Trajectories reviewed: reasons from teaching philosophy to teaching philosophy of education

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes aspects of the motivation of teacher trainers who teach philosophy of education in pedagogy programs. The empirical research field is formed by the pedagogy programs at two public universities, chosen because of their tradition in this program, i.e., one since 1939, and the other since 1984. The study was based on the content analysis of accounts in form of interviews with eight professors of philosophy of education. The analyses were developed around four main interpretive topics: the choice for teaching; from teaching philosophy to teaching philosophy of education: between freedom and imposition; being a teacher trainer of philosophy of education. The findings indicate that respondents chose philosophy: i. by vocation; ii. by a motivation from both within and outside the schooling process; iii. through the mediation of a teacher.

Keywords:
Teacher trainer; Teaching; Teacher subjectivations; Philosophy of education; Pedagogy

RESUMO

Este artigo teve por objetivo analisar aspectos que estão contidos na motivação de professores formadores que lecionam Filosofia da Educação no curso de Pedagogia. Como campo empírico da pesquisa foram definidos os cursos de Pedagogia de duas universidades públicas, escolhidas em razão da tradição na oferta desse curso, ou seja, uma desde 1939 e outra desde 1984. A pesquisa dirigiu-se pela análise de conteúdo das falas em forma de entrevistas de oito professores de Filosofia da Educação. As análises foram desenvolvidas com base em quatro eixos interpretativos: a escolha pela docência; a docência como atividade inventiva; do ensino de Filosofia ao ensino de Filosofia da Educação: entre liberdade e imposição; ser professor formador de Filosofia da Educação. As constatações da pesquisa indicaram que a opção pela Filosofia deu-se: i. por vocação; ii. por motivação advinda de dentro e fora do processo de escolarização; iii. por mediação de um professor.

Palavras-chave:
Professor Formador; Docência; Subjetivações Docentes; Filosofia da Educação; Pedagogia

RESUMEN

Este artículo tuvo como objetivo analizar aspectos que están contenidos en la motivación de los formadores de profesores que enseñan Filosofía de la Educación en la carrera de Pedagogía. Como campo empírico de investigación se definieron las carreras de Pedagogía de dos universidades públicas, escogidas por la tradición en ofrecer esta carrera, es decir, uno de 1939 y otro de 1984. La investigación estuvo guiada por el análisis de contenido de los discursos en forma de entrevistas con ocho docentes de Filosofía de la Educación. Los análisis se desarrollaron a partir de cuatro ejes interpretativos: la elección de la enseñanza; la enseñanza como actividad inventiva; de enseñar Filosofía a enseñar Filosofía de la Educación: entre la libertad y la imposición; ser profesor de Filosofía de la Educación. Los hallazgos de la investigación indicaron que la opción por la Filosofía se dio: i. por vocación; ii. por motivaciones provenientes de adentro y de afuera del proceso escolar; iii. a través de la mediación de un maestro.

Palabras clave:
Formador de Profesores; Enseñanza; Subjetivaciones del Profesorado; Filosofía de la Educación; Pedagogía

INTRODUCTION

This article analyzed aspects of the motivations of teacher trainers who teach philosophy of education in pedagogy programs. It also discusses, in light of these aspects, the constitutive process from teaching philosophy to teaching philosophy of education. The approach is focused on the figure of teacher trainers, delimited here as those who work with the training of future teachers, considering their education and professional trajectories, with a view to identifying the subjective and objective reasons that were foundational in their choice for philosophy and, later, for teaching philosophy. For this reason, it is understood that the pedagogical dimension of the philosophical education of philosophy teachers can only be thematized in its various issues by understanding the aspects of their personal, schooling and professional trajectories. Indeed, knowing these experiences is of the utmost importance for recognizing the possible implications of the various teaching methods.

Thus, the article was organized around specific and decisive aspects which interfered with the process that constituted the teaching career of professors of philosophy of education, which, from an education focused on teaching philosophy, was driven by the circumstances toward teaching philosophy of education - which therefore required an integration with educational issues.

In considering educational problems, particularly teacher education (with a focus on teaching-related issues) and how to bridge its gaps, one cannot ignore that many teaching careers are woven based on how one was as a student, the emphases of initial teacher education (theoretical and/or pedagogical) and one’s attentive eye to how teachers used to teach. In the words of Cerletti (2009), part of what one is as a teacher is related to how one was as a student, the observations of how teachers used to act, i.e., students learn how to teach by watching how teachers teach them. For Cruz and Magalhães (2017), teacher trainers have an undeniable influence on future teachers’ identity constitution, i.e., the observed practice provides a parameter for the practice of students under training.

Thus, the teacher’s identity is established at the confluence of plural aspects, being, therefore, an invention process in each concrete situation (Altet, 2017). This reinforces the understanding that teacher training, in its dilemmas, cannot find ways of improvement and efficacy regarding teaching, whether in the macro political aspect or in the constitution of each teacher’s singular teaching, without an effort to understand, wherever possible, the universe of teachers’ motivations. Therefore, the scope of this article is to understand the subjective logics that led teacher trainers of philosophy of education to choose teaching.

