“It is the Law”: the 9-year Primary School from the perspective of Pedagogy professionals/students

Abstract

This article is the result of a qualitative research with the general objective of identifying the opinions of Pedagogy professionals and students with regards to the new 9-year Primary School (EF – Ensino Fundamental). The methodological procedures applied were the production of a text about the EF and semi-structured interviews. In this article, the focus is on the results obtained from the text production. The research was based on 33 Pedagogy students from a private university in the countryside of São Paulo, who were to graduate in 2010. The empirical material has been analyzed based on categories defined a posteriori, after intensive reading of the material, searching for thematic cores recurrent in the productions, interpreted through the historical-cultural theory. From the results, it is possible to highlight essentially positive opinions about the new EF, comments on the importance of the teachers and schools preparation, and the incipient approach of recreational activities (with a predominantly generic treatment to them) These results allow us to (i) locate the important points to be approached on the initial and continuous formation of the teachers who work and will work on building the new EF, and (ii) problematize the way the Pedagogy professional/ student interprets the regulations in the Education area.