Formative practices in professional education: the emergency of a specific didactics?

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the existence of a specific didactics for Professional Education and its main purpose was to identify how reference authors of this area, among them Kuenzer (1998, 2010), Machado (2008, 2010), Ramos (2011, 2014), Cheap (2004, 2008), Araujo (2008, 2010) Gruber, Allain; Wollinger (2017) and Wollinger; Allain; Gruber, (2017) understand this theme. The methodological approach was guided by qualitative research of the bibliographic type, analyzing the works of the authors in an attempt to answer the following question: How the referential authors of the area present the discussion about the didactics for professional education and how they have characterized the formative practices that in it are developed in your academic productions? The results indicate that, as expressed in the first section, the general categories of didactics, such as the purposes, the contents, the methodology and the evaluation are objects of analysis in the works. However, although the need for the elaboration of its own didactics is advocated, position defended by authors analyzed in the second section of the paper, vocational education does not have sufficient knowledge about the processes of production and learning of technical knowledge, especially the operational processes, which support the formulation of propositions for the elaboration of this specific didactics.