METHODOLOGY

The empirical field for the research that served this article was defined around the pedagogy programs at two public universities with very distinct regional, geographic, and cultural characteristics, in addition to a robust tradition in offering this program, i.e., one since 1939, and the other since 1984. One is located in a hinterland area of the state of Bahia, and the other in the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It should be clarified that the idea of tradition which guided this choice regards the continuity and permanence of the teacher education experience, translating into significant time length offering the pedagogy program. One of the institutions is recognized as one of the oldest to offer this program in Brazil, and the other, in addition to having been offering it for four decades, long enough to grant it tradition in teacher education, was selected for its regional status.

Interviews were the method defined as the means to build data. This choice was based on the contributions of Szymanski, Almeida and Prandini (2004), as regards the relevance of knowledge from experience which is collected in the interview process, as well as in view of the need to listen to the actors of teaching of philosophy (of education) in terms of what they say about the reasons that led them to teaching.

Interviewing, as Bueno (2005) points out, is a valuable investigation instrument due to its heuristic potential, be it used as a source or an education device, despite the risks, as warned by Altet (2007), of discrepancy between the reported and the observed/performed practice. Another criterion that also justified choosing interviews lies in the ideas of Silveira (2002), where he understands interviews as a complex discursive event. Thus, the complexity of this event is due not only to what is though/interpreted/forged in the interviewer-interviewee relationship, but also by the intersections of images, beliefs, parameters and expectations, which end up adhering to the narratives produced in the interviews, on both the interviewer’s and the interviewee’s sides.

The subjects of this study were chosen in line with the investigation’s objective and the empirical field. These are professors at the defined institutions who hold tenured, full-time positions and, in most cases, a master’s degree or a PhD. The faculty at institution A, located in Brazil’s Northeast Region, for the pedagogy program, consists of 12 professors, nine male and three female, while the faculty at institution B, situated in the Southeast Region, is formed by 17 professors, 14 male and three female. Thus, the criterion for choosing the subjects for this study was as follows: the professors who taught required courses of philosophy (of education) the most in the pedagogy program. Based on this criterion, four professors from each university were chosen.

The Chart 1 presents the professors of philosophy of education from each institution who participated in the study, which was submitted to and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the institution to which it is affiliated. In accordance with the informed consent signed by the interviewees to ensure anonymity, code names referring to Greek mythology characters were used to designate each participant. By the same ethical principles, the study does not identify the institutions, which are designated as A and B, with A being Northeast, and B, Southeast.

Chart 1 -
Professors of philosophy of education participating in the study.

Participant professor	Institution	Education	Number of required courses of philosophy of education taught (2008/2018)
Prometheus	A	Philosophy (undergraduate and master’s degree)	05
Cronus		Philosophy (undergraduate and master’s degree and PhD)	05
Circe		Philosophy (undergraduate and master’s degree)	10
Zeus		Philosophy (undergraduate and master’s degree) and PhD in social memory	05
Apollo	B	Philosophy (undergraduate degree) and master’s and PhD in education	21
Athena		Philosophy (undergraduate and master’s degree and PhD)	05
Sisyphus		Philosophy (undergraduate and master’s degree and PhD)	09
Dionysus		Philosophy (undergraduate and master’s degree and PhD)	06

• Source: The authors.

The interpretation of the data collected from the interviews used Bardin’s (2016) content analysis, which allowed the emergence of native or emic categories, i.e., concepts and theories that arise from the participants themselves, which in turn allow transcending or expanding an existing idea about the object of analysis. The analysis was developed based on four main interpretative topics, namely: the choice for teaching; teaching as an inventive activity; from teaching philosophy to teaching philosophy of education: between freedom and imposition; being a teacher trainer in philosophy of education.

THE CHOICE FOR TEACHING

Regarding the identification of the aspects forming the teaching identity of these philosophy professors, in their way of teaching, it was possible to see, based on the interviewed professors, what Altet (2017, p. 1199) designates as a plural approach resulting from a combination of variables of a “psychological, pedagogical, didactic and contextual nature, methods and observations to grasp the complexity of practices.” In describing the process of choosing philosophy, which among the interviewed professors took place within and outside their schooling process, it was possible to infer that teaching has no relation to the idea of vocation (vocare), of being called to divine profession, although three professors expressed this possibility.

As I began to read philosophy, it grew larger, while agronomy faded away. [...] And when I went to Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais (IFCS) to study philosophy, I felt as if I was walking into a place I already knew. I don’t know if it’s spiritism, somewhere from the past that I’ve been to. (Professor Apollo)

I usually say I didn’t choose philosophy, it chose me. I was wandering, without even knowing the direction, and all of a sudden, I found myself a prisoner in its web. [...] Regarding philosophy, I chose it without being sure of what it had in store for me. I’m glad that even after a long journey, having it by my side, I have to admit: I couldn’t have found better company. That’s what happened to me. (Professor Cronus)

It was around then, in 1996, that I came closer to the humanities, as I’d been wanting to since 1993, that I enrolled in the philosophy course. And then my life opened up. (Professor Sisyphus)

Over their accounts, the same teachers pointed out aspects that counter this idea of “having been called” by philosophy, as they provided personal, psychological, and social indications that point to historical causes which intervened in that choice. Professor Cronus later indicates that he encountered philosophy through literature, as he had always enjoyed reading, although he did not say how he came close to the latter field. A point worth mentioning is when he indicates that he did not know that by studying literature he was already in the realm of philosophy.

