This approach presents a panorama of the complex situation of education in schools nowadays, and the need for changes in the formation/ performance of the teacher. Strains experienced by teachers during the pedagogical process are analyzed taking into account reflections of modern and postmodern thinking. According to this proposal, the results of the investigation developed by graduate and undergraduate students in a discipline of "Curriculum and Programs" in the Course in Pedagogy, and later deepened in a Research Project (Procelin-UFPR), in 2001, are presented here. The researchers investigated teachers from public schools in Curitiba and Great Curitiba. The meanings, needs and options related to the teacher's practice nowadays were understood considering Bordieu's concept of habitus, and the analytic possibilities opened by SACRISTÁN, GIROUX and GRAMSCI. This article tries to disentangle the teacher's work from the many demands imposed nowadays, concurring to a redirection in the prescriptive proposals of changes and specially in the ones referring to the formation of teachers.
teacher's function; meanings of change; modernity; post-modernity