The Potential of Action Research with an Operative Group for the Professional Development of University Professors

Abstract

In this article, we present the partial results of a study whose purpose was to understand the potential of the experience in a group of action research for the professional development of professors of a Brazilian public university, identifying facilitating factors, constraints and challenges to configure action research in group, effectively, as a strategy of professional teacher training and development of the researchers/participants of the experience. In our research, we defined as the focus of the analysis the role of the coordinator’s mediation in conducting the activities. The main data corpus was gathered from the action research group’s meetings recorded in audio and video and semi-structured interviews. The results show that mediation in action research, capable of promoting personal and professional teacher development, presupposes that the coordination should adopt a double role: that of a group member, willing to put into practice everything that they propose to the other members, capable of establishing with them a horizontal relationship and that of facilitator of communication and group production. Mediation is a complex task, of an objective and subjective nature, requiring skills in pedagogical treatment, commitment and a vision of the world, of science, of teaching, of groups, committed to the emancipation of the subjects.