BETWEEN TEACHER EDUCATION AND TEACHING PRACTICE: AFFECTS AND DESIRES IN THE JOURNEYS OF BASIC EDUCATION TEACHERS IN MATO GROSSO

Abstract

The conjunction between experiences of academic training and the demands of the labor market does not always align with our professional expectations and aspirations. As a basic education teacher in Mato Grosso with a background in anthropology, I begin from a personal sense of unease to carry out research together with my colleagues in the profession, exploring how they perceive their periods of training, especially in teacher education programs, and their professional practices. How are their desires for teaching shaped and transformed throughout different moments of life? How have they been affected along their journeys between university and school? How do distinct experiences, including my own, differ and intertwine in the making of a teaching collective? Based on ethnographic research, I analyze the experiences of basic education teachers in Mato Grosso, comparing and connecting their reflections on the moments in which they chose to pursue teacher education, their academic training, and their professional trajectories. What emerges is the proposal of a continuum-practice–theory and a collective composition of the desire and becoming of teachers.