TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS FOR TEACHING IN BASIC EDUCATION

Abstract

This article focuses on the discussion of the initial training of kindergarten/teachers and the skills to be developed so that they can be better involved in the construction of quality basic education. We believe that competence is manifested in the articulation of three essential elements, namely the know-how-to-act, which presupposes knowing how to mobilize and combine resources in a real context, the will-to-act, which is intrinsically connected to motivation, and the power-to-act that is sustained in and in action. The exploratory study developed had as its main objective to investigate the perspective of future educators/teachers who were, in the 2020/2021 school year, attending the Master's course in Preschool Education and Teaching of the 1st Cycle of the Basic Education in a higher education school in north-eastern of Portugal, about the importance given to a set of skills, involving the interpersonal, methodological, communicative, planning and teaching management, teamwork and innovation dimensions that can help shape a profile of professional skills for teaching. As a data collection instrument, a questionnaire was applied, consisting of initial questions in which it was intended to obtain the characteristics of the interviewees and, in another section, a block formed by closed and open questions with a homogeneous theme was organized. For the analysis of the data from the closed questions, statistical methods were used [Statistical Package for the Social Sciences IBM (SPSS) 23]. The results point to a greater appreciation of elements associated with communicative, innovation and interpersonal skills.