PRESENTATION OUTLINE
In-service Teacher Education "a la Brasil"
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
- 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
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
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
- 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.)
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?