T

Teacher Education, complex world, both for education as a whole

knowledges, practices and and for those who work in teaching and learning.
competences Skills, attitudes, contexts, situations, profes-
sional careers, work relations, socio-emotional
Gilvan Charles Cerqueira de Araújo and competences, knowledges and theories, educa-
Leda Regina Bitencourt da Silva tional public policies, elaboration and implemen-
Governo do Distrito Federal, Brasilia –DF, Brazil tation of curricular proposals, diversity of students
among educational stages and modalities, con-
cepts and methods, everyday reality, and peda-
gogical practice; these are some of the paths in
Introduction
which teacher education should be based on, as a
rich and continuous movement, as the complexity
The word formação, which is used in Portuguese
of teacher practice requires.
to refer to teacher education or training, comes
from the Latin formatio. In its etymological con-
ception, it refers to the action and the effect of
The Challenges of Competences in
forming or being formed, in the sense of giving
Teachers’ Professional Education
form to/constituting something or, in the case of
two or more people or things, composing the
We live in the era of information, hyper-consump-
whole of which they are parts. For the education
tion, and ephemeral meaning, and this landscape
of teachers, the term is adjectivized: teacher edu-
of multiple and mutual fluxes and exchanges
cation (or formação de professores, in Portu-
among human beings configures a global,
guese); initial education; continuous education,
regional, and local landscape of specific features
among others.
and complex analyses for us to achieve an under-
To educate teachers is one of the greatest pillars
standing of our world. School, teacher and man-
and challenges of education. The performance of
agers, the diversity of students, curricular
professionals who act directly in teaching and
proposals, educational plans, evaluation refer-
learning processes must be, at once, aligned both
ences of different scales, didactic and paradidactic
with their didactic–pedagogical practice and also
material, and all sorts of singularities composing
with their educational path, whether initial or con-
educational sciences are also inserted in this
tinued. Knowledges, practices, and skills in
mobile-complex context of the present time.
teacher education must, this way, be connected
In the perspective of a possible trail, faced with
to the demands of an increasingly diverse and
the myriad of expressions, configurations,
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
M. A. Peters (ed.), Encyclopedia of Teacher Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_399-1
2 Teacher Education, knowledges, practices and competences
meanings, and sociocultural, environmental, tech-
nological, and productive diversity, education
emerges as an indicator of what must be priority
and indispensable, as in setting the foundations on
which society will be grounded, will direct and
search its goals and solutions in fields such as
economic, environmental, political, social issues,
and so on.
It is in this sense that international agendas are
drawn up, in a joint effort to promote dialog and
propose ways in which current society in general
and education, in particular, may be guided. More
than thinking about student education for the new
world, we need to turn to teachers, their training
and education, worldviews, professional experi-
ences, conceptions, knowledge, and practices. To
reach the result, it is indispensable to consider and
give the protagonism to the agents of the process,
thinking of education as the movement in which
teachers, and their initial and continuing educa-
tion, are inserted inseparably.
It is also considered that it is necessary to
revisit, value, and deepen the theoretical-method-
ological propositions and professional compe-
tences of teacher education. As Schon (1987)
reminds us, the curriculum of teacher education
is usually presented as “diffuse, unstable, and
insecure” (p. 15). And it is on this diffuse charac-
ter, often removed from the context of teachers’
daily situations, that the author will propose all his
theory of reflective practice, widely used in
research and organizations of initial and continu-
ing teacher education in Brazil.
Elaboration of proposals for teacher training
courses is multiple, with different arrangements,
focuses, and structures, often meeting situational
and contextual needs and formative identities.
Amid the diversity of teaching education, two
types of proposals are identified: the initial, at
university, in undergraduate courses; and the con-
tinuous training that takes place throughout pro-
fessional development and the career. So, teacher
education encompasses at the same time the
acquisition of competence, as how one establishes
in a profession and, consequently, the construc-
tion of identity.