I came to encounter philosophy indirectly: through literature, I was introduced to it. I enjoyed reading. From an early age, it became a habit, I’d read everything. [...] Over time, I grew more discerning in my literary choices. It wasn’t long before I was reading something that was, all at once, literature and philosophy. I wrote somewhere about my first encounter with Sartre, through his book Nausea. Without knowing it, by reading literature I was already studying philosophy. So my love for books slowly built bridges that led me to philosophy and, through it, I was led to education. (Professor Cronus)

This claim about reading literature and thus finding oneself in the realm of philosophy corroborates Kohan’s (2009) idea of a primordial freedom in philosophy - when it comes to doing philosophy. While it is an established field, philosophy has no owner and may emerge in any situation or space, be it institutionalized or not. In the case of Professor Apollo, who chose agronomy at first, migration to philosophy was due to his discovery of an agronomy concerned with agribusiness rather than the human as he desired. And at the library of the university he attended, as he came across the news of philosopher Sartre’s death and a philosophy book by André Vergez and Huisman, he decided to study the field, i.e., to ‘dwell’ in philosophy.

One day, I’m walking through the library and see the philosophy area on a corner. Sartre had just died and it was all over the news: “the philosopher has died”. That stayed in my mind: “philosopher! philosopher!” I went to read straight away! I picked up this little philosophy book, so interesting, today it’s considered outdated, but to me it was a beam: “History of Philosophy” by André Vergez and Huisman. They are French! It did sound like I guidebook, but I loved it. I said: “what an interesting course, I wonder if they teach this in some college?” That book touched me (Professor Apollo).

Professor Sisyphus reported, at several points in his account, several historical (social and family) aspects in his choice for philosophy - which at the time was included in the general list of humanities. His bourgeois family, as he put it, wanted medicine, but he always found himself inclined in another direction. He took an admission exam for a medical school, unsuccessfully, and then chose law, but its pragmatic dimension disappointed him. As his father had always supported his education, regardless of whether or not it was what he considered best, after an encounter with a philosophy professor and a friend who also aspired to the field, Professor Sisyphus decided to enter the philosophy course with resolution.

I decided I would go with the humanities. So I took the test and enrolled in the law program at Universidade Federal de Goiás […] I had always considered a more humanities-based course, particularly human sciences, as I was quite let down by the law program. It doesn’t really focus on the sociological or philosophical aspect of law, I went to law school with that expectation, and in law you become a manipulator of legal codes (Professor Sisyphus).

The interviewed professors pointed out the significant influence of reading habits and the intervention of teachers on the choice for philosophy. In terms of a teacher’s intervention in a student’s career choice, Professor Prometheus expressed his views quite directly.

My first contact with philosophy was still in high school. I went to a technical school, there was this teacher, I can’t remember the subject, whether moral and civic education or OSPB [Brazilian Social and Political Organization], on the first day of class he says, ‘Well, this is the subject, but we’ll be having philosophy classes.’ He then digressed about the program and the subject’s purpose, and we had philosophy classes. That was in technical school. I was studying industrial mechanics. I didn’t complete the full four-year program because I realized the technical field wasn’t really for me, a lot by the influence of those philosophy classes, I decided to pursue something in the humanities and eventually came to philosophy (Professor Prometheus).

The accounts of the interviewed professors, which provide indications on the influence of reading and the mediation of a teacher as crucial factors in shaping one’s choices, align with what Cerletti (2009) says about philosophical intervention. According to this author, the teaching of philosophy always takes place through the mediation of a teacher (in the philosophical options of their assumptions), through philosophical texts on both traditional and contemporary issues, provided that this mediation maintains its critical dimension. Thus, the decision to pursue philosophy, and the subsequent engagement in its activities (doing philosophy) cannot unfold without a dialogical perspective. Hence, in the realm of teaching philosophy, students must have opportunities to problematize their own reality. Without this context-specific problematization, philosophical reflections merely entail recognition rather than the generation of concepts, which is the goal of an education that aspires to be philosophical (Deleuze and Guattari, 1992).

Expanding on the significance of a teacher’s mediation in students’ career choices, and later, as teacher trainers, one can infer, as noted by Cruz and Magalhães (2017), that the teacher-student relationship plays a pivotal role in the teaching and learning process. For most of the professors interviewed, teacher trainers emerged as decisive figures, from the mediation in choosing the course to later evolutions in initial teacher education. This points to the studies of Bressoux (2003) about the teacher effect, which causes students to learn, not only because they know the subject matter thoroughly, but they also know how to effectively teach it in connection with the various stages of basic education.

