In a transition phase from one period to another, like the one which is being lived at the moment, there is an epistemological debate in a process whose dialectics is defined between the right and the wrong, the stable and the unsteady, the continuoum and the rupture.
The reality is that we are in the full process of the construction of a global technological digital society that it is shaped as a deeply dynamic and communicative society, with new languages ¬¬ (sayings), new codes, new customs and new values (Luzzi, 2007).
In this section, the researcher is supposed to discuss the current context in which the teaching learning process occurs.
2.2 The Cyberculture
Since the oral culture to date in the digital culture, there have been several social transformations that are being produced by the technological advances that are the producers of the same technological advances. According to Tapscott (1999), in the beginning of the 21st century people live the“net generation”, which is defined by the author as a children generation that are aged 2 to 22 and have a fluency degree in the digital means. This generation is living a revolution in the information supports that creates a new culture. Such culture is based on the acceleration of the exchanges, in the abolition of the geographical limits and in the real time. These are factors that create new ways of relationships, new spaces and new learning ways.
In this way, the Internet allows people to meet in an environment that has no time and space limits. An open environment that is in constant change in which the communication is facilitated through computing resources. The people use chat, email, group discussion, the communities that are built from a common interest, which at the same time marks deeply the way how these people establish their relationships in that new culture. They live the dialectics between the isolation and the socialization – at the same time that they isolate themselves in their bedrooms to access Internet, they search through Internt the contact with others.
For Tapscott (1999), the time spent on the Internet is an active one. These are hours spent for reading, for research, for skills development and problem solving. This is the time spent analysing, evaluating, conciliating the thoughts and writing. The Internet opens the possibility for dialogue among different ways of life, different ways of thought, which generates a perception of a world that considers the wealth of the human diversity. In this way, the computers not serve only as calculating machines and for ordering, but also as creation tools, pleasure, communication and and social contact (Lemos, 2003).
This living together takes place in a differential space, a spiritual space. The virtual time can be understood in several ways. On the philosophical perspective “it is virtual that exists only in power and not in an act [...]. The virtual is found before the effective or formal concretization” (Lévy, 1999:47). Lévy considers that “it is virtual all entity that no longer belongs to any territory, able to generate several concrete demonstrations in different moments and certain places, without being itself stuck to a particular place or time” (1999:47). In so being, it is believed that the virtual is real even wthout being possible to fix it in a certain time and on a certain, it exists without being present.
On this virtual space, the living together happens in a real time that is very different from the linear and historical time of modernity. The real time (immediate), ruled on the computer nets not belonging to any territory the culture, having a strong impact in all social sectors and in our view of the world.
Currently, the geographical distance does not limit anymore the communicaton and meeting of people, likewise the time that is never more chronological and linear, but it is time for connections and time that is always present. The communication tools that are made available generate the circulation of information and a possibility for dicentralized connections in a rhizomatous structure creating a complex system in which there is no centralization of the communication but there are connection nets.
In this way, there are experiments on new ways of sociability that happen on a so-called virtual space. The labour, leisure, friendship, learning relatonships are developed in these environments. But what space is this? It is called cyberspace, a terminology that was invented and used for the first time in 1984, by the author of the scientific fiction William Gibson in a romance called Neuromancer. The author defines the cyberspace as a “physical or territorial space comprised in a set of computer nets through which all information (under several forms) circulate” (Lemos, 2003:136).
Santaella (2003) states that the terminology cyberspace has been used as a generic name to appoint a set of different technologies that “have in common the ability to simulate environments within which the humans can interact” (p. 99). Lévy (1999) defines the cyberspace as “communication space that is open by the world computer interconnections” (p. 92).
