O professor de Geografia e os saberes profissionais: o processo formativo e o desenvolvimento da profissionalidade

Abstract

LOPES, C. S. The teacher of Geography and professional knowledge: the formation process and the development of professionality. 2010. 258 p. Thesis (Doctoral) – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciencias Humanas, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, 2010. The process of appropriation, production and development of knowledge and the necessary types of know-how for the teaching of Geography is analyzed. While taking into account the specific terms in the discipline within the school curriculum, knowledge and types of knowhow that fundamental education school teachers of Geography should know so that they could develop a pedagogical and geographical working program that would trigger significant knowledge and form their professionality are identified and understood. In the wake of research aiming at the teachers‟ professionality and its main corollary which focus on teaching knowledge, we would like to contribute towards the teachers‟ acknowledgement and better social valorization as a rule and specifically towards an improvement of the formation processes of Geography teachers within the current historical moment. Besides the bibliographical research on this specific investigation, data and information are brought about from the classroom and from interviews with five experienced teachers and specialists in this area of the school curriculum who work in the municipality of Maringa PR Brazil. A set of categories has been built through the content analysis methodology to show results according to proposed aimed. It has been verified that the global perspective of the Geography teachers on their work and profession is marked by the field of their specific discipline. The teachers perceive that the geographic discourse, themes, concepts and procedures within the school curriculum are important for the enhancement of the discipline‟s identity but also within their own professionality. Although they define themselves generically, they accept themselves and seek acknowledgement as teachers of Geography. They thus appropriate themselves of a specific school geographic tradition which, highlighted by the historical development of science and by knowledge which has been produced and accumulated by professional experience, is continuously evaluated, critiqued and recreated. They insist that the pedagogical reflections, developed to make curriculum-selected geographical knowledge accessible, attractive and useful, will not de relegated to the periphery of themes and contents. Teachers involved in such a complex task produce specific professional types of knowledge listed in educational literature as Content Pedagogical Knowledge. We hold that the term geographic pedagogical knowledge is more appropriate. Geographical knowledge and related sciences, and pedagogical knowledge in general and knowledge of the context of the educational activity – especially the students‟ experience – mix themselves and give rise to geographic pedagogical knowledge. This type of knowledge is doubtlessly an evident token of the contents‟ special understanding that quality teaching makes mandatory. It also reveals the development of the teacher‟s professionality. The need for conceiving and implementing a curricular structure as one of the strategies related to the formation process and mostly in initial formation has been evidenced. This would give to future teachers an organic understanding of the relationship between specific knowledge in geography and pedagogical ones. At the same time, it gives adequate means for the development of dispositions that would make them conceive and develop a teaching which is sensitive to the various social and geographical contexts of the teachers‟ professional practice.