Problematizing one's own reality: analysis of an experience of continuing education

Abstract

Considering that the ability to problematize can be the object of specific education activities, particularly with a view to teachers' professional development, an experience of continuing education for teachers was carried out at university level in the format of an extension course with the duration of one semester (90 hours). From the analysis of four methodologies found in the literature that emphasize the action of problematizing we derived some principles and characteristics that guided our proposal: 1) emphasis on learning the action of problematizing; 2) emphasis on the active subject; 3) to have the notion of problem taken in the sense of philosophical reflection; 4) to have one's own practice as the starting and end point; 5) to aim at the acquisition of learning strategies; 6) to aim at conceptual change; 7) to be optional; 8) to present some immediate gain to the subject (in our case, an official certificate); 9) to be offered outside regular working hours. We proposed a definition of the action of problematizing, in which qualities were attributed to each moment of this action. Seven teachers agreed to participate in the study, five of which carried out all activities requested by the researcher. An instrument based on the conceptual maps was created to evaluate the teachers' actions of problematizing at the beginning and at the end of the course. Those actions were also analyzed according to a set of qualitative criteria developed based on the proposed definition. The results indicated a qualitative change in the action of problematizing, which can be attributed to the learning experience proposed.