For Lemos (2003), it is possible to understand the cyberspace from two perspectives: “as a place where we are when we enter the simulated environment (virtual reality) and as a set of computer nets, interlinked or not, in the whole planet, to Internet” (p. 137). The author calls attention to the fact that there should be the interlinkage between these two conceptions of cyberspace, as the nets will interlink among themselves and at the same time will allow the interaction by virtual worlds in three dimensions. In this way, the author considers the cyberspace as “a complex ecosystem where the interdependence prevails among the technological macro-system (the net of the interlinked machines) and the social micro-system (the dynamics of the users), created from the dissemination of the information, by the flow of the data and by the social created relations” (Lemos, 2003: 147).
From these definitions it is understood that there are consensus in conceiving cyberspace as an interlinked net of all computers on the planet from which the human beings interact, and it is in this way that it is understood and used in this work. There are several ways through which we can enter and use this virtual space where one feels present even realising that the things have no physical form. One of them is the virtual learning environment (VLE), which can be understood as a space on the Internet made up of individuals, their study objects, their interactions/relations and ways of communication that are established through a platform , having as a major focus the learning (Behar, 2005).
This environment can provide sync and assync tools for interaction/communication among individuals. It can also offer resources aimed to empowering on the learner a cooperative work, giving emphasis the process of building knowledge, autonomy and authorial.
The VLE presents itself as a learning context, which is different from the traditional context on which we have an established physical space and an established time that determines the interaction and characterize the classroom. In the virtualization process of the learning environment, there are different ways of time and space relations that imply depth in the learning process.
Such changes are socially and culturally felt as they are part of the so called “cyberculture”, that is defined by Lévy as“[...] the set of techniques (material and intellectual), of practices, of attitude, way of thought and values which are developed together with the growth of cyberspace” (1999: 17). For Lemos (2003: 95), “the cyberculture is built as a cybersociality”. The author understands that the cyberculture is built from the relationship between the digital technologies, the society and culture. Even without understanding, the digital culture is always present in our lives, in all activities that involve our relationship with the machine, as for example the use of credit cards, of cellular phones, bank terminals and many other activities that we carry out.
In that culture, several concepts that used to bring the feeling of stability and certainty, today they are changing and influencing our way of life, our way of looking and seeing the world, and in particular, the education. The concept of the lesson, for example that is linked to an idea of a well-defined time and space, today it is questioned. This happens because such time and space can today be more flexible at the time that teachers and pupils make virtual appointments through chats, and communicate permanently through the use of email.
2.3 VLE: the learning in a new space/time
In this technological advance, the different resources that the learning environments provide, the living is encoutered with the critique to the traditional learning concept based on the transmission and memorazation of knowledge as a result of the growing adjustment between the demand for a new culture and what such learning offers. In this study, the learning is conceived from the theory of Edgar Morin, so the researcher understands that education is essentially complex. In this way, it is important to tie to education the idea if the complex thought which considers the quality of the parts and of the whole as well as the relationships that exist among them.
The learning is, in this way, understood as going beyond “to know to do something”, understanding. This understanding is taking place in the linkage between the known to the unknown, that is, it is in the conjunction of the acknowledgement and the discovery that the individual builds or rebuilds some knowledge. This learning is built in the interaction of the individual with the physical, social, spiritual, cultural and historical environment that surrounds him or her. According to Morin (1996: 61), “the cerebral knowledge needs, evidently, of stimulus to put itself in action and develop. More deeply, it needs the organizational presence of the environment withinn its own organization”.
The human being is a being with relations and in so being he or she needs to have opportunities to develop. His/her original knowledge is mainly linked to an active relation with the outside world in which he/she mobilizes not only the reason and the intellect but also the sensations, emotions and intuition. For that reason, we can not conceive the disjunction between the subject and the object, on the contrary, in a complex way, conceive his/her indissoluble conjunction, because of the resort link on which several resorts are needed to the constitution of the others.
Such relationship demonstrates that it is no longer possible to think of an education based on the traditional teaching model, in which the directive and strict processes are developed. In these processes, what occurs is the content transmission and a worry on the memorazation of facts as well as of the isolated information. These are contents that are dealt with in an unshared, discontextualized strengthening the belief of disjuntion between the subject and the object. These are postures that reinforce the traditional paradigm of education, that strengtens the development of instructional pedagogical practices and when they make the use the computer resources, they impoverish and limit their potential.
