A construção de um currículo por competências: o caso do Curso Técnico em Sistemas de Telecomunicações do CEFET-RS.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the processes of development and specification of the curriculum of the Technical Course in Telecommunication Systems, of Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Pelotas (CEFET-RS), which took place in the context of the educational and curricular restructuring, based on the decree 2.208/97 and its complementary laws, which established the model of professional competences as the guide of the professional education in the technical level. It is a case study which used semistructured interviews, focal groups, and documental analysis as investigation instruments. The subjects of the study were the agents of the school management, the coordinatorteachers responsible for the development of the curricular specifications of each professionalizing module that makes up the course, the teachers who participated in the process of development/specifications of the curriculum, the teachers who did not participate at all, and also students in the end of the first module in the year 2005. This way the multiple subjects as well as the various power instances implied in the construction of the local curriculum were comprised. In the analyses performed mostly from the focus on the post-critic educational theories about the curriculum, it was possible to determine as a stand out the interpretations - and recreations - given by the local institution and its agents to the official curricular policy of the pedagogy of competences. It was possible to identify some mechanisms of power and dispute which define subjects’ positions in the process of curricular development and its results both in the written curriculum and in action. The study shows that the constitution of the local curriculum is a hybrid process, which incorporates elements of the official proposal and elements of the curricular tradition into the building up of the modular curricular model based on competences. The study also stands out an evaluation performed by the local agents concerning the curricular construction, pointing out the different aspects of the educational model based on competences adopted by the investigated course.