The substantial worldwide transformations due to scientific, economic and technological development have been causing abrupt changes of habits, values, priorities and the very self vision, the vision of the others and of the world. This has been requiring new social interaction rules, new professional practices and new education involving continuous updating as well as a denial for simplifying and fragmenting knowledge1.
The accumulated material technology has its wide permeability in the contemporary world due to scientific development. In the area of Health it is not different. However, human care demands more than technique and technology. It needs listening, sensibility and care. Such paradigm has provoked debates in the area which has raised reflections and proposals of changes of Health Education policies as well as the implementation of innovating practices of teaching and learning that address the phenomena in their multiple causes2.
Since the new Law of Directives and Bases of National Education (LDBE), Undergraduate School in Brazil has been convened to remodel its philosophical, political, methodological and conceptual principles guided by Educational projects that allow teaching to be linked to the marketplace and to everyday reality of social practices guaranteeing the development of abilities and capabilities as multitasking, cultural, scientific and technical productions3.
Nevertheless, the educational paradigm in transition can become a replicator of neoliberal ideals when the final objective is to assist the marketplace by graduating individuals who are resilient to such a model. The great challenge lies on transposing the pure and simple adjustment of Educational projects towards the demands of the marketplace by accepting and dilating basic principles such as equality, democracy, solidarity and why not integrality as transforming values of reality2.
Another aspect has to do with scientific and disciplinary culture which has been responsible for the disarticulation. On the other hand, the current teaching paradigm has as its mission to reassemble the whole, the complexity, the multi-dimension, the general intelligence so that by considering the whole, one will know all the pieces. The whole is formed by different elements, although inseparable for they are part of a single, interdependent, interactive, and inter-retroactive weft. Thus, man is biological, social, psychic, rational and affective, all at once, the same way society is economical, historical, political, religious and sociological. Consequently, a possible Education system is the one that aims towards the human being totality and comprehensiveness4.
This way, we believe that Educational projects which are based on processes that make the student’s conscious interaction with its means possible are the ones responsible for motivating several internal processes that lead into development.
Regarding national and international proposals to transform the paradigm of Nursing teaching, we question: Are new learning practices being implemented towards care integrality in Nursing Undergraduate School? Which ones? Concerning this perspective and taking for granted care comprehensive care during the school years, this study has had as its objective to analyze if there are teaching and learning strategies in tune with the new teaching paradigm (comprehensive care).
