Innovation and Higher Education – rupture and continuity

Abstract

The present article refers to the ongoing investigation titled “A study about the innovation in the teaching action and formation”, which empirical fi eld is a school of the municipal education system in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. The interlocutors of this work were four teachers indicated by the board of the school and other teachers for being considered innovators. They made it possible for us to understand the formation processes that constituted them as such, conducting us to a deepest refl ection about the University and its role in face of the formation of innovating teachers. It is a qualitative research, and the instruments and procedures for the collection of the data were: observation, registration cards; analysis of the registrations and documents; narratives and recurring interviews. For the analysis of the data the Content Analysis methodology was used. The studies so far accomplished make explicit that the university academic formation enabled paradigmatic ruptures in the educational conceptions of the teachers. However, it seemed evident to us, also, that the University needs to form a new set of knowledge, constructed by the university professors and the teachers in formation, considering their teaching experiences in the school daily life. So, we understand that the University is, potentially, a space for the reconfi guration of knowledge rooted in the subjectivities of each future teacher, constitutive of their way of being person-teacher, impossible to separate and, therefore, deserving special attention.

Key words: university, innovation, teacher action.