Licentiate degree in Rural Education at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil: trajectory, organization and functioning

Abstract

The article seeks to understand the history of creating a teaching degree in rural education at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil. The course aims to train education professionals to work in areas of knowledge (languages and human and social sciences) for the second stage of elementary education and for secondary education, based on the principle that rural education is a collective construction as a practice of a liberating dialogue, in the process of which students and teachers construct themselves and are constructed by others as autonomous historical subjects capable of reading the world. To this end, the article uses authors who have been dedicated to producing knowledge about rural education and the training of teachers to work in rural schools. As a theoretical-methodological approach, it uses the assumptions of historical research, performing analysis of the course’s structuring documents and conducting interviews with university professionals who worked on the preparation of the training proposal. As a result, the study shows that rural education is a historic struggle for social movements; that the Federal University of Espírito Santo sought to constitute actions and negotiations for the implementation of the course; and that the training of teachers to work in rural schools is an action that, if contemplated, impacts the right to education for the social groups that deal with and live on the land.