Research in initial teacher training

dialogues with Charles Wright Mills

Abstract

This article reflects on the place of research in initial teacher training, basing on the classic text of sociologist Charles Wright Mills, On Intellectual Craftsmanship, appendix of his book The Sociological Imagination, published in 1959. Situated in the debate on teachers/researchers education, and on the theoretical-practical articulation enhanced by it, we seek to discuss how the notes made by Mills towards research practice can also subsidize teaching learning. As a way of empirically anchoring the discussion, we identify in what ways the principles of research and investigative action contained in Mills’s text are concretely developed in the teaching internship experience in Physical Education and Social Sciences undergraduate courses of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in which we work in teaching and orientation.