The Construction of Knowledge and the Relationship Between Theory and Practice in the Training of Pedagogues

Abstract

This article addresses a topic related to teacher education from the classroom perspective, aiming to identify the conceptions of knowledge held by students in a pedagogy program and to understand how knowledge is constructed in practice. It seeks to contribute to the students’ process of theoretical construction as well as to our own teaching practice with regard to the ways of conducting teaching and learning processes, the transmission and exchange of knowledge from a theoretical–practical perspective, considering the possibility that both teachers and students may develop their own ideas. This study is based on the principles of qualitative research, specifically action research, with the purpose of intervening in teaching practice in order to foster a careful look at the concrete needs of the classroom. Interviews and observation were used as research instruments, aiming at the mutual complementarity of data. The results indicate that students have difficulty conceptualizing knowledge and understanding the role it plays in reality; however, once they have access to readings and classroom reflections on the subject, a horizon of possibilities opens up for understanding what knowledge is, its scope, and the role it plays in educational settings, especially in schools and universities. At the same time, they break with the idea of knowledge as restricted to scientific theories, immune to criticism, with a merely abstract connotation and without concrete unfolding in practice.