A Unidade de Ensino Descentralizada da ETFRN em Mossoró/RN: contextualização histórica e práticas de formação

Abstract

During the first term of President José Sarney (1985-1990) and the first expansion of the Vocational Professional Education in Brazil, the first Decentralized Teaching Unit (Unidade de Ensino Descentralizada – UNED) of the Federal Technical School of Rio Grande do Norte (ETFRN) was created in the city of Mossoró. It was inaugurated on the 29th of December in 1994. It aimed at amplifying the possibilities of Professional Education offers in the region and areas nearby, as well as promoting the “Citizen Technician” formation as it was established in the Pedagogical Political Project (PPP) of ETFRN that started in 1995. This dissertation analyzes the formative practices developed with the pedagogical team, the faculty and the students at UNED/ETFRN in Mossoró in order to implement the propositions of the PPP. I established the time interval between 1995 and 1998 – respectively the years of the beginning and graduation of the first class of Electro-Mechanics. Aligned with the research line of Teachers’ Formation and Pedagogical Practices at the Master’s Degree program in Vocational Professional Education, this investigation presents a qualitative approach and it is inserted in the field of School Institutions according to the studies of Magalhães (2004), Sanfelice (2007) and Nosella and Buffa (2005, 2008). Data collection followed a documental research and interviews through the Oral History method. For the documental research, I used the PPP, ordinances, reports, action plans, ETFRN’s agendas, newspapers clippings from Mossoró press, brochures from UNED/ETFRN, pamphlets designed by students and photographical records. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed. The interviews had an open structure. I interviewed members of the pedagogical team, managers, teachers and former students from UNED/ETFRN. It totaled 26 subjects. The field research and the data analysis was based on document studies by Le Goff (1990) and the memory study by Le Goff (1990), Halbwachs (2003), Pollak (1992) and Benjamin (1994). The results led to the conclusions that the UNED/ETFRN in Mossoró faced many challenges because it created high expectations in the population of Mossoró and cities nearby about the possibilities of jobs in the world of work. In addition, the institutional principles primed for a student formation not focused on the purely technical conception of Vocational Professional Education but also on a formation aligned with the perspective of citizenship. However, the great challenge faced was internal: to provide the pedagogical team, the faculty and the students an integral human and polytechnic formation that would break from the opposition between theory and practice, technical and propaedeutic subjects. Therefore, the administration implemented a training for the pedagogical team so that they would be ready to promote the continuous teachers’ formation through weekly pedagogical meetings – teachers would be ready for their teaching practice based on the principles of the PPP. Although not every interviewed teacher mentioned the existence of such a formation process, the analysis of the sources showed that the teachers’ formation was a reality at the UNED/ETFRN. In its own way, it made possible for the faculty and the institution staff to promote, in the school daily life, the development of a culture towards the formation of the “Citizen Technician”. The students were taught to build up their critical thought and acted their own citizenship. History of Scholar Institutions. ETFRN. Political Pedagogical Project. Formative Practices.