Curriculum reforms and initial education: Knowledge and professionalization

Abstract

This work aims at providing an overview, from the perspective of governmentality, discourse and curriculum policies, on the issue of teachers’ professionalization in the curricular reforms that have guided the fi eld of initial teacher education in Brazil and around the world since the 1990’s. For such, an analysis of professionalism, teaching professionalism and education in initial training, whose offi cial policies have privileged bachelor’s degree and undergraduate levels based on the legislation texts – Ordinance CNE / CP 009/2001 and Resolution CNE / CP 01/2002, Ordinance CNE / CP 28/2001 and Resolution CNE / CP 2/2002 – which introduced the reform earlier this century in Brazil, is made. This database is supplemented by observations resulting from investigations over the last decade which have discussed the effects of this policy on undergraduate programs, for the purpose of assessing their impact on curriculum and teachers’ professional identity. It is argued that the initial training of teachers to work in Elementary Education has been guided, from an offi cial point of view, by a practical and instrumental rationality that reduces the teacher to an expert in the management of the teaching process and his professional development, pointing, paradoxically, towards curriculum de-intellectualization and teacher de-professionalization.

Keywords: curriculum reform, teacher professionalization, initial training.