Teacher Professional Development in Brazil: Colonization of Teachers’ Voices

This paper focuses on professional development practices implemented in Brazil, and the influence of post-colonial views in the power-relation between the ‘educational authorities’ or ‘experts’ and teachers. The paper addresses how this relationship in professional development is mostly ‘one-sided’, as often it does not include the 'voices' of teachers. Rather, it prioritizes the assumptions many ‘experts’ have towards teachers’ needs for growth, in which the choices of topics and the kind of professional development programs to be designed often follow an ‘one-fits-all’ model or banking education as defined by Freire (1970). This paper emerged from the author's experience during her Master’s thesis research (Nascimento, 2010). She addressed the challenges of teaching in public schools in Brazil, and its implications in a social justice context. Through the lens of different teachers who participated in a volunteer-based Canadian/Brazilian teacher professional development program, the research investigated in which ways the inclusion of teachers' voices in professional development programs could affect teachers’ performance in a Brazilian context. During four years over the summer, Canadian teachers and Brazilian teachers worked together on a professional development program that aimed to encourage teachers to share their teaching experiences and reflect on their practice.