Initial teacher training: an integrative perspective on subject content and health education

Abstract

This paper discusses a proposal for a curricular reorganization, called Study Situation (SS), focusing on teacher training and health education. The study aims to investigate the learning that was produced by teachers in initial formation during the development of the SS “Food: Production and Consumption”, and how they mean the concepts of natural sciences from the perspective of Health Education. The SS was developed in the Training Classes of Science Teaching: Elementary School I (Biological Sciences Course) and the empirical data were produced from class discussions and analysis of 14 textual productions, taken from graduates’ journals. The results show that there are still some conceptual misunderstandings in the journals writings, but the reflection on their records made it possible to construct important learning for both teacher education and the integration of science and health education contents. In general, the graduates showed interest in new ways of teaching and learning and they produced more complex meanings about human nutrition through the understanding of chemical, physical and biological concepts articulated with the subject under study. It was verified that the initial training of teachers in this perspective contributed to the constitution of more critical and sensitive teachers to the daily problems of their students.