The State Centers for Continuing Education of Basic Education Teachers: Analyzing Conceptual and Methodological Foundations
Continuing education for basic education teachers; State centers for continuing education; Conceptual and methodological foundations of continuing education; Teacher education policy; Neoliberal education reform.
This research is linked to the Graduate Program in Education at the University of Brasília, within the Research Line on Teaching Profession, Curriculum, and Evaluation. Its objective is to analyze the conceptions of professional development in the State Centers for Continuing Education of Teachers in Brazil. Guided by the Historical- Dialectical Materialism method, the study employed document analysis, technical visits, and semi-structured interviews as instruments for data collection and generation. The research locus included State Centers for Continuing Education, representing four regions of Brazil, and the participants were managers and teacher trainers working in these institutions. The results indicate that, although the centers play a strategic role in teacher professional development, they tend to align with reformist and neoliberal interests that shape educational policies in Brazil. These centers often consolidate as spaces for ideological reproduction and maintenance of capitalist production relations, as their training activities are institutionally designed to implement and reinforce state curricula. These curricula were updated to meet the guidelines of the New High School Reform and the National Common Core Curriculum (BNCC), resulting in the devaluation, expropriation, and alienation of teachers' work. The research highlights the urgent need for the State to reassume central responsibility for managing national education policy and continuing education, prioritizing training practices that value teachers and address the social, economic, and political needs of Brazilian education. To support the discussions, this study is based on the works of Araújo, Brzezinski, and Sá (2020) and Freitas (2014, 2018) regarding Continuing Education and Educational Policies. For discussions on Continuing Education and Praxis, it relies on the research of Curado Silva (2015, 2019, 2024), Saviani (2008, 2011), and Contreras (2002)