In his account, Professor Zeus emphasized, in his own way, that the choice for philosophy (as a critical attitude) occurred outside the realms of formal schooling. This clearly attests the public and non-institutional dimension of philosophy as an attitude (doing philosophy), which can manifest itself in the most unexpected moments and places, even before it is formally designated as philosophy. Professor Zeus underscored that his choice for philosophy began through literature (accessed independently and through the mediation of friends), and that it counterposed what he had experienced in technical education. According to him, choosing philosophy was always linked to an unofficial and playful dimension of life, as opposed to an overly technical (formal) logic. This professor’s account highlights that his awakening to philosophy was mediated by friends, literature, and philosophy books, with a particular emphasis on the philosophers Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The cultural environment with artist friends played a decisive role in his choice for philosophy, as well as in his later formal teaching career.

However, my introduction to philosophy was earlier, not in secondary education, but outside school itself. […] I was always interested in literature, poetry, and philosophy. So, it seemed like an alternative to the technical route. When it came to choosing a higher education course, this alternative route resonated more with me than pursuing, for instance, business administration, engineering, or any other course. When I chose the teacher’s license degree in philosophy, I did it more like the unofficial side, which came out on top in my decision to take the admission exam. From the moment I stepped into the teacher’s license program, I felt more at ease, the environment was better aligned with my desire for more time to read. My technical training gradually faded as I pursued the course (Professor Zeus).

Similarly, Professor Athena pointed out that she could not draw a direct connection between her basic education and her decision to pursue philosophy. She had always seen herself as a critical individual actively engaged in student political matters. One of the reasons cited by her was that in philosophy she could problematize the human. She had considered studying philosophy and artistic education, but ultimately found philosophy to be closer to her quest for understanding the human. Here, it is worth mentioning Professor Apollo, who chose not to pursue agronomy (despite completing the program) due to the absence of a humanistic perspective within the field.

Meanwhile, I decided to study philosophy because I was interested in problematizing, there wasn’t a connection or a calling that I found. […] Later, in fact, at the university, I gradually affirmed this place. I chose philosophy (teacher’s license degree) because it was a field in humanities that problematized the human, even a more structural field, which is psychology, but I chose this course (Professor Athena).

The accounts of the interviewed professors, making their choice for philosophy based on different principles and perceptions, illustrate that there is no inherent notion of a “logical destination” to philosophy, and therefore to its professional teaching. Instead, philosophy appears as a choice shaped by individual self-perception and reflective attitudes toward one’s own reality (built both within and outside the schooling process). And from this self-perception, owing to the representations built in their various pathways, philosophy is viewed as a mirror, i.e., a course which, within the field’s topics and concerns, translates into an extension of what one wishes to be.

Both Professor Athena and Professor Apollo sought, through different paths, a place from which to approach and understand the human. This human, claimed by the interviewees in their choice to study philosophy, aligns with Kohan’s (2009) perspective, which regards it not merely as a potential career, but as a form of self-education and self-cultivation. The accounts allowed to infer that the choice to study philosophy occurred, in all instances, in a balance both within and outside formal basic education. There is no precise way of marking these “within and outside” boundaries, as these experiences often retain some degree of opacity.

TEACHING AS AN INVENTIVE ACTIVITY

Through the non-linear process from choosing philosophy to practicing the profession, the interviewed professors revealed that teaching is not a given, but an ongoing process of shaping one’s identity. Not an identity in the classical metaphysical sense, as an unchanging essence despite external influences, but rather an identity understood within the flowing and acknowledging of differences. From the perspective assumed here, a teacher’s “identity” can only be understood as an ongoing, unfinished process shaped by the course of history - different in each society. It was possible to see that an awareness of their professional destination when choosing philosophy, emerged over the course of personal, social, and cultural intersections.

Teachers were trained in different contexts and their vision of teaching (unique and unrepeatable) was created in different ways and paths. And this same teaching is also woven in the face of the inefficiencies of institutions in structuring courses. Therefore, the entry of the interviewed teachers into professional practice is marked by a set of determinations present in their trajectory (Bueno, 2005).

Another noteworthy aspect deduced from the analysis is that, for the majority of the interviewed professors, teaching did not arise as a deliberate choice but rather as an outcome of the specific circumstances at the time. Two interviewed professors, Circe and Prometheus, expressed from different perspectives that their primary goal in their education process had always been research. While recognizing that research was strong in their education process, and having no prolonged professional contact with basic education, except through disciplines in the course, these professors seemed not to grasp, as much as they should have, that teaching was an inevitable path. After all, even within the university, where teaching may receive less prestige, it does exist (in teacher’s license degree courses) as one of the fundamental pillars.

That experience, in fact, of my relationship with philosophy was always linked to a perspective, let’s say, of research, or an initial interest in research. When I went to Universidade Federal da Bahia, having taken the internship and joined research groups, I began to engage more in teaching. My career is entirely built practically in higher education (Professor Circe).

