Caracterização da filosofia educacional do corpo docente da FUEL

Abstract

It is said that the characterization of the educational philosophy of a university teaching staff may help the departments, the centros, and the university itself in the processes of defining and producing their educational objectives. Thus, in order to find out which was the most representative educational-philosophic current in the university, an exploratory study was carried out. Twenty percent of the teaching staff participated in the study. A questionnaire with bipolar scales, based on the description of the educational-philosophic currents proposed by George F Kneller in Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1966), was given to the teachers, who could express, in varying degrees, their approval or disapproval of any of the educational-philosophic principles. In order to avoid the "halo effect", the principles were not identified with their respective currents. The results showed PROGRESSIVISM and PERENNIALISM (each favored by 212 of the participants) to be the educational-philosophic currents most representative of the modus operandi of the teaching staff of F.U.E.L. RECONSTRUCTIONISM and ESSENTIALISM constituted the second and third positions respectively. The principle of "progressivism", wich best characterizes the didactic thought of the teaching staff, is: "Considering that the individual learns according to his own ways and interests, the teacher's task is to command, but to guide the apprenticeship ".