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In-service Teacher Education "a la Brasil"

Published on Aug 09, 2016

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

In-service Teacher Education "a la Brasil"

Challenges and dillemas in post-Olympic times

Context

Teacher shortage, diversity and a wrong paradigm of change

1946 - 2006: 8M to 41M students (state owned primary and secondary schools)

Context

  • +2M teachers (3rd largest occupational group)
  • +52M students (public and private)
  • As of 2011, 40% of primary school teachers had no college degree
  • 55% of teachers does not have a degree in the subject taught
  • Teacher education is something that only higher education institutions do (locus)

Deficit Paradigm

In-service teacher education initiatives are mostly compensatory

Deficit Paradigm

  • Federal online program "UAB" to "re-educate" 100k teachers per year.
  • Government assumption: Lack of formal education in the subject taught "explains" poor quality of teaching.

In-service training options

Disjoint, fragmented and confusing

In-service training options

  • Lectures, workshops and short term courses
  • Subject knowledge as main concern (deficit paradigm)
  • Rare continous support after training (one-shot training)
  • Typical providers: Public higher education institutions in partnership with States and Municipalities

Is it working?

Brazilian teachers have spoken

Teachers have spoken

  • Lack of formal incentives
  • Time escarcity
  • Low aplicability
  • Focus on short term results and high visibility inittiatives
  • Bad alignment with career goals

Not everything is lost at the Equator line

The City of Sobral and the art of swiming against the stream

The City of Sobral

  • 190k habitants
  • Poorest region of Brazil (Northestern)
  • Created a PERMANENT teacher education institution in 2006 (ESFAPEM)

TE "a la Sobral"

  • Teacher´s personal/cultural development (movies, theatre plays, books, debates etc.)
  • Clear and concise "scripts" to facilitate classroom work ("the recipe")
  • Monthly meetings with experts to discuss issues, materials, scripts etc
  • Strong orientation towards "standard" performance expectations (IDEB, PISA, IMO etc) ("sense of achievement")

Sobral´s results

  • Rio: 400 pounds / 5.3
  • Sobral: 100 pounds / 7.8
  • Sobral is 1º in the country in almost everything (Maths, Portuguese, Astronomy etc.)

Are scripts that bad?

Maslow´s  hierarchy of needs and an strange analogy with Sobral´s principles

Untitled Slide

Conclusion

Not really a conclusion..

Conclusion?

  • Is the search for "the right way to deliver information" that bad, when it fulfills teachers´ "basic" need to do more with less time, effort and resources?
  • Should we take into account educational system´s "maturity level" when selecting the set of "principles" to design a teacher education program?
  • How important is "sense of achievement" to both energize and perpetualize a TE program?