Work-in-progress: Institutional policies on teacher training and engineering teachers' training

Abstract

This paper aims to briefly discuss the issue of institutional policies for teachers training in Brazil. The paper discusses some changes in Brazilian Higher Education Institutions and provides an important example of changes in Institutional Policies occurred in Europe after the Bologna Declaration. The example of Europe is presented because there was an important change-inducing factor in institutional policies Higher Education Institutions that enabled the development of many actions for teachers training and improvement. It is observed in Brazil exactly the absence of a change-inducing factor and teachers training is not a common and present subject in the institutional policies in higher education. The paper also presents a program for teachers training, called University Pedagogy Course, which existed at Universidade de Sao Paulo and the Program for Teaching Improvement, that still exists, for graduate students offering an university pedagogy overview and providing initial teachers training. Finally, the work discusses the importance of teachers training, the motivation of teachers to improve themselves and the conflict that exists between the dedication to teaching and research.