O imaginário e os “meios-caminhos” na educação de professores leitores: o lido e o contado formando formadores.

Abstract

This dissertation is a qualitative piece of research, mixing case-study and life-history methodologies. It has been theoretically funded by the studies on the imaginary and its main objective is to answer the following question: “Is it possible to relate childhood references of trainee teachers, about their experiences with books, to their pedagogic practice?” To answer such a question, the empirical research has been focused on the childhood references of ten teacher (nine women and one man) that were carrying out their undergraduate studies in the Special Program for the Formation of Working Teachers, run by the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), in the city of Canguçu, Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil (BR). The empirical part of the work took place between the months of May and November 2006 and has been aimed at exploring subjects’ childhood memories related to their experiences with books. For the process of data collection, a workshop, entitled “Once upon a time – Stories and images on making oneself a teacher”, was organized. The following data collection instruments were used: field diary, written and oral narratives produced by the subjects, and a personal book, created by the teachers themselves, considered as an oriented self project. Through such instruments, it was possible to capture trainee teachers’ references which have been expressed through two pairs of meaning nuclei that enabled the establishment of connections between personal repertoires and pedagogic know-how. They are: the read and the told (which have emerged from the empirical field, based on books that have been read by the subjects or stories they have been told by their elders) and the search-project and the opus-project, which, based on the ideas of Marie- Christine Josso, led the subjects to a self-consciousness that sprang from references that were not always fresh in their memories. From such references and “matricying” elements, I have investigated the points of contact to weave with the pedagogic practice of each subject, respecting their subjectivities, imaginaries, timings, and choices that were revealed in this (self)formation process.