According to Tapscott, “the new media allows – and the Net Generation require that for its learning – a change in learning transmitted for what I call an interactive learning” (1999: 135). If it is thought in a way the information is broadcast today, it clearly glimpses the influence that this situation exercises in education. The information is not being centralized in schools and universities, it is disseminated and this provokes and establishes a differential relationship between teachers and students. The teacher no more plays the role of a transmitter of the knowledge and a source of all information, likewise the student that no more plays a passive role of a receiver of the knowledge transmitted by the teacher.
According to Tapscott, there are several new situations that have been provoked in the classroom by cyberculture:
New media tools offer great promises of a new learning model – based on the discovery and participation. This combination of a new generation with the new digital tools will lead to the review of the nature of education – in the context and content (1999:124).
The digital technology is not autonomous to provoke transformations, but its use puts in place new questions to the educational system and raises explicit and inumerous inconsistencies. The growing speed of production and exchange of information and their acquisition through the multiple ways destabilizes the static model of the press society. Because of this greater circulation of information, the bilateral (transmitter/receiver) characteristics of the written word, on which the author and the limit of the text are clearly defined has been overcome. On the place of the absolute, there has been a multiplicity of points of view.
With the cyberspace, the production of a text or message is collective. In the classroom, the student does not satisfy him or herself in hearing what the teacher has to say and quietly accept whatever the teacher has said, as if it was an unquestionable truth. The interactivity is the base of the new culture, in which the people want to be the users and not only the spectators or listeners. The students that are born in the Internet era are used to control the greater part of their world. On the Internet they play the role of an active user, they do not observe but they participate. It is this space on which the people ask, discuss, buy, play, investigate, imagine, look for, inform, learn, they are authors and active producers.
The learning on the cyberspace happens through a free search and in environments created specifically for an educational end, like the Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). In these, the individuals, even placed on different spaces and time, interact the same virtual learning environment and have the possibility to build a collective knowledge. This collectivity is instigated by the enlargement of the communicative potential available on the environment, promoting the exchange of information under several ways. This technological increase has been helping in building virtual learning communities and according to Lemos (2003: 93), “is aggregates around a common interest, regardless the limits, territory and permanent borders”.
On the VLEs, different tools (forum, chat, on board diary) are available so that the teachers and students can relate and together build knowledge. These tools are an important chracteristic of these environments, as with them all teacher and students interventions are registered and it is possible to accept them at any time. In so being, what happen on the environment is registered facilitating the assistance by the teacher, of the learning process of the student. For the student, this register is also important so that he or her can review the interventions made by the teacher and by the colleagues as well as for the student him or herself to follow his learning process.
In this way, the VLE is a space in which it is possible for the teacher and for the student to develop a new relationship that is not based on the hierarchy on which the teacher is the centraliser of the know how like what predomains in the face to face traditional teaching process. In this space, if used on the perspective of the building a collective knowledge, the teacher and the student are active producers and receivers that interact in search of a cooperative know how and of the knowledge on the net, becoming in this way partners of the learning process.
According to Valentini and Fagundes (2001: 110), “in the virtual learning environment the learner can interact and cope with different individuals, contexts and objects of the knowledge being able to operate in connectivity in a particular and multiple ways”. With that, this environment can collaborate in a meaningful way for the transformation of the traditional education. The digital culture creates a new logcs, not linear, but rhizomelic, founded in connexion and links, making it impossible the maintenance of the traditional educational practice. This is exactly the challenge for the schools and unversities to understand the new logics and know how to work with it.
2.4 About the models of continuous teacher training
This section will have register of the studies about teacher training and professionalization, theoretical issues of the continuous teacher training with regard to its characteristics, ways of developing their daily school work and life as well as the discussions about the implications and contributions that certain practices bring to the current educational context. There will be two major theoretical models for training and their multifaceted of their existence, regardless how they are named by some authors (as structural or classics and the constructivist model or interactive-reflexive).
