<b>Faculty professional development strategies in public universities: similarities and differences

Abstract

 This study aims to understand the strategy definition processes in faculty development movements of five Brazilian public universities. Specifically, we wanted to know about the articulation of university pedagogy with different areas of knowledge, describe the strategies developed and realize conditions that facilitate and/or hinder their development. Seven academic administrators involved in the organization and planning of these strategies collaborated in this research. The results revealed that the main strategies used are lectures, seminars and workshops; and that only one of the institutions uses activities mediated by information and communication technologies such as teleducation. The interviewees mentioned that the universities have difficulties in establishing and strengthening pedagogical advisory groups to bring together teachers and staff to address teaching practice issues, given the specificities of the institution. In fact, little was mentioned about organizing and enhancing internal groups for this purpose, which may suggest that they are not relying on specialized researchers or sufficiently considering the literature and experiences in this field. At the end, we point out that further studies could provide more insight into the impasses and their conditioning factors, thus, could help in the development of organizational and programmatic alternatives or innovations to improve teaching and learning processes in Brazilian higher education.