O trabalho como princípio educativo no ensino médio integrado do Instituto Federal do Paraná – Campus Foz do Iguaçu

Abstract

Labor as an Educational Principle is one of the main aspects of Professional and Technological Education (henceforth, PTE) and High School “Integrated” (as called in brazilian law) in Federal Institutes. In this context, we rely on Saviani (2007) to state that the link between Education and Labor is ontological-historical. Only man works and educates. Ramos (2008) join this discussion, pointing out that students should understand that we are beings of labor, and that everyone should act in the labor realm with an emancipatory conscience. However, what shows up empirically is that the understanding of Labor as an Educational Principle is not easily applied in the High School “Integrated” (HSI, henceforth) proposal. This research seeks to better understand this relationship between labor and education. For that matter, the investigation was carried out at the Federal Institute of Paraná - Campus Foz do Iguaçu, and focused on identifying the understanding that teachers and students, especially teachers, have on the category Labor as an Educational Principle in the HSI proposal. The research has a qualitative character with a critical-participatory approach and a historical-structural view based on the dialectical method. The investigation was developed through participatory research because the researcher works at the institution under research. For data collection, quizzes with open and closed questions were used. For data analysis, we used Bardin's Analysis of Content (2011). After collecting and analyzing the data, it was possible to identify that the vast majority of teachers and students, at the investigated institution, have the understanding that PTE, HSI, and the premise of Labor as an Educational Principle are concepts aimed at preparing for the labor market. This understanding of PTE as a factor of insertion in the labor market is ingrained in brazilian education and it is something spread by the capitalist ideology. However, it is imperative to overcome this pragmatic and utilitarian view in order to build an emancipatory and integral education. This possibility is found in the category of contradiction and it is experienced in the Federal Institutes through the HSI proposal. In this sense, there was a need to provide a professional improvement place for teachers to discuss the relationship between labor and education, concepts of HSI and PTE and a political-pedagogical approach in this perspective. When going through the theoretical path, it was identified that the Historical-Critical Pedagogy is configured as a counter-hegemonic theory in relation to traditional pedagogies and, therefore, it is configured as a theoretical-methodological alternative to guide the educational practice on the HSI proposal. Therefore, after following the theoretical and methodological path, a proposal of training in PTE, for teachers of the institution under research, was developed and offered as one of the research results. Contributing to the construction of educational practices that allow students to have a more broad worldview about the labor realm, questioning their relations of exploitation, it is the aim of this research.