Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PSYCHOLOGY
2015, Volume 4, Article 4
ISSN 2165-2228
DOI 10.2466/10.IT.4.4
A. F. DAndrea 2015
Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs CC-BY-NC-ND
NOTICE
This Open Access article originally appeared in Innovative Teaching, published by Ammons Scientific LTD. It is reproduced in the
following pages in that form.
CITATION
DAndrea, A. F., Alves, A. F., de
Carvalho, J. N., Edmundson,
M. V. A. da S., & Abramson,
C. I. (2014) Brazilian educational system and advances in
vocational teaching with the
advent of Federal Institutes
of Education, Science and
Technology. Comprehensive
Psychology, 4, 4.
Innovative Teaching was sold to SAGE Publishing Inc., and will not
be published after December 31, 2015.
With their permission, the authors are hereby issued a new Creative
Commons license for the article to be included in Comprehensive
Psychology. In this manner, the article can continue to be accessed
and cited in an active Open Access journal, operated now by SAGE
Publishing Inc.
This article should be cited as a part of Comprehensive Psychology
in the format listed in the side bar of this cover page. The original
DOI has not changed.
Ammons Scientific
www.AmSci.com
INNOVATIVE
TEACHING
DOI 10.2466/10.IT.4.4
A. F. DAndrea 2015
Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs CC-BY-NC-ND
Charles I. Abramson
Department of Psychology and School of International Studies, Oklahoma State
University
Received March 3, 2015
Accepted June 11, 2015
Published July 10, 2015
CITATION
DAndrea, A. F., Alves, A. F., de
Carvalho, J. N., Edmundson,
M. V. A. da S., & Abramson,
C. I. (2014) Brazilian educational system and advances in
vocational teaching with the
advent of Federal Institutes
of Education, Science and
Technology. Innovative
Teaching, 4, 4.
Ammons Scientific
www.AmmonsScientific.com
Abstract
This paper is a description of the current situation of Vocational Education in
Brazil, to indicate directions and perspectives for teaching practice and research,
under the Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education of Brazil. Issues discussed include the history of university education in
Brazil, how students are selected for university training, the role of government
regulation in encouraging university education, and problems with the educational system. Of special interest are programs related to international cooperation such as the Thousand Women Program and Science Without Borders.
In the last decade, Brazil has experienced a wave of growth in social services, economics, and infrastructure. One of the fastest growing fields, yet often unknown outside of
Brazil, is in the area of education. National programs such as Science Without Borders
(SWB) have facilitated collaborations between Brazilian universities and those in the
United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The purpose of this article is to acquaint the reader with the history of the Brazilian educational system, especially as it relates to the Federal Institutes and vocational training. We
hope that such knowledge will facilitate meaningful exchanges between Brazilian universities and those outside of Brazil. It has been our experience that eorts at collaboration can
be facilitated if our foreign partners know more about our educational system and its history. For example, as a necessary first step in seeking collaborations in psychology, studies
were designed that revealed Brazilian students diered greatly in their beliefs about psychology as a science. Those in the northeast of Brazil generally did not consider psychology
as a science, while students in the south of Brazil did consider it a science. This dierence
between the two regions of Brazil is linked with the ability of students to do research; the
more research a student does, the greater the belief that psychology is a science (Bartoszeck,
Abramson, & Place, 2005; Morales, Abramson, Nain, Junior, & Bartoszeck, 2005). Foreign
professors trying to improve psychology training in Brazil have been hampered by a lack of
understanding of the educational system (Abramson & Bartoszeck, 2006).
This article seeks to provide foreign professors some context of our educational system by providing in English material that is currently only available in Portuguese and
dicult to locate. We believe that such a context will allow foreign professors and students to better interact with Brazilian colleagues in such areas as writing cooperative
proposals, e.g., to the National Science Foundation (Page, Abramson, & Jacobs-Lawson,
2004). We provide the reader with an informative picture of the current situation of Vocational Education in Brazil, indicating directions and perspectives for teaching and investigative activities within the Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education of Brazil VSTE Federal Network. This paper is divided into four sections.