Both initial and continuous training need to
guarantee the acquisition of theoretical
knowledge articulated to practice. A solid theoret-
ical education allows for educational profes-
sionals to act with confidence. In order to do so,
the teaching curriculum needs to define issues of
insertion in practice interconnected with the initial
and continuous education curricula, so that there
is no juxtaposition between these two types of
education, seeking, therefore, an inextricable con-
nection, continuity, and monitoring of the com-
plexity of the current world, both in the initial
phase of teaching activity, as well as for profes-
sionals in middle or long-term careers.
For this context of valuing teacher education,
alongside school, students and the teaching and
learning processes as a whole, Serres (2011) states
that: “teacher education is considered as a lever to
act over results of the school” (p. 425). In that
sense, it is necessary to define what the school’s
role is. And, based on that, to define which pro-
fessional should act in its interior. The author,
thus, corroborates with Rios (2010) in under-
standing that the school’s main role is to build,
rebuild, and socialize knowledge. In this sense,
for this author, teacher training should consider
issues of competence and quality in education.
The competence is set in three dimensions: tech-
nical, aesthetic and ethical, and political, and it has
the sense of “knowing how to perform the duty
well,” supported by knowledge and revealed in
action (Rios 2010, p. 88).
The reflections by Serres (2011) and Rios
(2010) are in line with those by Schon (1987), in
the sense of a resumption of the connection
between school daily life, the pedagogical prac-
tice of teachers and their theoretical-reflexive
framework, improving professional skills and
competence. That is to say, it is the action,
the pedagogical practice, which will define the
parameters to deepen, strength, and perfect the
initial and continuing education of teachers. This
is a connection without which both sides wouldn’t
understand each other in their essential and inher-
ent roles:
I shall use knowing-in-action to refer to the sorts of
knowhow we reveal in our intelligent action-pub-
licly observable, physical performances like riding
a bicycle and private operations like instant analysis
Teacher Education, knowledges, practices and competences
of a balance sheet. In both cases, the knowing is in
the action. (Schon 1987, p. 25)
Schon (1987) adds that knowing-in-action is
the basis for the reflective pedagogical practice.
Teachers’ training should be attentive to this dou-
ble condition of its conception, implementation,
and connection with the professionals: it must
consider that their careers and paths of didactic-
pedagogical experiences and also connect, as far
as possible, with the situational diversity of dif-
ferent school realities on which they act daily: “A
professional’s knowing-in-action is embedded in
the socially and institutionally structured context
shared by a community of practitioners” (Schon
1987, p. 33).
Knowing-in-action, as raised by Schon (1987),
brings with it the situational, circumstantial, and
formative diversity of teachers’ professional per-
formance. This diversity is essential in the elabo-
rate conception of their professional skills and
abilities, structuring their training for pedagogical
practice:
Knowing-in-practice is exercised in the institutional
settings particular to the profession, organized in
terms of its characteristic units of activity and its
familiar types of practice situations, and constrained
or facilitated by its common body of professional
knowledge and its appreciative system. (Schon
1987, p. 33)
Moghtadaie and Taji (2018) present us with
three main components of teachers’ professional
skills development. These are: (i) Professional
identity, composed by epistemic ability, attitude
ability, skill ability, job role-playing, and the
social role-playing; (ii) Self-development, com-
posed by attitude, skill, and behavior; and (iii)
the Competence, which brings elements such as
pedagogy, technology, research, basic competen-
cies, social-emotional, and spiritual moral.
Competence is understood as a specific set of
skills, composed by the groups of know-how
required for the teaching profession. As presented
by Moghtadaie and Taji (2018), these professional
skills in teacher education must encompass the
knowledge, the skills, psychological and emo-
tional aspects from the teacher’s work, necessary
for their theoretical, practical, and methodological
improvement in professional performance. These
3
skills draw near the teachers’ training prerogatives
raised by Schon (1987).
As we think of teacher education through skills
and competences, it needs to be directed to the
improvement of their theoretical-conceptual
framework and practical-methodological reper-
toire of their professional performance in educa-
tion. Teacher education must align specific
knowledge with practice. As worked by Tardif
(2002, p. 39), the teacher is “someone who must
know their subject, their discipline and their pro-
gram, in addition to having certain knowledge
related to educational sciences and pedagogy,
and develop a practical knowledge based on
their daily experience with students.”
