POPULAR EDUCATION: AN EXPERIENCE OF CONTINUING TEACHER EDUCATION IN YOUTH AND ADULT EDUCATION (EJA) IN SAL DA TERRA PROJECT

Abstract

This article is an excerpt from an exploratory research carried out at the master's level in the Post-Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Paraíba. The objective of the research was to analyze the process of continuing education developed by the Sal da Terra Project in João Pessoa-PB with the teachers of the EJA modality, and to identify the principles of Popular Education. As this is a case study and empirical and documentary research, with a qualitative approach, we resort to the dialectical method for a more critical analysis. As procedures for data collection, we conducted a semi-structured interview with educators and with the project's pedagogical coordination, document collection and participant observation. The collected data were worked based on the Content Analysis technique, recommended by Bardin (2011). From the teachers' reports, we found contributions from the principles of “dialogue”, “participation” and “citizenship” of Popular Education, which were developed in the training provided by the project to EJA teachers, however, categories such as “awareness” and “praxis” were not present, revealing that the project is relevant, but it does not present a high emancipatory education, since the interviewees had limitations with respect to the main constituents of Popular Education.