In this scope, the researcher tries to design the needs for the reflexive teacher training, maping new tendencies of the teacher continuous training counterpointing with the Classical model and still drawing some paths to walk on that is based on the systematizations. From such referential it is possible to discuss the current changes in the continuous teachers training from which relie the important role in this dynamics and how they can articulate a continuous teacher training model so that it values the school space and the permanent exercise of the action-reflexion-action as an essential element to teacher training. The central idea is to upraise a discussion that is aimed to contributing with the new perspectives of the continuous teachers training in an attempt of seeking for a professional significant acting.
2.4.1 Theoretical-conceptual framing of the training
The training, as concept and practice, has been assuming varied configurations/forms. As a concept, it can be identified as an educational concept, when acquired by the organizational school contexts or when people talk about permanent education and education or training throughout the life, as it is given some specificity and autonomy in issues related to education, instruction and teaching. In this second perspective – in which the researcher shares and places him/herself some authors like Alin (1996) and Fabre (1995), that give to the training, as concept and practice, a meaning which is relatively distinct and autonomous to what is defined as education.
What has just been refered here can be shown with the definition of some semantic poles, presented by Fabre (1995) retaking Pierre Goguelin (1987), that are close and collaborate for the training conceptualization.
1. The pole to educate: comes from latin étimo (feed, create...) and educere (to make leave from...). It is a reaching concept that refers to intellectual, moral and physical development;
2. The pole teaching: from latin insignare (to give mark, a distinction) is close to vocables to learn, to explain, to demonstrate and to give predominantly operatory or methodological or institutional meaning. "The teaching is an intentional education that is carried out in an institution whose goals are explicit, the methods are codified and it is ensured by professionals" (Fabre, 1995:22);
3. The pole to instruct: from latin instruere (insert, disposal...) appeals to the contents to transmit, giving to the spirit intellectual instruments, explaining information;
4. The pole to train: comes from latin formare (give a being and the form, organize, establish). The vocable appeals for a profound and global action of the person: transformation of the whole being configuring know how, know how to do and know to be.
Considering the four mentioned semantic poles, there were some approachings among them. However, each one acquires a specific meaning that characterises and differentiates each from the others.
It is in this context that it is considered relevant to place the training with the concept and the practice, which configures itself with a direct approximation to what is defined as education and instruction, but it must not be misunderstood comceptually: "train is more ontologic than instruct or educate: in the training, it is the proper being that is looked at and his/her form" (Fabre, 1995:23).
The training appeals for an enunciation, by the proper subject, of the issues that serve as consubstantiaters of their project, of their demand, and that do not exclusively belong to the external objects domain with which they establish the relationship, but mainly to the being domain, with him/herself and with others, establishing a direct linkage between to be and to do, to be and to know (Alin, 1996).
Meanwhile, the concept of training like the concept of education, polysemic, being able to be situated in two relatively distinct poles:
one, raising the know and know how, valuing the professional and learner domains as integrated in a complex system of production that require specialised knowledge and competences in which and for which training is needed;
another, emphasizing the dimension of the global development of the subject, redimensions the know, the know how, in a perspective of integrater construction of all constitutive dimensions of the learner, privilegiating the self reflexion and analysis, on a way of a continuous non-structuration-restructuration of the subject as a multidimensional being.
It can, in this way, be said that the training is crossed by a duality of inspiration: as a technological paradigm of modelation of the learner or "adaption" to the working post, looking for an identification of a model and production of accordable copies; or; on the contrary, it is a biological paradigm that domains and what is being looked for is a suppletive adaptation of a subject to a reality and change (Fabre, 1995:29).
Since the 60s the adult training problematic has been discussed progressively and worked on by different authors giving origin to distinct definitions and profoundings. This study will not, however, be stuck in this wider context of adult training, it will make a brief conceptual characterization concerning specifically to the continuous teachers training.
