the theme was produced, giving an opportunity to try new evaluation practices, as the basis for the longed transformation.

Source: Collected and charted data by the researcher, 2022.

Image 1 - Perception of the teachers-participants in relation to what the training meetings allowed. 

Stem from analysis, we connected below some significant speeches of the participants of this research, full of important meaning for the comprehension of this training process that was dialectically created in a perspective of educational and social transformation.

5 Conclusion

Before the obtained results, we can highlight the potential of the Trans-Formation-Research as a strategy of teaching training. A collective training that starts from the critical reflection of their own practice, deepened in the theoretical-practical connection.

When this research produces dialectical information, in a collaborative way, through meetings that instigate the creation of Social Situations of Development, it trains teachers and instigates processes of transformation in the teaching practice.

The Trans-Formation-Research is consolidated as a proposal of connection between university-school, and research-training, seeking to create training proposals that contribute to mediations that are necessary to the process of transformation in school. This research always had the perspective of radical social transformations.