University teacher training: Contributions from Sociology of Critical Education

Abstract

This work is an invitation to challenge our
teaching practices that are embedded in an institutional
and socio-political context, have an epistemological
anchorage delimited by the particular field of knowledge,
and are defined by theoretical perspectives and
ideological-political options. One of the tasks proposed
by Sociology of Education is to ask ourselves which
training processes are being developed by university
teachers to challenge their own trajectory and to generate
critical educators with transformative intentionality.
Some discussions on this issue are shared in this article.
Pedagogical training of teachers at secondary and
university levels is a challenge for those who have the
conviction that not only disciplinary knowledge shapes

the teaching practice but also a baggage of knowledge
that provides meaning to specific knowledge, making
up an integrated whole in teaching. The pedagogical
task often seems to unfold with autonomy of ethical and
political principles. In addition, the ways to build teacher-
students relationship in university classrooms only
circumscribed to the ‘critical contents’ of the subjects
without an appropriation anchored in the experience
of an alternative pedagogical practice runs the risk of
losing precisely its transforming potential.