And, as the author continues, in the wake of
teachers’ knowledge-teaching skills, in all of their
professional education, “knowledge-teaching is
important insofar as it requires knowledge of
life, personalized knowledge and competences
that depend on the personality of the actors, their
personal know-how.” Tardiff (2002) adds to the
importance of the teachers’ context and experi-
ence in this process, considering “professional
teachers’ daily and school life backgrounds” (p.
17).
Agreement with Tardiff (2002), Pimenta
(2012) emphasizes that this indissociability
among knowing, doing, and teaching provides
knowing-in-action, that is, it is tacit, implicit,
internalized knowledge in practice. However,
knowledge alone is not enough, it requires that
the professional manages to mobilize this knowl-
edge in their practice based on a repertoire of
situations that articulates theory and practice,
reflection.
On the other hand, the professional teachers are
required to have epistemological knowledge of
their discipline, methods, and techniques in
order to enable the learning of all students and
different ways of evaluating. For this to happen,
the degree courses’ curricula need to establish a
dialog with the one established in basic education.
In this sense, to understand the incomplete human
being, who is in formation throughout life in a
society where knowledge is increasingly
demanded, the professional teachers’ develop-
ment cannot be detached from this reality. That
4 Teacher Education, knowledges, practices and competences
is to say, it is necessary to constantly revisit and
enhance the initial and continuous education, in a
permanent way.
Teacher Education in Brazil and its New
Perspectives
It is understood that the study of teacher educa-
tion, henceforth cited as teacher formation, is a
field of studies and research in Brazil in expansion
and consolidation under a pressing necessity. Dur-
ing the 1960s, Aparecida Joly and other
researchers in the field of sociology had already
begun researches in this field (Pimenta 2012). The
theme justifies its relevance in the National Asso-
ciation for Post-Graduate Studies and Research in
Education (ANPED) which holds the Thematic
Working Group No. 08 – Teacher Education.
This institution organizes journals and national
and regional congresses gathering researchers
from different areas related to education. There
is also the National Association for Training of
Education Professionals (ANFOPE), established
in 1980, advocating policies for education and
professional valorization to ensure the social rec-
ognition of teachers, their professionalism, and
professionalization.
In Brazil, studies about teacher education are
commonly developed with the theoretical contri-
bution from foreign authors such as António
Nóvoa, Donald Schon, Bernard Charlot, Kenneth
Zeichner, among others. Paulo Freire is the Bra-
zilian author who stands out in this scenario,
developing a dialogical practice between teachers
and students, with attention to culture, knowl-
edge, the conditions of the unprotected, oppressed
and excluded, considering also that education is
not limited to the classroom. It is also necessary to
consider, in the Brazilian case, the development of
studies on teacher education studies based on the
materialistic-historical dialectical categories, hav-
ing Katia Curado as one of their greatest expo-
nents. Her work proposes teacher education in a
critical-emancipatory perspective based on prin-
ciples such as the labor category, the relation
between theory and practice, the research in/of
teachers’ function and education.
Progress in teacher education in specific areas
of the curricular components of basic education in
Brazil is also notable. Special and inclusive edu-
cation, professional and technological education,
studies directed to rural education, areas such as
school geography, mathematics education, envi-
ronmental education, studies of improvement of
the psychomotor and ludic activities for all age
groups, diversity of students in the education net-
work, courses of didactic enhancement through
active methodologies, proposals of continued
education for a complex and interdisciplinary
vision in the educational stages and modalities,
among others formative specificities.
In a similar way, this movement of updating
and renewing teacher education goes hand in hand
with the revision of curricula in degree courses.
Mainly in specialist areas, present in the second
phase of primary and secondary education, it was
necessary, at least during the last two decades, to
develop proposals to reformulate pedagogical
professional competences which were closer to
theories and concepts elaborated and dissemi-
nated worldwide. At the same time that it had
become necessary to approach the Brazilian edu-
cational reality, now modified and with new local
and regional panoramas, reflected in the different
specificities of the municipal, state, and federal
education networks.