The first is a brief historical overview of Brazilian vocational education. This is necessary because the Brazilian university system has an important vocational component,
Address correspondence to Alexandre Fonseca DAndrea, IFPB Joo Pessoa campus, Unidade Acadmica
I, Av. 1 de Maio, 720, Jaguaribe, Joo Pessoa, PB. CEP 58015-430 or e-mail (alexandre.dandrea@ifpb.edu.br).
1
unlike many American and European universities. Moreover, vocational training is one area where Brazilian and
non-Brazilian universities can develop new training programs. Second, we discuss the new legal system recently
put in place to monitor and evaluate our educational system. Next, we provide an analysis of the Brazilian educational system. We close with a discussion of the future of
our educational system.
Fig. 1. Locations of the Centros Federais de Educao Tecnolgica (CEFET, Federal Centers of Technological Education), created from Technical Schools in Brazil in 2009. Source: http://redefederal.mec.gov.br.
1994, with Law No. 8948 (Brazil, 1994). From this legal
framework, some Federal Technical and Agro Technical Schools were transformed into CEFETs by specific decree for each institution and, according to criteria
established by the Ministry of Education, were given
autonomy to oer new undergraduate courses.
The Law of Guidelines and Bases of Brazilian Education was enacted on November 20, 1996 (Law 9394),
with a chapter on Professional Education (Brazil, 1996).
Law 9394/96 also defined the professional certification
system that allowed the recognition of skills acquired
by people outside the school system. In 1997, it created the Professional Education Expansion Program PROEP, with Decree 2208/1997, which regulates vocational education in the country, making vocational and
technical education independent of high school. In this
sense, the technical courses could now be oered concurrently or sequentially in high school.
For many, this separation meant a step back in vocational education, since the integration of high school
and technical education activities provided a comprehensive education from the point of view of the development of skills and competencies while at the same
time providing the student with basic science training
in high school. In this context, the process of transformation of Technical and Agro Technical Schools in CEFETs started in 1978 was resumed.
In 2004, technical education was again changed,
permitting integration of technical education and high
technological education as solutions to meet social demands according to regional peculiarities; (3) forming
themselves into centers of excellence in science education in general and applied sciences, in particular, while
encouraging the development of critical thinking and
empirical research; (4) qualifying as reference centers to
support science education in public schools and to provide training for public school teachers; (5) developing
outreach programs and promoting science and technology; (6) conducting and encouraging applied research,
cultural production, entrepreneurship, cooperatives, and
scientific and technological development; and (7) promoting the production, development, and the transfer of
social technologies, notably those aimed at preserving
the environment (Brazil, 2008a).
In 2007, several technical schools were already seeking the status of CEFETs or Technological Universities.
Faced with heterogeneity of the Federal Network, which
made it dicult to eectively manage vocational education in Brazil, a new structure was proposed. This new
structure led to the creation of Federal Institutes that
would integrate vocational education into university
level training. Thus, given the desire of various educational units to be transformed into CEFET institutions, a
Public Call MEC/SETEC No. 2/2007 (Brazil, 2007) was
launched to receive proposals. These proposals led to the
creation of the Federal Education, Science and Technology institutes known as IFET initially, and subsequently shortened to IF (Federal Institutes). The Public Call
No. 2/2007 originally forecast a maximum of 37 Federal
Institutes in Brazil. After adjustments to the proposed
names and the inclusion of another federal institute for
the State of Minas Gerais (the Federal Institute of South
of Minas Gerais, due to its regional peculiarities), made
public by Ordinance No. 116 of March 31, 2008 (Brazil,
2008a), Law No. 11,892 was published on December 29,
2008, creating the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology (IF) (Brazil, 2008b).
The 38 IFs, with at least one located in each Brazilian
State, are characterized as institutions of higher education
that oer basic and professional courses in vocational and
professional training. Unlike many institutions of higher
education in the United States and Europe, IFs build campuses where the students are (rather than a central main
campus), often with limited or no dormitory space. With
the creation of IFs, the Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education takes on a new social
role that henceforth makes it truly a vector of the education for coexistence, precept that guides inclusive education and subsidizes the didactic and pedagogical procedure that meets this target audience (MEC, 2010a).
