The New Curriculum of the CEFET/RJ (Petrópolis) Undergraduate Physics Teacher Education Program

Abstract

The Resolution 02/2015 of the Brazilian Education Main Council has established the new National Curriculum Guidelines for the initial and continuing teacher education in which physics teacher education programs are included. In this study, we report the description on the curriculum reformulation process that was carried out to adequate a nightly presential physics teacher education program to the new guidelines. Despite of the compromise to implement the reformulations within two years imposed by the Resolution, this was not the main reason for the curriculum revision. The process had already been initiated with a committee established in the year before of the new guidelines enacting. In this way, we show, in this study, changes realized in observance of the legal requirements as well as an interesting discussion of the reflexive and self-critical process that led to the new curriculum. It is important to note that the reformulation process has taken into account the experience over the eight years of existence of the program in which several participants contributed such as the authors of this paper, other professors, undergraduate students, and CEFET’s employees. Beyond the reflexive analysis, we also describe quantitative data on the college dropout and failure in the physics teacher education program lifetime that justify the changes done.