Teacher training processes and teachers' competence : A sociological study in the primary school

The paper describes part of a study whose aim was to investigate the relation between modalities of teacher training and modalities of pedagogic practice implemented in the science classroom. The study is focused on primary school context and analyses the evolution of teachers performance in terms of their acquisition of recognition and realisation rules, i.e. coding orientation, to specific scientific learning contexts. Theoretically, the study is based on Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse (1999, 2000)which provided the concepts to characterise the modalities of teacher training and of classroom pedagogic practices and to analyse teachers’ evolution in terms of recognition and realisation rules. The sample was made up of four teachers and their four socially heterogeneous school classes. An action-research methodology was followed.The results suggest that the teacher training implemented was favourable to the teachers’ professional development and their competence to lead all children to a high level of scientific development. The efficiency of the training process has to be mostly attributed to the strong classification of the researcher-teachers relation and to the strong framing of evaluation criteria, selection and sequence, together with weak framing of hierarchical rules and pacing.Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Instituto de Inovação Educacional e Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT)