CONTINUING TRAINING OF TEACHERS OF THE FINAL YEARS OF BASIC EDUCATION: EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

Abstract

This article represents a survey on teachers’ professional development and the contributions of continuing education, which was carried out with teachers in the final years of elementary school. It focuses on discussions on continuing education as one of the strands (though not the only one) for professional development, and its objective was to find out the teachers’ of teachers in relation to continuing education. The approach that supported the data analysis of this research is qualitative, using a questionnaire as the data collection tool. For the analysis and discussion of the data, it used mainly the theoretical contributions of Marcelo Garcia (1999, 2009), Formosinho (2009), Cochran - Smith & Lytle and Imbernon (2004, 2010). The data obtained from the teachers constitute the category that will be presented and discussed in this work: training needs of teachers in the final year of elementary school. The results pointed to the need for planning and development of shared actions of continuing education, and the development of training activities in networking or learning communities. The data also led to some proposals for improving the continuing education of teachers in the final years.