In this way, there will be a brief gathering of definitions proposed by several authors, identification of definitions that will allow to get a referential for analysis of the policies and practices of the teachers continuous training in Mozambique.
For Esteves and Rodrigues, the continuos training will be
That which takes place throughout the professional career after the acquisition of the initial professional certification (which only happens after one finishes the in service training) privilegiating the idea that his or her insertion in the teacher career is qualitatively differentiated in relation to the initial training, regardless of the moment and work time the teacher has when he or she did her professionalization which we still consider as a stage of the initial training (1993:44-45).
In this case, the continuous training is sequential to the initial training, acquiring the statute "qualitatively differenciated" in relation to that.
Also João Formosinho defends that the continuous training is sequential to the initial training, and clearly distinct from this, arguing that "the concept of the continuous training distinguishes itself mainly from the initial training not on the contents or methodologies of training but by the receivers", being
Offered to people who are seen as adults, with teaching experience, that influences the contents and the methodologies of this training by the opposition to the initial training generally offered to youth without teaching experience (1991:237).
In summary, this author defines the teacher continuous traning as
Teachers training with a professional initial training aimed to upgrading their personal and professional skills. The continuous training is aimed to upgrading the knowledge, the techniques, the necessary attitudes for the exercising the teacher profession (Idem, ibidem).
In the scientific literature, however, it is possible to find other designations such as: in service profissionalization, team development, permanent education, professional development, teacher development, in service teacher instruction. In these designations it is possible to distinguish some semantic sets: instruction-education-development, teachers-team, in service-continuous that lead to different training orientations. If, on one hand, the notion of "training" points to an achievement of tasks of the instruction to be developed by the teachers so that their students learn in a classroom context, that is, the upgrading of the teacher´s professional competences (scientific and pedagogical), the notions of "education" and "development" give an idea of a more global teacher training (trying to developing the personal competences). This last one articulates with the extension and diversification perspectives of roles that are expected from the teacher to play on the school institution frame and educational system, framing him or herself in the proper evolution of the school concept to the educational centre.
The concept of "development" or of the "team development" can, however, be considered, as outlines Howey (1985) cited by Esteves and Rodrigues (1993:46) in a literature review, as embodying a set of dimensions such as: continuous pedagogic development; development and continuous self discovery; continuous cognitive development; continuous theoretical development; continuous professional development; career continuous development.
In this way, the continuous training conceived as empowering the "development" can, as it can be seen, point to distinct perspectives.
The researcher considers, meanwhile, in summary, enhances that the continuous training which is conceived as"practice/preparation" to carry out instruction tasks – oriented to specific competences -, as considered in a perspective of "development" has implicit that
The improvement on the teachers has obvious individual endings that are also of social usefulness. The continuous training has as endings the social and personal improvement of each teacher, in a permanent educational perspective. But such improvement has some positive effect in the school system if it is translated into the improvement of quality of education offered to children. This positive effect that explains the current western world worries with the continuous teacher training (Formosinho, 1991:238).
Although the social usefulness of the training is of the fundamental importance and safe motor of political commitment and consequent juridical regulamentation- as presented in the previous point – not always one can be sure that the positive consequences of a policy of the continuous training can be ensured, all the more since such evaluation is deprived of complexity.
2.4.2 Training Models: A contribution for practice analyses
The reference to the models or paradigms of the training finds justification on the need that the researcher feels to integrate both the analysis of the emergent practices of training in so far as a reflexion – as a structuring dimension of the practices and professional development – on a theoretical frame of reference.
In the same way, whether the modalities of operation of the continuous training, whether the conceptual framing that has just been enunciated suggest a definition of referent contextualizers that are more reaching.
Basically, there can be identified three models of reference for the training practices that have inherent distinct rationalities and conceptions of the learning and training processes.
The transmissive model – orientated to the acquisition and distant of the subjectivity of the subjects – confers to objectivity and to the external reality the total autonomy and independence on the subjects.
