errors in teacher training in Brazil

At the end of 2023, after yet another disastrous result for Brazil in Pisa, the world’s main exam to assess the quality of education in countries, discussions about the main causes of this failure were resumed. The Minister of Education, Camilo Santana, stated that one of the reasons would be the lack of teacher training.

Some data corroborates the statement: in the last Enade (National Student Performance Exam), an exam that measures the knowledge of students at the end of higher education, all graduates of undergraduate courses had a grade below 5, on a scale ranging from 0 to 10.

An old problem reflected in this result is the qualification of students who attend undergraduate courses, who arrive at higher education with serious deficiencies in basic training. According to data from Sisu (Unified Selection System), while to enter courses such as medicine and law the student must achieve minimum scores of 811.42 and 732.60 on the Enem, respectively, for the pedagogy course only 598 is needed. .05 points. If the student is competing for ProUni, aimed at low-income students entering private colleges with scholarships, the minimum score is even lower: 463.58.

But the responsibility would not only lie in the profile of the students. A problem discussed in Brazil is the structure of pedagogy courses. According to a study released by Abmes (Brazilian Association of Higher Education Supporters), Brazil has a curriculum focused significantly on theoretical subjects and few practical subjects.

Singapore, the country with the second best Pisa score in the world, has six theoretical subjects, while in Brazil there are nineteen. When we talk about practical disciplines, the situation is reversed. In the Asian country there are 47 subjects that deal with what should be taught and how; in Brazil, there are only 18.

Paulo Freire’s influence hinders the acquisition of knowledge, says expert

For sociologist and educational consultant Gabriel Mendes, this curricular structure follows the thesis that it would be more important to develop critical thinking in students than to impart knowledge. “Roughly speaking, what happens is that, for the teacher, it is more important to carry out political proselytizing than to teach text interpretation and the basic operations of mathematics. So, what we form is a ‘sealer‘ semi-literate”, he points out.

Doctor in Neurosciences Henrique Simplício also points out as erroneous the stance of prioritizing the critical training of students, especially due to the subjectivity of what is meant by this. “What we call critical reasoning in cognitive psychology is something super hard work. It is a way of escaping, often, from mastering the content, which should be more important. But content mastery is often rejected by many educational documents and theorists.”

The story that critical thinking should have greater weight in the training of professionals has its roots in the patron of Brazilian education: Paulo Freire. In several publications, Freire reinforces the importance of teachers and unions insisting on politicized training. “Even in Paulo Freire’s international experiences, such as Guinea-Bissau, you can clearly see this: it has always been more important to transmit to students the critical awareness that, in fact, is not critical at all!”, he comments.

According to Mendes, what is sold as critical thinking is, in fact, an attempt to promote an ideology “It’s that thing where you observe a phenomenon and reflect on it. But what you notice is that many teachers end up, in the end, imposing a thought, transmitting it as if it were the absolute truth. And anyone who contests has serious problems.”

Simplício corroborates this idea, pointing out that the distorted vision of a good teacher is already rooted in this model: teachers considered “hip” are seen as good, while those who make an effort to teach are devalued. “In public schools, you see that the most influential teachers are not those who make the effort to teach the content, to transmit all of their knowledge,” he laments.

For Simplício, Paulo Freire denies one of the basic principles of cognitive science, in which the transmission of knowledge should be prioritized for good student training. “This is very evident [no pensamento de Paulo Freire]. You cannot transfer knowledge, this is even considered an ‘attack’ on the student. But you can ‘be a fighter’. So, when you don’t transmit knowledge, you transmit political value.”

Consequences in the classroom

The experience lived by master and doctoral student in Education Marcus Vinícius Neves Araújo reinforces the experts’ perception. Marcus says that, during his master’s degree, he taught scientific methodology to students on the Physical Education course at a federal university and realized in practice how the fragility of the basic training of undergraduate students harms their higher education.

“I worked with people who were already halfway through graduation. And it was very common to get projects with terrible writing, from people who really had great difficulty writing. This makes us reflect that, in fact, the deficiency in higher education is often at the base”, she comments.

Araújo was also Head of the Professional Education Department in Uberaba, Minas Gerais, between 2021 and 2022. His experience in the sector took place during the pandemic period, in which the most basic deficiencies became even more evident.

