Science curriculum: alchemy of school subjects and production of teaching autonomy

Abstract

In this article, the production of Science school curriculum in a municipal school of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is investigated. That school receives undergraduate’s students of Biological Sciences from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro for teachers’ training supervised internship activities. It focuses on the way undergraduate students become teachers through the experience of producing this curriculum. So we associated our observations to a conversation with the undergraduates who worked in their supervised internship, during 2019, in a specific school institution. Supported by Michel Foucault and Thomas Popkewitz, we argue that the alchemical processes that transform the sciences into school knowledge also produce, at the same time, good and suitable teachers (as well as not so good and unsuitable). In the analysis, we realized how the teacher autonomy has assumed to be central to the teachers’ training process which has articulated the curriculum construction around knowledge, teaching materials and assessments. Aspects such as the use of practical activities and creativity were enunciated as participating in the constitution of this good teacher, capable of understanding public school. Besides that, he or she is also suitable to subvert the modes of regulation and control imposed by centralized policies. In the formative process, in addition to scientific knowledge, the pedagogical statements were assumed to be quite significant in the constitution of a professional capable of escaping the norm, participating in the construction of the curriculum in an active, creative and autonomous way.