Professor Prometheus, when discussing his entry into philosophy and teaching, mentioned that he initially pursued a bachelor’s degree because he did not want to engage in teaching. He acknowledged his limited awareness of the distinctions between bachelor’s and teacher’s license degree programs, but driven by his negative perception of teaching, he opted for “the other thing”, which was the bachelor’s degree. He recounted his lack of connection with a high school teaching experience and his identification with higher education. This suggests that, in his process of self-awareness regarding his own teaching practice, this interviewee did not engage in significant problematization concerning the concept of teaching and the knowledge required to teach at various levels, from basic to higher education, and its implications in postgraduate studies.

Professor Prometheus’ remarks revealed a prevailing representation, particularly among philosophy professors, but also extending to professors in other fields, that teaching in higher education is not fraught with significant complexities and demands, as it involves teaching adults, i.e., adults learn without relevant difficulties. Within this representation, issues related to attention, motivation, and interest are no longer obstacles in higher education as they were in basic education. According to Pereira (2000), there is a misconception that among adults, especially in the context of philosophy teaching, the transmission of scholarly knowledge is easily achievable. Consequently, any resistance encountered in the classroom is often attributed to students’ lack of motivation or the equally prevailing discourse that they were not prepared to handle the demands of university life.

It cannot be ignored that these professors, by failing to acknowledge that teaching among adults requires specific knowledge, end up withholding understanding of their respective disciplines. This results in a situation of denial, closure or disengagement, not due to a lack of identification with the subject matter, but rather to the way it is presented. Even within the university teaching context, according to Mialaret (1981, p. 16), teachers need to reasonably comprehend, in view of time constraints, the backgrounds, lifestyles and way of thinking of their students, or risk hindering the establishment of authentic communication that defines genuine education. Furthermore, these professors, due to their training, often dissociate teaching and research. They fail to realize that teaching is not separated from investigation. Put differently, the philosophy professor and the researcher professor are not separated, as both are combined in the same person. This also applies to other knowledge domains that involve teaching.

Professor Sisyphus, despite lacking professional experience as a teacher in basic education, shows in his account that his observation of how teachers conducted their classes eventually afforded him some familiarity with teaching when he began to work at a university. Throughout his discourse, there was no indication of any resistance to teaching as a possibility. His professional beginning as a teacher in university brought him closer to the complexities of teaching.

Because my relationship in school, with teachers, was always one of observation and interaction. […] I’ve always had a positive relationship, always observing teachers a lot. That facilitated my late entry into teaching, as I was nearly 30 years old (Professor Sisyphus).

Similarly, Professor Apollo did not display any initial resistance to the prospect of teaching. Following the completion of his degree, he recognized teaching as something familiar due to his Christian involvement (as a catechist for chrismation and first communion) alongside his academic pursuits. An inclination toward teaching had already taken root in his journey prior to university, which was doubtlessly an important requisite along with other experiences in the context of his academic and pedagogical training. Teaching is always marked by events that predate one’s entry into the university, making it a hybrid construction process.

I came from a Christian militancy background. I used to be Catholic. I was a catechist and a chrismation teacher. So, I was already familiar with classes in parallel to all that. So, I enjoyed teaching and decided that I would do that. My classmates told me this wasn’t a good place, but I loved it. And I found the opposite. […] So, I loved it here and I said, ‘Well, I guess teaching will be my thing.’ (Professor Apollo)

Further commenting on Professor Apollo, it is worth highlighting a significant aspect of his professional trajectory, especially the transition from basic education to higher education. This transition occurred when he secured a teaching position at a public university through a competitive examination, and he expressed an interest in academic pursuits in education at the postgraduate level. In this discourse, one can see elements of a harmonious transition, without significant conflicts, regarding his teaching in basic education. Throughout his account, one can identify a sense of belonging to the teaching profession and a fluid adaptability to various educational stages.

Throughout his career trajectory, Professor Zeus did not amass any professional experience in basic education. His exposure to teaching was limited to pedagogical subjects and internships. In his account, while this does not fully convey his grasp of the theory-practice relationship in the philosophy course, he mentioned that he had voluntarily pursued an internship even before the officinal one, in order to gain more exposure to the teaching-related aspects. And the internship, according to his own account, was highly significant as a preparation for teaching.

But I wanted to enter the field, which is a way of being closer to reading activities, while also dialoguing with another environment, other places. I took this earlier internship and then the internship itself, which is the one in the teacher’s license degree course. Soon after that, I graduated in the end of 1996. The university was a little behind schedule due to a strike, and I could only finish it in early 1997. But then, in early 1997, as soon as a finished the teacher’s license course, I was hired as a substitute teacher. So, the transition was really quick. High school and that contact before the contact with higher education were a great preparation. It was a time of contact with a group of young friends, at the same time without access to philosophy, and my effort was precisely how to make philosophy accessible to that group that was young and curious, and they’d feel lost with dense reading, but then the reading was turned into dialoguing. So, high school, in fact, that internship period, it was my great school (Professor Zeus).

