Teaching conceptions of Agricultural Science professors working at community universities

Abstract

Teaching, understood as a complex action, mobilizes specific and complementary knowledge. University teaching has shown itself to be dynamic, in the sense that be molded to contemporary context. Nowadays, Higher Education is impacted by competition, productivity and efficiency. The ways of being a teacher, of teaching, of understanding teacher education and the influences of the socioeconomic context form and reveal teaching concepts. Based on these assumptions, in this paper we aim to analyze the teaching conceptions of bachelor teachers beginning their careers. This qualitative and empirical research adopted the interview for data collection with seven bachelor professors, beginners in their careers and working in the agrarian area and in community universities in the western mesoregion of Santa Catarina. The results, built through content analysis, showed that the teaching conceptions are formed by the convergence of the teaching practice bases, training/self-training, the teaching activities carried out, the Agricultural Sciences area and the community universities, as well as the context of performance of these teachers - convergence that also expresses the complexity of teaching in Higher Education. We also found that the socioeconomic context makes higher education institutions and their teachers increasingly involved in market logics.