The teacher as an intellectual of praxis: challenges faced by teachers

Abstract

The pedagogy of competences has been consolidated as a hegemonic discourse in curricular documents and in the banners of movements said in defense of the universalization and valuation of education. At the heart of this perspective is the idea that education must be qualified by means of precepts that stimulate learning, enabling students to envisage a certain usefulness in the acquired knowledge and contributing to their insertion in the labor market and coexistence in society. We propose a critique to this understanding, evidencing how this bias empties the ideals of human formation and the emancipation of the subjects in the educational debate. In opposition to this tendency, we argue in favor of the valorization of decent work, conceptualizing the teacher as an intellectual of the praxis and glimpsing an active role of the educational process, centered in precepts of human formation that surpass the educational utilitarianism, without falling into the conservatism of the selective tradition of school culture.