Integrated secondary education: reflections on conceptions and perspectives of its teachers

Abstract

This research investigates the conceptions of Integrated Secondary Education (ISE) held by teachers from the Federal Institutes of Education, Science, and Technology in Brazil, highlighting their theoretical and pedagogical foundations. The study has a cross-sectional and descriptive design and employed an electronic questionnaire administered to 1,077 active teachers from all 38 Federal Institutes in the country. The data reveal that, at the theoretical level, teachers exhibit a non-critical alignment, a position that becomes more nuanced when they are asked to define ISE. In this context, responses tend to fall within a broader field of social disputes and controversies, exposing the tension between critical approaches aimed at social emancipation and perspectives aligned with the labor market. It was also found that, to varying degrees, teachers tend to value isolated elements that compose ISE, although these do not represent the proposal in its entirety. If problematized, such limitations can serve as a starting point for the development of pedagogical practices aligned with an ISE understood as a path toward overcoming capital and the duality between a school that prepares for doing and one that prepares for thinking.