From interruption to experimentation and transformation: pedagogical training of higher education teachers in Portugal

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the plurality of meanings that may characterize pedagogy and teaching in higher education, exploring the possible effects of a particular higher education teacher training provided in Portugal. By recognizing that pedagogy cannot be understood as a merely technical issue, requiring a more general and broader reflection on higher education, we understand teaching in its ethical, political and aesthetic sense, exploring the meaning (or the lack thereof) of what happens in education if we move away from an explanatory and normative vision. In the analysis of the individual portfolios developed by the trainees during the course, we identified two axes that were configured as fundamental to think about how the training proposal had impacted its participants with regard to pedagogical issues: transformation movements at the level of conceptions and practices; and the creation of experimental dynamics both within the scope of training and in the context of practices taking place in the institutions and in the professional daily lives of each participant. It is worth highlighting that one of the most interesting aspects of reading and analyzing the writing exercises found in the portfolios lies precisely in the possibility of following these movements of transformation and experimentation, as well as understanding the way through which a space for collective study is formed, a study community. From the analysis of the two axes mentioned above, we understand how this collective dimension of the training proposal emerges from the reports of its participants.