Similarly, Professor Cronus also pointed out that he lacked professional experience as a teacher in basic education. However, it was clear to him that his choice for philosophy would inevitably lead to a teaching role, even though this would only be in a later stage, due to professional opportunities arising upon entering higher education. This same aspect is evident in the professional trajectory of Professor Zeus. In their accounts, there was no indication of any reluctance regarding the prospect of teaching in basic education as a viable path within their field of study. A positive representation of teaching did not necessarily translate, for the majority of the interviewees, into a deliberate alignment between their field of activities and education (teaching), even in the context of a teacher’s license degree program.

The accounts of the interviewed professors concerning their entry into the teaching career provide clear evidence that the choice for philosophy and the subsequent involvement in teaching unfolded through the co-determination of multiple factors (personal, social, and cultural) always in an a posteriori fashion. In other words, teaching is built, according to Bueno (2005), by subjective logics present in the genesis of representations, without any ready or final foresight about becoming. This underscores the understanding that teaching (and the strategies it comprises), at its various intersections (from schooling to higher education) remains a fluid and undetermined process.

All interviewees, even those who had a short stint in basic education in the supervised internship, gave indications of the contributions of that moment to the learning of teaching that would be taken on later. This attests that teacher education courses, for the legal reasons that regulate them, have an inseparable link with basic education as a constitutive condition. Cochran-Smith and Litle (1999) warn us that, in the context of initial teacher education, teachers’ practical knowledge serves as an object of examination and reflection on the knowledge implicit in their practice by students (future teachers). They also highlight that teacher trainers who have not had experience with basic education, depending on what they present to their students, may have less enriching classroom experiences.

FROM TEACHING PHILOSOPHY TO TEACHING PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION: BETWEEN FREEDOM AND IMPOSITION

It was perceptible from the accounts provided by the interviewed professors that teaching philosophy of education was a consequence of choosing the teaching profession, by means of the attributes outlined in the public competition notices. Even the focus of the research undertaken by these professors, from undergraduate to doctoral levels, in most instances did not align with this subfield of philosophy, i.e., philosophy of education. This underscores the reality that, even if unwillingly, these educators found themselves compelled to build themselves as teacher trainers of philosophy of education, considering its distinctive characteristics, thus preventing its transformation into a general philosophy discipline. The following statement by Professor Cronus clearly conveys his initial lack of a sense of belonging in education - in terms of a link with his reflections - and a disconnect between the research conducted in continuing education and the teaching demands common to professor who teach in teacher’s license degree programs.

However, it’s worth noting that it didn’t put me in the realm of education, I just found myself in it, but not as a thinker of education, I was just teaching philosophy disciplines offered in the various courses, bachelor’s and teacher’s license degree programs, including in pedagogy. Here a note is in order: I was working with education, but it wasn’t the object of my reflections, not even my academic research, even later when I started my teaching qualification, doing my master’s and my PhD (Professor Cronus).

Similarly, Professor Prometheus’ account is opportune as it reiterates that the teacher trainers who are interviewed, particularly in the context of teaching philosophy of education (often viewed as a subfield within general philosophy), had to adapt themselves due to the lack of affinity to this specific discipline, in view of the programs that comprise it and the syllabus requirements which involve dialogue with educational themes. This adjustment is understandable due to the academic training they received, which compartmentalizes disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge and subordinates the teaching dimension. It was also influenced by the prerequisites for university positions, which required working with various philosophy disciplines, irrespective of their personal affinity or lack thereof.

When I graduated, I was compelled towards higher education teaching. [...] One of my challenges was precisely with pedagogy programs. I had to give lessons on teaching philosophy and, at the time, we had philosophy of education, and it was an area I had no interest and no experience in. I was coming from my bachelor’s and had to force myself into it (Professor Prometheus).

Professor Cronus, while not identifying himself as a professor inherently linked to education due to his research interests, exhibited a degree of receptiveness to his involvement in the pedagogy program. It is evident among the interviewees that becoming a professor at teacher’s license degree programs does not necessarily entail a direct connection with education in its strictest sense. Thus, the interviewed professors often spoke of a supposed liberty, which, while not leading to the omission of education-related topics, manifests in a theoretical perspective on education associated with Ancient Greece - the concept of philosophy as Paideia - rather than focusing on education and its contemporary dilemmas. Professor Cronus, in his testimony, demonstrated he was aware of the implications of philosophy in teacher training, deconstructing the common representation in philosophy instruction that a strong affiliation with educational themes weakens the “authentic” philosophical endeavor. Professor Cronus exhibited a precise comprehension that his engagement with education did not diminish the significance of philosophy, as the two are historically connected.

Philosophy made me dependent on that privileged space (education). Over time, I found that practicing teaching, in any circumstance, requires philosophical knowledge. Whatever the realm of reflection - the humanities or exact sciences - required exercising your thought. Having made that choice, I would always be close to philosophy (Professor Cronus).