“Many teachers didn’t know how to write an email, or how to fill out a Google Forms form. A very common mistake that happened at the time was that we would send the form links, the teacher would fill it out and just by filling it out he thought it was already right. He wouldn’t click the ‘send’ button!”, says the professor who, during his tenure on the board, began training with workshops on Power point, video editing, email creation, among other tools made available by Google. Uberaba, a city located in the Triângulo Mineiro, 490 km from Belo Horizonte, currently has between 4 and 4.5 thousand teachers in the municipal education network, which serves almost 30 thousand students in early childhood and elementary education. The department headed by Araújo offers free training to teachers in the municipal network, regardless of whether they are competitive or hired.

Araújo believes that thinking about continuing training policies for teachers is fundamental. However, even in your city, which has a body responsible for the area – in addition to having a number of professionals that would even allow testing more efficient training models –, it is not always possible to execute satisfactory projects due to political interventions. “Few municipalities have a continuing teacher training center. In terms of legislation and structure, Uberaba is a model. But the execution is still flawed,” he comments.

After his tenure, Marcus observed how political interests overrode the quality of the work being developed in the sector. “At the beginning of the administration, autonomy was total. I was able to handpick the professionals who would be with me, however, over time, this autonomy was diluted. There is no longer any autonomy in choosing the team,” he comments. This lost autonomy, for Marcos, is reflected in the choice of professionals who are not necessarily technical or competent enough to collaborate in the continuing education process.

Lack of funding or teacher salaries does not justify the problems

Investment is another factor that is always remembered to justify the flaws in the Brazilian educational system. However, this, for Henrique Simplício, is not an issue that explains educational failure. Pisa itself has data that show that investment is not necessarily a predominant factor in improving quality. OECD data show that Brazil spends 6% of GDP on education, and countries with higher performance, such as South Korea and Japan, spend 4.5% and 3.1% of GDP, respectively. If we compare with countries with a similar socioeconomic profile, we see the situation does not change. Chile, which is the country with the best PISA performance in Latin America, invests 5.4% of GDP in education.

Simplício explains that issues such as teachers’ mastery of the content have greater weight. “People are trying to explain these things through economic reductionism. It’s as if Brazil spent trillions of reais and had a much better mathematical performance in education and, in fact, we know that’s not the case. Brazilian teachers have very low performance, they do not master the content of the subject they teach. And no one can teach what he doesn’t know.”

The idea that teachers in Brazil do not receive a fair salary already populates the imagination. It is very common, in the media or in demonstrations by teachers’ unions, to raise the flag of minimum wages and that the problem is low pay.

Simplício disputes these statements, citing the case of Maranhão, which is constantly mentioned as an example due to the high salaries of teachers. “It is a state that traditionally has one of the worst performances in Pisa and even in Saeb itself, which is a government indicator. It is a region that has many problems, but the minimum salary for teachers in Maranhão is the highest in Brazil.”

Maranhão is one of the states that has the highest minimum salary for teachers, where they earn the minimum of R$6,867.68. Even so, it is the third worst state in Brazil in the Ideb ranking among students in the initial years of elementary school with a grade of 5.0. Santa Catarina, the state with the highest score on the index (6.5), has a minimum value of R$3,845.63. For Simplicio, one way to improve this would be to link results to financial performance. “We also don’t have a chain of public policies, where we can be responsive in terms of compensation for the effort,” he says.

Both experts agree that the educational problem is a vicious cycle. An effort is needed for Brazilian education to break with the poor quality, which affects both public and private schools. Consistent changes would involve a pedagogical restructuring in the curriculum of pedagogy courses, for example. However, the regulation of higher education is mostly linked to federal laws, which requires more complex work in the Legislature. It would also be necessary to consider the interest that the current government would have in making these changes.

Mendes believes that it is necessary to think about short-term and independent alternatives. “What could be done is for governments at lower levels, states and municipalities, to start mobilizing in this sense and also think that civil society can start working towards offering better quality teacher training, whether in postgraduate -graduation, in the research, extension part. There is the possibility of different courses, which can transmit evidence-based pedagogy to teachers.”