Enseñanza & Teaching (Jan 2013)
Teaching practice in the initial training of teachers in the first cycle of Primary Education in Portugal
Abstract
Being centered in the context of initial teachers’ education this article describes and analyzes the speech about the role of the pedagogic practice in the point of view of the different elements that participate in that process. The developed investigation was drawn in both quantitative and qualitative paradigms, involving futures teachers, cooperative teachers (tutors) and supervisor teachers. The analysis was essentially descriptive and interpretative. Our greater preoccupation is to understand the meaning that the participants give to a set of questions in the context of the pedagogical practice. The data gathered by the instruments were analyzed with a methodology of content analysis. The analysis allowed obtaining a conceptual picture guided by several categories that show: the conceptions concerning the expectations and fears about profession; the function and organization of the pedagogic practice; and, the cooperative teachers’ role and supervisors’ role. The main results evidence that the component of practice is very important in the preservice teachers’ education. The students in initial formation show positive expectations about profession, but they also point fears. The students value the roles of the tutor and the supervisor, like agents of mediation of the processes of understanding and integration of the different knowledge, and advisors of the dialectic processes of analysis of processes and syntheses associated to the reflection that the young professor must do in his practice. For the agents of the practical education (tutorial and supervisors) the practice is defined as a context of fundamental formation in the preparation of the young teacher. With respect to its roles we saw that these are not exactly coincident, but complementary.