The technical and instrumental rationalities dynamize the training practices orientating them to the externity of the subjects, that is, to the objects that these must recognize and manipulate instrumentally. They invest in the universality of the operated objects on the space-time of the training and on the neutrality of the implicated subjects.
The other model, relatively distant from the previous one, is experiential, centred on the process (Ferry, 1991), through which is subjacent a practical reality (Kemmis, 1989), which values the subjects and their experiences. These are constructed in the interaction with the environment - social, cultural, physical, etc. – and must be linear in a comprehensive and interpretative dimension. The training practices orientate for the interimistic of the subjects in training.
The model centred on the analysis (Ferry, 1991) is led by a critical and emancipating rationality (Habermas, 1990; Kemmis, 1989; Mezirow, 1996) and privilleges, as the proper names suggests, the capacity of analysis that the training process must favour, being given to the learners "a training in analysis and an analysis of their training" (Ferry 1991:80).
This model values the scientific dimension of the knowledge in its interaction with their operating practice, as well as the analysis of the practice through the theoretical referentials for its evaluation and restructuring. The training practices centred on the analysis foment on the subjects the reflexion and analysis of themselves and on their contextualized practices with the objective of their progressive and commited emancipation, encouraging the dimension of the social agentes (Lesne, 1977) transformers.
Close to this model is that of Perrenoud who called it "open professionalism", which
Situates the teacher in the centre of the process of the improvement of quality in education. The teachers, individually or in groups, are considered responsible for the analysis of the school needs [...], are considered as innovative leaders that are able of the self improvement, able to analyse their actions, identify and react to the students needs, able to analyse the outcomes of their interventions (Vonk, cited by Perrenoud, 1993:182).
2.4.3 Brief reflexion around the emerging practices
The speech about "post-modernity" is found on the scientific, cultural and educational agenda. In the social sciences and mainly in the educational sciences there has been a profound study on the characteristics of 'our time' that seem to present significant turnings with are different from those that characterize the so-called "modernism".
In the modern period of the sciences, the scientific speech can be built assuming theories, models, paradigms that find a "relative stability" on the time and space. Certainly, the stability that in the past could be experimented, keeping itself for a resonable duration, was put upon the account of the atomic bomb and its capacity of the massive destruction.
The stability and safety that emerges from these circumstances lead to an equationing different from reality, with impact on the production of knowledge. The same way, the emergency of different movements like the greenpeace, the feminism, together with other sociocultural phenomena like multiculturalism, the classism introduced "structural discontinuities" (Beare & Slaughter 1995:5) that oppose to characteristics of the modern period and generate impact on the production and sharing of knowledge.
Coulby and Jones (1995) refer that these movements and sociocultural phenomena namely the feminism, the multiculturalism and the classism, introduce different perspectives in the way of conceiving and analysing knowledge, giving a different dimension to the world phenomena. These phenomena end up revitalizing universal postulates, showing that there is not any system that is superior to the other, that the individual is more important than the group, that the diversity is good, ending up by putting upon accounts of "models" that hinder and corset the emergency and the singularity of the subjects and the contexts.
The diversity and the unpredictability are on the social, cultural, economical and educational agenda, generating some instability that needs to be assumed. These are, of course, the characteristics of post modernity that this will have to host and manage, which rebound into educational level in a speech that occurs more:
on an innovation;
on the autonomy;
on the continuous training and shared reflexion;
on the exercise of fellowship;
on the research-action;
on the project construction that give voice to the local identity;
on the curriculum differentiation;
on the alternative curriculum.
These strategies seem to be indicators of the need for openess and integration of the realities, at the same time, singular and multiforms, opening room for dialogue with the diversity that the democratization of education and mass schools could not solve.
Summing up, and according to Gimeno Sacristán (1998), "the new legitimities make the teachers relax with regard to quality of education", being up to them "generate" the models in their practices.
