Education and emancipation – educating teachers in the context of social movements

Abstract

The study focuses on teaching practices in initial training and aims to understand possible connections between training in undergraduate courses and university extension. This is a narrative study, which takes the writing of Pedagogy students from a university in São Paulo, about their experiences in extension, as material subject to interpretation. The investigated proposition developed from regular visits, which took place throughout the first half of 2024, to a settlement of the Landless Movement, the MST. When looking back at the experiences recorded by the students, we ask ourselves whether participation in extension actions can contribute to teacher training, in the search to identify which practices are coherent with the principles we defend. The construction of the theoretical framework is guided by Freire's concepts of training, extension and praxis. Taking the relationship between university and community as a dialogical practice, the choice for the MST proved to be coherent and potentially formative for the undergraduate students. The meetings provoked reflections on teaching and education. The records signaled that a humanizing and emancipatory teaching training develops in dialogue with today's confrontations and dilemmas, collectively. They also show that the extension mobilized them to defend agendas such as the demand for effective public policies that do not exclude access to education, and political-pedagogical training based on the strengthening of the working class.