Learning to teach requires on the part of the future teachers the development of attitudes, values, and knowledges proper to the teaching activity, constituting a complex process that has to be put in motion by the licentiateship courses. The present study starts from the premise that the licentiateship student experiences conflicts during this process, which are possibly intensified by the changes that the teaching profession has undergone, changes that for some configure a crisis. Previous studies, based on Jean Piaget's theory, indicate that the ways to perceive and resolve conflicts vary among working teachers and that the way to deal with professional situations is not always related to career time, but to levels of construction of the teaching activity. Thus, the study sought to find out whether there are conflicts among teachers in preparation, and if the way to solve them can be related to the acquisition of professionalism. To that end, licentiateship students responded to a questionnaire and an interview based on hypothetical stories involving situations that were capable of producing conflicts related to issues such as teacher authority, professional autonomy, and pedagogical choices, among others. Understanding how the licentiateship students interpreted and dealt with - or failed to deal with - such conflicts offered clues as to the levels of construction of professionalism by the subjects, even if they had not yet concluded their courses. To recognize the existence of these levels opens up ways to rethink teacher education in licentiateships, so as to offer conditions for the students to develop further, into a higher level of professionalism, still during their initial training.
Conflict; Educative practice; Licentiateship; Professional development