Hence, Professor Cronus’ account translates a harmonious adaptation within his process of recognizing the inevitable evolutions for a philosophy professor who comes into teaching at the university, particularly in teacher’s license degree programs. He acknowledges that he will have to fulfill the requirements of teaching philosophy in disciplines encompassing specific areas such as philosophy of education, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, among others. Consequently, these specialized subjects cannot be disregarded or omitted through a general philosophy-based approach, which is more suitable as an introduction to the field. Since faculty position competitions, within the examined tradition, do not incorporate certain criteria for the admission of these professors, given these specificities, philosophy professors, in view of the duties of university teaching, whether by freedom or institutional necessity, must built themselves as professors of philosophy of education. This requires the mobilization of knowledge and practices to ensure instruction that duly considers its distinctiveness and integration with education.

BEING A TEACHER TRAINER OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Professor Athena has provided a relevant piece of information, since besides pointing out situations where teaching is perceived as an ongoing construction, she also suggests a potential discussion about teachers’ professional entry into higher education in teacher’s licensure degree programs. In recounting her philosophical instruction, she delves into her “personal research” in the realm of aesthetics (in studies of Walter Benjamin) and her process of solitude when she joined the university. Her initial goal was to teach aesthetics in either the philosophy or the arts program, but due to professional opportunities, she found herself in the pedagogy program, where she had to develop here own teaching methodologies to find purpose in her educational work.

Another aspect observed is the fact that many philosophy professors working in higher education would prefer to work in philosophy courses, and non-voluntary transitions (due to competitive examination requirements regarding courses and disciplines, and professional demands) led to a need for adaptation. However, results show, over the analysis process, that teaching was taken on in a responsible manner, despite the initially opposed desire. And the sense of responsibility identified did not mean, in most of the interviewees’ accounts, that the teaching carried out by these professors of philosophy (of education) extended beyond the history of philosophy to provide an integration with educational themes - the purpose of the discipline (Philosophy of Education).

When I went to Rio de Janeiro, what I wanted in terms of aesthetics was to teach in a university, in philosophy or in some arts institute. So, I even took an exam for Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro but didn’t pass, which was for their arts institute. When I took the test for philosophy of education at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, I realized I could use conceptual resources from the Frankfurt School for a sort of methodology, also in terms of concepts, but in a dynamic way… thinking about methodological questions in education (Professor Athena).

Knowing the narratives of the interviewed professors regarding their educational journey until reaching the not always clear status of teacher trainers, as regards their (theoretical) basic philosophical instruction, was important for identifying that they all take on an approach to teaching through emphases. This might bring some assurance if teaching by emphases did not incur, in the case of philosophy of education, as Saviani (2013) suggests, a dispersion which generally gives courses a panoramic nature, without ensuring in-depth examination of education issues. Obviously, the practices declared (Altet, 2017) by the professors reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, an effort to engage with education. However, a comprehensive analysis does not allow to precisely infer whether discussions on Kant, regarding his writings on education, transcend the level of history of philosophy, in the pedagogical dimension presented, integrating this reflection with the problems of society’s contemporary education.

A discussion about a philosopher’s perspective on education, without considering how their text can contribute to reflecting about a different society from theirs, though one facing similar issues, in an effort to establish commonalities and differences, which aids in addressing dilemmas (problematization + problem solving), ends up reducing the teaching of philosophy of education, as warned by Ceppas (2004), to a history of pedagogical ideas, removing its potential to serve as a way of denouncing the educational organization of a particular society. Professor Prometheus’ account, as regards his didactic approach, reveals his care for the connection between philosophy and education.

For example, I’ll give a lot of attention, in the philosophy of education course, to Plato. You could say, ‘Come on, you have a background that’s more interested in phenomenology and you’re working with idealism? How come?’ Because he’s the one who properly addressed the matter, who dedicated specific attention to education. I think Plato had that. I think that even in a pioneer way he played that role. I’ll take classical texts like, for example, people say, ‘Come on, you’re using Kant in philosophy of education? How come?’ Because what he wrote about pedagogy is a text that has to be seen. Why? Because he somehow thinks about an educational process. I’m doing it this way: who talked about education here? Nietzsche criticizes our education institutions, so, ‘What does it matter? The guy was thinking about education in Germany in his time.’ Did you know we have German influence on the structure of our educational system? We imported things from there. So, let’s try here to see if there’s something to it. You may be surprised, even to think about what we’ve been doing and to observe what’s inherited, and hence the failure of our education systems. Because we import things and ideas and we don’t think. How would that play out around here, in our practice, with our diversity, with everything we have here? (Professor Prometheus).

The interviewed professors, in their training and professional paths, provided evidence that they built themselves as teacher trainers, despite lacking a more in-depth understanding of the implications of this classification, due to their involvement in teacher’s license degree programs. While the term ‘teacher trainer’ may not have been explicitly mentioned in the professors’ accounts, the facts they discussed attest to a wealth of knowledge being mobilized to address the challenges posed by teaching philosophy of education. In principle, such teaching should encompass planning that aligns with the professed knowledge (with an emphasis on theoretical training/history of philosophy) with the imperative need for an emphasis on, and integration with education.

