Crenças de licenciandos sobre o ‘aluno ideal’

Abstract

This thesis articulates the debate on teachers’ beliefs, the ‘ideal student’, and initial teacher education, from the perspective of the sociology of education and, particularly, from the field of inequalities in educational opportunities. Its main objective is to investigate the beliefs of beginning and veteran preservice teachers, from different undergraduate programs, about the ‘ideal student’ in school. The research is based on the assumption that the characterisation of the ‘ideal student’ is part of the teachers’ belief system, which tends to influence the teacher’s pedagogical practice, and may compromise the right to education of students who are not recognised as ideal. The research was conducted with 147 preservice teachers, enrolled in night on-site classes of the courses in Biological Sciences, in Mathematics, in Languages – Portuguese-Literature of the Portuguese Language, and in Pedagogy, offered by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, on two campuses located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. We hypothesised that the specific education context for each degree program leads future teachers to believe in different profiles of the ‘ideal student’. Participants answered a printed survey with 39 questions, distributed in six thematic blocks, between the semesters of 2022.2 and 2023.1. Data analysis was carried out from a quantitative and qualitative approach, with a descriptive-interpretative nature. The research constructed categories and subcategories for analysing the characteristics of the ‘ideal student’ declared by beginning and veterans preservice teachers, which highlight perspectives on the objectives of formal education that are familiar to us – acquisition of school or scientific knowledge, respect to standards, and socialisation. The results show relative lack of differentiation between the desirable profiles of beginning undergraduates and those in the second half of the course, and also among the four undergraduate programs.