Session Information
Session 8B, Scholarship, research and teaching in higher education (1)
Papers
Time:
2004-09-24
11:00-12:30
Room:
Chair:
Barbara Zamorski
Discussant:
Barbara Zamorski
Contribution
The paper deals with partial results of a research concerning the intimately connected roles of teacher and researcher at the university. The concept of a teacher that is at the same time applies its pedagogical skills and knowledge in research was suggested by previous activities within the university that dealt with two different concepts, reflexive teacher and practical epistemology. Taking these as a starting point, the present research aims at the investigating of teaching practices at the public university so as to identify possibilities of interconnecting the different activities of teaching and researching. The research takes place at the University of the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil and is co-ordinated by the Faculty of Education. The results of the research should answer to four main goals that can be described in the following terms: To obtain a theoretical understanding of the concept of reflexive teacher in terms of a practical epistemology; To obtain a theoretical understanding of teaching at the university as a praxis capable of contributing knowledge concerning the problematic relationship between teaching and researching; To contemplate the results of such theoretical activities in a broader perspective so as to compare them with similar research taking place in other countries; To suggesting concrete measures so as to effectively integrate teaching and researching at the university in institutional terms. The research is based on two different conceptual points that in their turn support the methodology opted for: the conceptions of teaching and learning. Given that learning is something that surpasses the mere acquisition of information as involving the processing, analyzing and comparing of it, put it into context, to call it into question and interpreting it, it is not difficult to perceive that we must have a method of studying and inquiring. For the most part, teachers working at the university have learn to teach through teaching. The experience of teaching is one of the means to learn how to become a teacher, but it does not necessarily implies that it is always enough for it. And in that lies the central point concerning processes of preparation of teachers, in taking the experience of teaching as the starting point for a critical analysis of the experience itself so as to configure na epistemology of the practice of construction of the identity of teachers. The professional development of teachers is the main goal of educational proposals that focus on the formation of teachers not merely understood as a process involving technical rationality that considers teachers as mere executors of superior decisions but through a perspective that recognizes their capacity to make decisions by themselves. In confronting their everyday attitudes with theoretical analysis the teacher is able to redefine its own practices and their theoretical support, to research for the constitution of its own practice so as to produce new knowledge concerning theoretical as well as practical aspects of its own activity. To transform the practices of teaching is something that can only be achieved through the teacher's enlarging of its own conscience concerning its own practice in classrooms as part of the university as a whole, and this is something that presupposes theoretical and critical apparatus concerning reality. Key Words. University - Teaching - Researching - Reflection - Epistemology.
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