From here lays the great demand for a continuous training, from the researcher´s point of view, there has to be the provision of new and more profound knowledge and also the sharing of experiences, reflexive dynamics and construction of knowledge so that the management of the autonomy and freedom takes place "with science and consciousness" (Morin, 1982).
2.4.4 The reflexion as a structuring dimension of teacher practices and professional development
The valorization as a powering exercise of the professional practices, personal and professional development have been deserving an attention, an investigation and a theoretical profounding from many researchers, especially throughout the last two decades.
Yet the investigations held are not restricted exclusively to the teachers as a professional group, it is in this group that, with no doubt, that centers the greater number of studies and publications about this matter.
The greater number of investigations held and published work is an indicator, yet it is not the only one, gives importance that the reflexion has in the professional practice, in the construction of knowledge, in the structuring of professional identities and on the professional development, on the social and cultural construction.
The importance given to"training throughout life" and, namely, the continuous teacher training justifies itself through the characteristics of the post modern society that demand for new requirements of the knowledge, know how and above all to know how to make them professionals.
It is in this context that Schön refers that the model of the applied sciences shows itself incomplete to explain (the) competence(s) practice(s) in diverging situations and in this way he proposes:
Let us then look for their place an epistemology for the professional acting that is implicit in the artist and intuitive process and that some practicals make their interventions towards the situations of uncertainty, instability, singularity and value conflicts (1996:205).
In fact, these situations that, at great measure, characterize the current contexts, namely: the educational contexts, as much as at pedagogical level as at organizational level, are incompatible with exclusive operation of a technical rationality, instrumental, objectival, external and neuter towards the subjects and the contexts.
The uncertainty invaded the scientific postulates, the models, the paradigms ending up flowing on the scientific field some instability. The transmission of knowledge – the role played by the teachers relying on the behaviourism – has been put upon account progressively, giving space to the construction of knowledge, on the educational models as on the training.
The "movement of reflexive practice" (Zeichner, 1993) emerges from these circumstances, as well as the need to train for the construction and production of knowledge.
Tavares states:
It is within these conceptions of training and competences that need to be acquired so that one becomes a good professional, that the people build, produce scientific and pedagogic knowledge. The training goes through this construction, in which are involved the investigation activities, of teaching and of the proper personal and social development of the respective actors and actors of the process. (...) It is through this construction, taking place along the process of training, that must rely a balanced and solid personal development as founding and founder competence of all other competences to which they overlap and it is the condition sine qua non so that all happens and there is a guarantee of a training of a good educational professional (1997:66).
The legal devices define as objectives of the continuous teacher training "the complement, the deepening and the updating of knowledge and professional competences..." and " improve the professional competence (...) acquire new competences related to the required specialization by differentiation and modernization of the educational system..." point, the researcher thinks in this way, for dynamization of the training practices that lays on the fundamental analytical, critical, reflexive and practical conceptions.
Considering that "The professional development" is not only structured on the domain of knowledge, but also on teacher attitudes, interpersonal relationships, competences related to the pedagogic process among others, the teachers will have to mobilise their practices not only on specific knowledge of the subjects they teach, but a set of other competences that compete for the success of those practices and, consequently for their development, self and personal realization.
According to Oliveira, the professional development “is reported on a more specific form to the domain of knowledge about teaching, the personal interrelationships, the involved competences in the pedagogic process and to the reflexive process about the teacher´s practices” (1997:95)
Involving for that, three fundamental dimensions: that of knowledge (specific knowledge), that of know how (professional achievement, attitudes towards the educational act) and that of knowing how to be and know to become (interpersonal relationships, self perception, motivation, expectactions).
The researcher thinks, in this way, to get a path to the conceptions of the training that value not only the acquisition of knowledge but above all, the development of competences and in this way, the professional development.
