Do trabalho para a escola: olhares de trabalhadores-estudantes e professores sobre as relações entre o saber da prática e o saber da escola

Abstract

This work presents the results of an investigation performed in PROEJA courses in a professional education institution in the city of Curitiba. Its main objective was to identify and establish the relationships between the knowledge acquired by students at work, of practical and tacit nature, and knowledge of scientific and theoretical nature, especially the Physics ones, to which students had access in school. This research considered work as a central category and educational principle, and was supported by the work of Marx, Paulo Freire, Lukács, Gaudêncio Frigotto and Acácia Kuenzer, among others. It emphasized, on a theoretical referential, the ontological fundaments and the manners through which workers access knowledge. The research was developed in the range of technical courses of Civil Construction and Electromechanics and gave special attention to the base knowledge of civil construction and industrial production identified with workers‟ labour practices in the investigated areas. Academic and school knowledge or practical and tacit knowledge were considered in the study. Both students and teachers participated on the research, which had a qualitative nature and obtained the data through semi-structured interviews. The results analysis was conducted based on four categories: professional trajectories; work execution; tacit and school knowledge; and production Physics and school Physics. The results pointed out that, taking the intermittent or interrupted school trajectories into consideration, workers seek the knowledge they need in complementary courses, in their own professions and in the contact with more experienced workers. It was verified that this knowledge conquered through practice, the tacit knowledge, is closer to the school, theoretical one, and allows workers to have more possibility of knowledge articulation. As a reflex, it was observed that the integration of knowledge, provided in the PROEJA modality, grants more autonomy and freedom to the working students in their performed functions and more recognition in the work environment.