Thus, the idea of planning, beyond the reasons for choosing the discipline, allowed building teaching trajectories in philosophy toward philosophy of education, i.e., the teaching of philosophy of education, in professional terms, emerged as a response to the requirements of academic decision-making bodies, personal subsistence and a professional agenda, rather than stemming from a personal connection with the particular discipline. The professors had to seek potential ways of integrating philosophical and pedagogical knowledge.

Regarding the lack of a relationship between “personal research” in initial training, the choice through public competition, and working in other programs than philosophy, especially teacher’s license degree programs, Professor Cronus’ words are blunt.

So, moving departments is not so simple. When you take a competitive exam, you’re allocated to a department, which over time becomes your prison. Of course, you could, with a lot of effort, move and transition between departments in the institution. But in my case, I took the exam for a university that is primarily focused on education. In any department that I picked, I’d be dealing with education. Besides, my own degree, a teacher’s license degree, already indicated, in a way, the direction of my professional path. In choosing a teacher’s license degree, I was choosing to be a teacher. The university where I teach has only just recently created the philosophy program, which is why I’ve almost always taught philosophy to non-philosophers, students in other courses: geographers, historians, pedagogues, among other teacher’s license degree programs, not necessarily pedagogy, but in other fields of knowledge, but always working with training future teachers (Professor Cronus).

As Cerletti (2009) says, when it comes to teaching, initial teacher education, no matter how good it is, cannot cover everything. This allows us to infer that teaching can never be conceived as something final, requiring daily and differentiated investments from its actors (teachers), to guarantee increasingly higher levels, in their practice, so as to justify the effectiveness of teaching - which is the specificity of the teaching profession. Therefore, it is important, when understanding teaching in its various forms, to have the idea of this same teaching profession as something always singular, although constituted and constructed by collective intersections, as each teacher trainer, depending on their trajectories (personal, schooling, academic and professional), is the result of a hybrid process, resulting from countless known and opaque factors about themselves. The composition of teaching, as a singular process, takes place in this hybridization movement that, as Cerletti (2009) says, will have an emphasis related to what was most predominantly present in initial training. In other words, the emphasis will be associated with the degree of the theoretical and pedagogical dimension received. This will undoubtedly reflect on the way one teaches. And as this combination occurs on a subjective level, it can only be observed and not measured in the teacher’s practice.

CONCLUSION

After analyzing the accounts of the interviewed professors who teach philosophy of education, considering aspects of initial training and professional practice, it can be inferred that the choice for philosophy, and consequently for philosophy of education, as noted by Altet (2007, p. 1999), involves a combination of variables of a “psychological, pedagogical, didactic and contextual nature, methods, and perspectives to understand the complexity of practices.”

Initially, it was possible to infer that the process of choosing philosophy occurred both within and outside the formal schooling process, and that the decision to teach has no relation to de idea of vocation, as the interviewed professors provided personal, psychological, and historical indications that pointed to historical causes intervening in that choice. Another aspect which added to the historical understanding of the elements that led to teaching in philosophy was the search for a course that could problematize the human, and the interviewees saw philosophy as the space/course par excellence for this. Also, along the presentation of the historical and concrete factors that interfered with the decision to teach philosophy, it is noteworthy that some of the interviewees pointed out literature, socializing with friends, and the teacher’s mediation as determinants for their desire to “dwell”/teach in philosophy.

In a second moment, from the choice for philosophy (of education) to teaching, it was possible to infer that among those interviewed, this choice did not result from a deliberate decision, but rather as a consequence of concrete situations at the time (subsistence, specificities of the teacher’s license degree course, public notices of competitive examinations, resolutions by faculty bodies, and geographical issues). Additionally, it was observed that the process of becoming aware of their professional destination, upon choosing philosophy (of education), occurred progressively through personal, social, and cultural intersections. The interviewed professors, despite their personal desires, had to build themselves as teacher trainers of philosophy of education, in its specificities, preventing its transformation into a discipline of general philosophy. They had to learn to mobilize diverse knowledge and strategies to ensure a way of teaching philosophy (of education) that considered both its specificity and its connection to education.

Therefore, the research movement, as outlined in this article, further clarified that teaching is not something given, but rather something in an ongoing process of construction of its identity. It is always singular and authorial, though always shaped by collective aspects, being materialized by a joint determination of several aspects in an always a posteriori manner. To echo Bueno (2005), teaching is a historically built phenomenon, taking form through subjective logics present in the genesis of representations, without any ready or final foresight on what it may become.

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• How to cite this article:

  PEDREIRA, André Luiz Simões; CRUZ, Giseli Barreto da. Trajectories reviewed: reasons from teaching philosophy to teaching philosophy of education. Revista Brasileira de Educação, v. 29, e290015, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1413-24782024290016

• Funding:

  The study didn’t receive funding.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  22 Mar 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  13 Sept 2022
• Reviewed
  02 Feb 2023
• Accepted
  13 Feb 2023