These competences yet to develop belong to three domains – according to the dimensions above mentioned - (Tavares, 1997):
specific competences: imply the scientific knowledge and the domain of contents which are related with the topics of a certain speciality;
pedagogic competences: that refer to operational knowledge (know how) the knowledge taking into account the receivers, the students, the contexts, the resources, selected methodologies and strategies that are more suitable;
personal competences: directly related to the teacher intra and interpersonal development, with the know to be, know to relate, know to communicate, know to share on a personal development perspective.
The acknowledgement of these dimensions as structuring of the professional development appeals not only for a configuration of training as a space-time nor mainly the transmission of knowledge, but also of reflexion about action and analysis on a logic of distructuring-restructuring and construction of knowledge, that rehabilitation "an epistemology of practice" (Schön, 1996), or of "knowledge" as Edgar Morin understands: i) information; ii) analysis and contextualization of information; iii) intelligence, consciousness or wisdom, explicating that:
Intelligence has to do with the art of entailling knowledge so that it is useful and pertinent, that is, to produce new forms of progress and development, conciousness and wisdom involve reflexion, that is, the capacity to produce new forms of existence, of humanization (cited by Pimenta 1996:78).
It is in this way that the researcher finds pertinent to orientate the practices of the continuous teachers training that must integrate not only the technical rationality but also the critical and practical rationality that will allow the learners - the teachers – their continuous updating, not exclusively on the acquisition perspective (of knowledge, of qualifications), but mainly the personal and professional development. The dimension of development is built through sharing of experiences and of the intercommunicative analysis that will build and is built by reflexion (Schön, 1983):
on the action, when each teacher is able to reflect on the practice;
about action, when teachers individually and in groups reflect about their practices;
about reflexion on the action, when the teachers through the analysis of their practices redesign, restructure and suit the contexts of the realization.
Considering that this dimension finds a context of development particularly favourable in a training that potentiates and articulates an action with investigation, as the action research assumes a privilleged role on the teacher professional development mobilizing a cooperative reflexion (Gimeno Sacristán & Pérez Gómez, 1993).
The legal frame that regulates the continuous teacher training in Mozambique predicts several models for their realization: courses, modulles, seminars, training workshops, projects, study circles.
However, the continuous teacher training practices, has been privilleged by the courses, the modulles and the seminars with which lays the methodology that is supported by an techno-instrumental rationality, fundamentally orientated for the externality of the training subjects. In this training models, the role and the power of the trainer is rendered in detriment of participation, critical and reflexive analysis of the teachers being trained, falling upon on the teachers individual worries – considered as objects of the training (Lesne, 1977) – to be able to have a set of competences and credits that allow the career progression.
There are then identified other models like the training workshops, projects and study circles which have mobilization and teacher initiatives from their working contexts. Privillegiating initiative, experiential knowledge, the contextual characteristics in which the teacher´s practice develops these models are empowere of synergie that articulate the non formal knowledge, experiential with the formal knowledge (Usher & Bryant, 1992), within the interactive logics in which the action, investigation and training are present.
In this way, from the researcher´s point of view, these training models are the ones, which can best contribute for the reflexive dynamics as they emerge from the teachers formative dispositions generated by the working contexts. The formal training program, previously conceived and in most cases finalised (characteristic of courses and training models), gives room to the construction of the training devices (Correia, 1992), based on the needs analysis of the training (Idem, 1989), in which there is a critical rationality.
In these models, it is expected that the space-time of the training puts on with space-time of work finding way through the daily formative effects (Pain, 1990), the knowledge on the action and reflexion about knowledge on the action (Schön, 1983), that is, rehabilitates an epistemology of the professional action (Idem, 1996).
These models, in privilleging the teachers as actors and authors of the training process, are the dynamic generators of the formativity (Correia, 1992) falling upon on the subjects interiority, in their professional experiences and on the capacity to communicate intersubjectively about them with the objective of constituting on the place of consuming knowledge, very often abstract and distant from the concrete operating.
This capacity of elaboration and construction is claimed by the singularity of the situations contextualized locally, that the teachers experiment on their daily professionalism and as such, must be potentiated not only on the initial training as on the continuous teacher training.
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