Educação a distância no Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Sul: da teoria à prática

Abstract

This research is in the context of the research line, Education, Development and Technologies of the Post-Graduation Program in Education of the University of Vale dos Sinos – UNISINOS. Its main objective is to understand how Distance Education is being formed - DE at the Federal Institution of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul – FIRS, analyzing the process of institutionalization of this kind, trying to understand its dynamics, its limits and possibilities. It also attempts to know the public policies related to the use of DE and verify in what measure the policy guidelines are made real in the DE actions under the FIRS; understand the concept DE of the different actors who act on this modality in the context of FIRS; know what knowledge that these different actors believe to be necessary to act on in DE; understand how these different actors perceive the institutionalization process; in addition to understanding how the training is taking place with the DE mode. The main theoretical that substantiate the study and some authors who help to undertand the research are Aebli (1958), Santaella (1997), Lévy (1999), Axt (2000), Peters (2001), Belloni (2003, 2009), Santos (2005), Schlemmer (2005, 2006), Silva (2006, 2012), Tardif (2007) and Preti (2009). The research is of explanatory nature involving qualitative and quantitative analysis of data by conducting a case study, using the official documents of the institution and the questionnaires applied to the managers, of the rectory and campuses and to the professors of the institute. The most significant result indicates that the DE, in the FIRS, is not yet an institutionalized practice. In this way, we see that, the FIRS has reproduced some flaws that have already been perceived in other institutions, where the institutional documents bring the idea of formalism, but keep on investing in individual construction projects of pedagogical practices, management courses, using methodologies, etc. We understand that the effective contribution of the thesis is given towards identifying the need for significantly change the individual actions to collective and shared actions, proposing the creation of moments of dialogue and reflection by managers and the general community regarding DE in order to make it possible to account for the constitution process and institutionalization of DE in FIRS.