Literacy teachers education: searching for practice

Abstract

This paper presents results of a research carried out with literacy teachers in a school system in southern Brazil and aims to present discussions on literacy teachers’ training and profession. The research had a qualitative ap-proach, considering that we aimed at understanding the processes experienced by a given social group from the results obtained. With the aid of the theoretical framework we found that the literature in the areas of teacher education is growing and allows for some analysis based on observations and research by authors such as Tardif (2002), who states that the professional knowledge of teachers are plural, and are amalgamated to personal and academic knowledge, among others. A survey was conducted seeking for data on the subjects and on the implication of the phenomena stu-died in a process of exploration of the search field. The survey achieved a return of 138 questionnaires, 43% of the 318 teachers who work in the first and second years of elementary education of that school system in 2012. In the analysis, in addition to the data obtained in the research field, the main aspects of the investigation involved the literacy teacher training and profession, as well as their pedagogical practices. As main results we highlight the high rate of teachers with postgraduate training and the search for training that directly involve their classroom practice. The principal authors of reference are: Tardif (2002), Santos (2007), Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999), among others.