Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

We present part of the research on the precariousness of teaching in Brazil. It is an in-depth discussion about teaching in higher education, in the present context. The hypothesis is that these teachers are submitted to the alienation and precariousness of labor by means of the recruiting, selection, hiring and evaluation policies, that deprives them of control over their work. Taking historical and dialectical materialism as reference, we utilized documental analysis to study the case of a state university. We identified as indications of the precariousness of teaching: the application of institutional evaluations for the management of the teaching staff; staff cuts; the substitution of disciplines for internships and teaching practice; e-learning; the lack of retirement recognition policies; and the policies that impose a productivist logic to the teachers in activity.

*

Carried out in public schools in different environmental and educational contexts of Belém, state of Pará, Brazil, the study presented was designed to create a possible methodological approach to be reproduced by any primary or secondary school in the Amazon, generating information about the human-animal-environment interactions and the progress made in ecological awareness among the students. Five quantitative indicators were tested: ‘Distinction between wild and domestic animals,’ ‘Animals on the plate,’ ‘Student-animal proximity,’ ‘Feelings regarding the fauna,’ and ‘Student absence justifications.’ Significant results were obtained: In the identification of the students' prior knowledge about the concept of wild-domestic animals, it was found that at one of the schools, although students passed from one grade to the next, they were not necessarily more able to distinguish among the animals; alligators, armadillos, and turtles were the species students mentioned most frequently in the two schools, and they were on their families’ food menus; keeping domestic and wild animals in the homes was common, and keeping multiple animals was frequently recorded; feelings of ‘want to kill’ and ‘fear/disgust’ were still quite common, especially with regard to reptiles, reflecting the need for greater investments in environmental education; absences due to illness were recurrent and were closely related with animals. The methodology is valid for ethnozoology and environmental education, and is appropriate for the socioeconomic and environmental realities of the schools.

This paper aimed to develop a qualifying instrument to contribute to the monitoring and evaluation of the Multidisciplinary Residency Program in Family Health. It was an exploratory evaluation study carried out in two phases: the first comprising the face construction and validation of the logic model and of the indicator matrix, through document analysis and a nominal group consensus technique. The first phase, in turn, took place in two stages, before and after the consensus meeting, in which the goal was to validate a logical model and an indicators matrix that would reflect the main evaluative elements of the program. The second phase included the construction of the evaluation instrument. A logical model and the indicator matrix were validated based on the work done by the consensus groups, the outcome of which was 32 indicators used to build the evaluation instrument that was formatted through a structured questionnaire. This questionnaire consisted of 35 evaluative questions divided into 19 questions in the program management dimension; five in the organizational structure dimension, and 11 in the educational process dimension. The instrument that was prepared, based on a universally accepted protocol for this purpose, will need to be applied in future surveys for its validation process to be completed.

The study aimed to identify the difficulties experienced by faculty in the implementation of active methodologies in the undergraduate course in nursing at a federal institution in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. This was an exploratory and descriptive survey using a qualitative approach. The semi-structured interviews were applied to twenty subjects in August and September 2011 and, subsequently, analyzed pursuant to content analysis assumptions. The main adversities listed by the research subjects were grouped into three analysis categories: Curricular issues as an impediment to the application of active teaching/learning methodologies; professor resistance to the implementation of active teaching/learning methodologies; and difficulty in understanding the applicability of active teaching/learning methodologies in the teaching practice. Faced with such difficulties, it was necessary to introduce new ways to organize and produce knowledge, since the use of active methodologies could favor the training of subjects with an enhanced view on health who are active and committed to the transformation of reality. Understanding the use of active methodologies is critical to meeting the assumptions of the contemporary educational paradigm.

Today, the family health support centers are a locus for the insertion of the physical education professional in primary health care. This fact has introduced new challenges to the work of this professional, such as the undertaking of health promotion activities at the individual and collective levels. This study aimed to analyze the actions taken by such a professional at these centers in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2015 with 15 participants. This was a qualitative, exploratory study, which used the documentary research and focus groups as data collection instruments. The results showed different and complementary conceptions about the health promotion concept and the undertaking of comprehensive and diversified promotion actions together with the team and the community. Factors such as the reorientation of the model of health, community participation, the appreciation of multidisciplinary and intersectoral work, and government incentives for physical activity practices were identified as facilitators to carry out these actions. The greatest perceived difficulties included the lack of infrastructure and training and the conception of other professionals, still focused on individual clinical actions to the detriment of collective actions to promote health.

This article aimed to analyze the contributions made by “Permanecer SUS” (Remain UHS), a State Department of Health of Bahia (Brazil) program for training students and future health professionals. The study was conducted based on a qualitative approach from the institutional ethnography perspective. Data were obtained through structured interviews carried out with twenty health students participating in the program in 2015. The results showed the effectiveness of the Permanecer SUS (Remain UHS) program. The study found there is a need to value interdisciplinary teamwork, to dismantle networks, and the need for approaches to train these students in humanization and acceptance. In contrast, it was found there is a lack of understanding on networks among health professionals already working at the unit, something that can hinder comprehensive care. It was concluded that the Permanecer SUS (Remain UHS) program provides opportunities for dialog, reinterpretation of training, and for communications among team members and future health professionals, encouraging students to work in networks in the Unified Health System.

The article discusses the training process educator nurses get in the hospital context from the perspective of permanent education in health, highlighting the experiences that constituted this process, the meanings of the training, and the changes that took place in the development of nursing care based on meaningful learning. This was an exploratory, descriptive qualitative study developed through focus groups with seven nurses working in the Continuing Education Program in Nursing at a university hospital in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 2010, the light of the assumptions set forth under the National Policy of Permanent Education in Health. The thematic analysis of the content made using the NVivo 8.0 software for organizing and categorizing data. The results showed that the nurses' participation in the program resulted in opening to several changes in their work process and in the established teaching-learning modeling, expanding training concepts and spaces with an emphasis on collective learning at work and on it, which impacts nursing care.

This article aims to present an analysis of the process of implementing continuing education in health in São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil, considering the impasses that hinder the development and feasibility of this process. The discussion is based on the qualitative research technique, and the data were produced through semi-structured interviews submitted to the subjects connected to continuing education in health in the city. The results showed that education mode was weakened mainly on account of the breakdown of municipal policies because of alternating governments. Nevertheless, the research showed that the city also had potential to implement the continuing education in health, such as representativeness in the joint discussion committees. It is suggested that the idea of creating a center be resumed, since, as seen in the literature, forming such centers was an effective tool to implement permanent health education in several other locations.

The study aimed to get to know the changes taking place in the work process resulting from permanent health education. It was a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory research project. The interviewees were nurses working in health services at five basic health units and five hospitals in ten cities of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, between 2011 and 2012. The results indicated that the research subjects’ knowledge on continuing education was limited and, in general, they were unaware of how educational activities are evaluated. It is concluded that education at work, in the researched segment, was carried out in a compartmentalized, timely, and unsystematic manner, and that the evaluation of educational activities did not contribute to improving the educational process.