Abstract:

If we accept that the “knowledge society” is developing, we must also consider that elementary school teachers are key players in building a world in which the decisive issues of efficiency and productivity are well-matched with the communicational questions of human training and ordinary life. On the route toward the knowledge society the training of elementary school teachers in new molds is, therefore, an important dimension to invest in.
However, training elementary school teachers has revealed difficulties in transforming teaching practices and school cultures, which have been built up throughout years of organization of mass teaching processes. The gap between the challenges presented at that teaching level by the knowledge society and the real practices taking place in it is, the majority of times, something to be questioned.
In this communication we want to discuss ways of training teachers for elementary education aimed at the knowledge society, starting from the conceptions of teachers whose professional life and work we investigated.
From the theoretical point of view there are studies about teaching identity and school cultures, in whose environment we are emphasizing the perspectives of Woodward (2002), Claude Dubar (1995) and of the authors themselves (Tura, 2000; Lopes, 2002 and 2008), which we chose to identify and discuss the situations being examined. On one hand, it is considered that identity is constructed in a dynamic, continuous and inventive process, which in the current context contains a plurality of significations and referents and on the other that the possibilities of invention are limited by cultural representations and sedimented institutional practices. It is also felt that the change involves people in their entirety, as well as the different levels of the ecological system in which they move around.
From an empirical standpoint, the results of two research projects are correlated, one done by Brazilian teachers (Tura and Marcondes, 2005/2006) and the other by Portuguese teachers (Lopes, Pereira, Ferreira, Silva e Sá, 2007). The research done in Brazil involved semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and a free word association test. The research done in Portugal involved biographical interviews and analyzing documents.
The conjugation of the studies enabled us to throw light on one and the other and to identify categories of common analyses: the conception of teacher (including the reasons for choosing the profession, motivations for being a teacher and professional ideologies); the first years of work; professional socialization and training; the current configuration of pedagogic work and the conception of school knowledges.
The joint results point to the persistence of pedagogic work methods fed by traditional conceptions of knowledge and the sparse communication between the world of the school and the world of training. When discussing these results, in terms of the theoretical picture, various factors are considered, in themselves and in their inter-relationship: the expectations of those who choose to be teachers; the representations of those training them about their role; the representations of the population about the role of the elementary school teacher; the characteristics of the more typical school cultures, and training policies.

Keywords:

knowledge society, teacher training, teacher identity, school culture.