This article deals with the theme of teacher education, especially with continued education and its relation with the low quality of public school systems. It presents analyses from a research on the main educational programs implemented by the government of the State of São Paulo in the 1982-1994 period. Together with the documental analysis, an empirical research was carried out including a case study of one the continued education programs envisaged at the time of the implementation of the Standard School Program (1991-1994). The analyses made of the educational literature and of the educational programs reveal that teacher continued education was seen as a strategic element to build up teacher competence. The text moves on to register the presence of a discourse that has given support to the growing importance attributed to teacher continued education, projects and actions aiming at improving the quality of education systems. The discourse of incompetence is then described and problematized. The different forms assumed by this discourse are presented, according to the context in which it appears, and also the various appropriations made by the several agents involved in the teacher continued education policies, from the architects of the programs to the participating teachers. It is proposed that the argument of incompetence has founded reductionist and homogenizing practices of continued education. The importance is highlighted of taking into account, when conceiving continued education policies, the heterogeneity that characterizes the teaching staff and schools, and also of developing broader educational policies targeting the actual improvement of the educational services and not just the competence of their teachers.
Teacher education; Continued education; Ethnography; Competence