From the point of view of the role of promo-
tion, monitoring, and regulation of activities
aimed at teacher education, the Ministry of Edu-
cation, together with the National Education
Council, defined, through Resolution CNE/CP
No. 2 of December 20, 2019, the National Curric-
ular Guidelines for the Initial Teacher Education,
which aims to establish the Common National
Basis for the Initial Education of Basic Education
Teachers (BNC-Formação, in the Brazilian abbre-
viation). In addition to the formative, structural,
and organizational aspects, this document is spe-
cifically concerned with valuing and promoting
the organization of professional teaching skills for
teacher education in Brazilian basic education.
This way, many of the theories, propositions
and methodologies of implementing the deepen-
ing and improvement of teacher education in Bra-
zil have been following, to a great extent, the
Teacher Education, knowledges, practices and competences
current work on the theme, arguing that it is nec-
essary, above all, to value also the educator and
the professional experience, thinking of the
teacher’s education as a whole, but also of the
educators of these teachers and the specific
demands of each educational reality. The path to
be followed, in the sense of structuring teachers’
professional competences, together with their
practices and knowledge, is as complex as it is
challenging, with both the federal figuration of
promoting a structure, organization, and orienta-
tion for such training, as well as the local,
regional, and contextual specificity of teachers’
performance in schools and educational networks
throughout the country.
Curriculum and initial training, programs of
continuous education courses, active and effective
participation in the development of educational
public policies, alignment of teacher education
with school pedagogical planning of the teaching
network and the curriculum of stages and modal-
ities of basic education: these are some of the
elements that encourage and strengthen the refer-
ence basis for teacher education, the educators of
these teachers and the skills, the professional-ped-
agogical performance as a whole.
Much of what has been proposed as innovation
is based on what has been called teaching practice,
i.e., the pedagogical-didactic practice in school
everyday life. In addition to the proposition of
the theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological
development of teachers, present, for example,
in Tardiff (2002), an approximation of the theo-
retical to the daily practice is observed through
new incursions of methodological
implementation.
The competences once listed by Philippe
Perrenoud and Jacques Delors are now faced
with a new world, largely worked by the new
demands for the constitution of professional skills
that accompany the nowadays’ speed, dynamics,
and educational diversity. These contemporary
proposals for the renewal of teachers’ practice
5
are more commonly called active methodologies.
Blended models, mobile curricula, insertion of
metacognitive elements, the presence of digital
information and communication technologies in
learning processes, among other current proposals
in the educational sciences, confront a whole set
of innovations that must be present in the teacher
education for the twenty-first century.
In a world increasingly crying out for a future
to be achieved, or the one already existent in some
privileged informational, socio-environmental,
and productive places, it’s a long way to go. The
sociocultural diversity goes hand in hand with the
productive inequalities of consumption, as well as
the multifaceted reality of the educational situa-
tions present in our world inserted, inherently, in
specific local and regional contexts. With these,
all the theoretical, practical, and methodological
sets of knowledge, skills, and competences of the
professional teacher education must dialog, con-
nect, and understand, in order to propose better
solutions in the formative journey of the future
teaching professionals, who will act in such dis-
tinct and complex realities.
References
Moghtadaie, L., & Taji, M. (2018). Explaining the require-
ments for teacher’s development based on professional
competencies approach. Educational Research and
Reviews, 13(14), 564–569. https://files.eric.ed.gov/
fulltext/EJ1186380.pdf.
Pimenta, S. G. (2012). Professor Reflexivo: construindo
uma crítica. In S. G. Pimenta & E. Ghedin (Eds.),
Professor reflexivo no Brasil: gênese e crítica de um
conceito (7a ed., pp. 17–52). São Paulo: Cortez.
Rios, T. A. (2010). Compreender e ensinar: por uma
docência da melhor qualidade (8a ed.). São Paulo:
Cortez.
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practioner.
San Francisco: JosseyBass.
Serres, G. (2011). Formação Docente. In: Van Zanten, A.
(Ed.). Dicionário de Educação. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes
Tardif, M. (2002). Saberes docentes e formação pro-
fissional. Petrópolis: Vozes.