In short, the purposes of IFs comprise: (1) oering
vocational and technological education with an emphasis on socioeconomic development at local, regional and national levels; (2) developing vocational and
Innovative Teaching
Fig. 2. Structure of the Brazilian Educational System. Adapted from OEI (2002) and UNESCO (2010).
initiative represents a gain for students, parents, teachers, educational institutions, business enterprises, and
society for having at its disposal an instrument that presents a common framework for technological courses. It
brings together essential information needed to evaluate an undergraduate's professional technology profile.
The CST also provides important information for vocational decisions, curriculum matrices, and training strategies, and promotes the exercise of citizenship in monitoring the quality of the courses. The catalog lists names,
minimum hours, and recommended technological infrastructure of 112 courses organized in 13 technological areas, namely: Environment and Health; School Support;
Control and Industrial Processes; Business and Management; Hospitality and Leisure; Information and Communication; Infrastructure; Military; Food Production;
Cultural Design and Production; Industrial Production;
Natural Resources; and Security.
Nursery Education
Preschool
Primary Education
Secondary Education
Vocational Education
Brazil
48.48%
51.81%
70.77%
90.97%
87.92%
North Region
34.36%
34.32%
54.68%
92.57%
95.33%
Northeast Region
29.24%
31.06%
51.93%
80.31%
87.79%
Southeast Region
55.59%
64.51%
82.77%
95.68%
87.57%
South Region
47.61%
63.55%
84.07%
93.92%
87.07%
Mid-West Region
57.53%
67.52%
81.91%
91.84%
90.53%
Currently, Science and Technology policies in Brazil are being developed to promote the so called popularization of science.5 Issues such as the environment
and sustainability are taking center stage in Brazil. The
Brazilian educational infrastructure has made it possible for greater dissemination of scientific results, and
has facilitated the flow of information between universities, research centers, and society. On the other hand,
the science of results has limited the development of
a standard for scientific research in Brazil (Newsletter of
the Brazilian Society of Soil Science, 38, 3, Set-Dec 2013).
The first initiatives to oer graduate courses (Master's and Ph.D.) in federal institutions of technical education are little more than 10 years old and only with
the advent of the Federal Institutes did it become possible to strengthen institutional research and seek approval for new graduate programs. It is expected that
with the increase of scientific and technological research
coupled with the eorts of internationalization by the
Federal Institutes, research in Brazil can be strengthened. We expect that in the coming decades it will be
possible to increase the number of Masters and Doctoral courses in the Federal Institutes.
Innovative Teaching
550
366 schools
350
250
215 schools
150
50
140 schools
2002
2008
2010
2014
Fig. 3. Numbers of units of the Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education from 20022010
(Scenario of the Federal Network up to 2014). Source: http://
redefederal.mec.gov.br/expansao-da-rede-federal
Fig. 4. Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education Federal Network map in 2010. Source: http://redefederal.mec.gov.br/
expansao-da-rede-federal
Innovative Teaching
http://mulheresmil.mec.gov.br/cooperacao-brasil-canada
Innovative Teaching
led to 101 students studying in foreign universities. Before the SWB program, the IFPB had approximately 10
students who participated in exchange programs primarily through the Fulbright program. As a result of the SWB
program, the Federal Institutes have greatly increased the
number of institutional agreements.
Conclusion
This description of the Brazilian Educational System
and its history demonstrates how national education has
advanced in the last two decades exactly at the moment
that Brazil is cast on the world stage. We emphasize in
this history of Brazilian higher education the advent of
the Federal Institutes as the driving force of vocational
education, science, and technology of Brazil.
Innovations in teaching and research by Brazilian institutions in recent years are mainly supported by the increase
in federal investment in the field of education, including
the Science Without Boarders Program. It is expected that
in the coming decades Brazil will establish itself as a country of outstanding participation in science and technology.
Finally, the importance of the country's internationalization process in the education sector should be emphasized
as a key element in the construction of economic and social
development of a free and sovereign nation.
References
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Innovative Teaching
http://www.agrichains.utad.en/
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