Teachers' Actions and the Changes Movement in Continuing Education Activity

Abstract

The subject of this article is the continuous education of the elementary school Mathematics teachers. It shows the result of a Ph.D. research conducted to investigate how changes in content and form can be produced in teaching activity in the context of a continuous education seeking process. For this purpose, a formative movement was promoted to teachers and coordinators from the 1st to the 5th grade of a full-time municipal school from the Brazilian education system. In this movement, discussions related to mathematical knowledge, analysis of teaching practices, and experience sharing were conducted. The formative and research actions were supported by the theoretical-methodological principles of historical-cultural theory, focusing on the theory of activity and based on the method coined by Vygotsky. Results suggested that when the content of the teaching activity is based on scientific knowledge and collective work actions are prioritized, new meanings regarding the organization of mathematics teaching and its teaching objects are developed. Driven by the development of theoretical thinking, changes in content and, consequently, in the course of teaching activity, are manifested. These changes are not produced in a linear and/or isolated way, because they are impacted by the forms of school organization in capitalist relations in which the concrete working conditions of the teacher materialize, which are opposed to the movement of change in the content and form of the teaching activity.