Teachers’ Ideas on Education: Approaches to Teachers’ Resistance to Reforms

Abstract

This text summarizes the arguments guiding a research on the ideas of teachers from São Paulo, Brazil, regarding school education. The research concluded that the teachers’ ideas are rooted on a classical, humanist, scientific-based schooling model, and that teachers resist practices that oppose this model. The text presents the grounds for the research’s hypothesis: that, whenever there is dissonance between the ideas about education held by those who foster educational reforms and the ideas of teachers, the latter present some form of resistance. Teachers’ ideas stem from the socialization of members of this professional category, especially during the period of their basic education. The hypothesis contradicts the common statement of an important portion of the literature on the subject of teacher resistance, according to which that resistance is due to poor teacher training.