Abstract
The core issue of this paper is the teacher education undergraduate courses (called Pedagogy in Brazil) set up based on the National Curriculum Guidelines, approved in 2006. Our purpose is to discuss the training of multipurpose teachers for children´s education and for the early grades of elementary schools, starting with results of a research conducted in public and private institutions in the state of São Paulo, from 2012 to 2013, funded by CNPq – the National Research Council. For the quantitative approach, we utilized the technique of documental analysis over the set of 144 curriculum grids we were able to obtain. The grounds for the qualitative approach, data were analyzed by cross-checking the characteristics of the institutions with the characteristics of the discipline that make up their curriculum grids. Data reveal that most teacher education courses in the state of São Paulo are provided by private institutions, with minimum number of hours and research is not intrinsic with their characteristics. The interpretative analysis of results establishes that the Pedagogy courses investigated are affected by the same problems pointed out in the literature concerning DCNCP/2006: the vagueness of the pedagogical field and the scattering of the scope of pedagogy and the teacher´s professional practice. Consequently, the majority of such courses are not fully training neither the educator nor the multipurpose teacher intended to work in child education (preschool) and the early grades of elementary school, as the education and training they get is fragile, superficial, generalizing, fragmented, dispersive and unfocused. In our conclusion alternatives are indicated in order overcome some of these problems.
Pedagogy courses; Educator training; Teacher education; Multipurpose teacher; National curriculum guidelines