PEDAGOGY STUDENTS DURING THE PANDEMIC (2021): what they think and prospects for the future of the profession

The purpose of this article is to understand what Pedagogy students, who were attending the undergraduate course during the COVID-19 pandemic, think about the profession and their professional insertion. The metodology was a camp estudy, like a survey, with describy and explory the realitie estudied. Participants are 40 students from a Higher Education Institution, located in the southern region of Minas Gerais, enrolled in the Pedagogy Degree Course, in the face-to-face and distance modes. An online questionnaire applied in 2021 was used as an instrument for data collection. The results revealed a greater participation of students enrolled in the last semesters of the course. The majority was less than 30 years old and they became the first of their family to complete higher education. They are students who help with the composition of the family income, and their earn on average up to 4 minimum wages. Students have a positive understanding of the profession, perceiving it as an instrument of social change and that they can be well paid, even though they understand that it is an arduous activity. At the same time, they have representation of a good teacher, the one who dominates knowledge, who is a mediator, flexible and who knows how to listen to the students. They would like to start their professional activity in teaching early childhood education, at the same time with studies at the postgraduate level, whether lato or stricto sensu. Finally, they declared that they felt fulfilled with the choice of the course and maintained positive feelings in relation to the professional insertion.

Pre-service teacher education in times of crisis

No doubt, this is a time of crisis. The impact of COVID-19 on people’s lives is tremendous. The pandemic affects human beings in different ways, depending on their place in society, but everybody is somehow affected: in finances, emotions, behaviors, to mention a few. The same is true about education. Institutions, teachers and learners are pushed to debates and changes never considered, which raise a number of uncertainties. Motivated by discussions the authors took part in as teacher educators, a documentary research was conducted, focusing on national and local documents published due to the pandemic. Based on the data collected, in this article we aim at discussing their possible implications for teacher education. © 2021, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Faculdade de Letras. All rights reserved.