Uma proposta para caracterizar a atuação do professor na sala de aula

Abstract

This work is the result of an observational research, carried out in the period of 2004 to 2005, in Sao Paulo, along with a group of high school physics teachers in inservice teacher-training course. Our broader issue is inserted in the context of teacher education and our initial problem was based in the recognition of the incipient learning of teachers in the courses, as identified from the few changes resultant in their practice. The first more objective observation that gave birth to our research question was the teachers' fragmentation of the pedagogical sequence when trying out changes in their practice; that fragmentation coming from attempts of application of the course's proposals. We noted that the discomfort of the teacher with this generated disruption in the sequence many times discouraged them from persisting in putting the new learning into practice. What does this fragmentation consist of and how does it occur? What are the obstacles (conceptual, epistemological) of the teacher that can cause the disruption? This question motivated us to study the characteristics of teacher practices in the classroom and how these characteristics change, or oscillate, when teachers are in process of re-elaboration of their practice, fostered by a teacher education program. We chose a group participating of an in-service teacher-training program, which we understand as constructivist. We analyzed the classroom practice of the teachers within this framework and grouped their characteristics into three dimensions as of their more direct classroom practice teacher and their strategies, teacher and their abilities, and teacher and their attitudes and two dimensions as of the reflection and self-evaluation of their work evaluation that teacher makes of their work and meta-evaluation. We related the fragmentation of the pedagogical sequence with the incoherence in the teachers' strategies and attitudes when they apply the teaching theory they are learning, but at the same time maintain aspects of their practice still founded into the old theory. We concluded that the learning of a new teaching theory requires a ground attitudinal change, more fundamental than possible changes in the teaching strategies, these ones capable of planning. An attitude change is complex as it involves more then mere substitutions, and time-taking, as it depends on feedback to concrete situations brought from the classroom practice.