Ética e autonomia na formação de professores: uma reflexão a partir de Paulo Freire

Abstract

This research focuses on the importance of ethics in education, emphasizing how schools, as formative spaces for individuals, foster ethical development by cultivating values such as respect, justice, solidarity, and autonomy. The topic holds social, cultural, and political relevance, as it pertains to shaping individuals as citizens for future generations. Education's task is to form ethical subjects and build the framework of a society aligned with a political project. Teachers play a key role in this process, as they are responsible for nurturing the ethical and academic development of individuals within the school environment. These individuals, in turn, will shape the future of the nation. According to Paulo Freire, teachers bear an ethical responsibility in their professional practice, given that education plays a formative role in the ethical subject across historical, social, cultural, and ethical dimensions. This is achieved through awareness-raising, dialogical problematization of the world, and a foundation of solidarity. In this process, teaching requires a reflective and ethical role to autonomously and responsibly fulfill its duties. Thus, the central research question arises: How do the study of ethics and autonomy influence the teacher's formative process? Accordingly, this research aims to investigate how the study of ethics and autonomy can contribute to the teacher's formative process, from Paulo Freire's perspective. This study constitutes a bibliographic, qualitative, and exploratory research, drawing on scientific articles and books, with a focus on Paulo Freire's major works, using databases as research sources. The thematic discussions are organized around three articles: a) Paulo Freire's humanizing and liberating education; b) education and ethics from Freirean thought, offering an extended view of education and ethics from various authors; and c) the development of an educational product through a thematic reflection workshop, which proposed a discussion on ethical components in teacher training, the relationship between ethics and autonomy in teaching practice, and the reporting of this experience in the dissertation. The first article specifically aims to understand how humanizing education aids individuals in reading the world. The second article discusses the role of ethics as advocated by Paulo Freire in the context of education. The third article presents reflections from the thematic workshop conducted with postgraduate students, based on the contributions of ethics and autonomy in the teacher's formative process. The workshop is part of the educational product, a requirement of the Professional Master's in Education program at the Federal University of Lavras. Finally, it is my hope that liberating and humanizing education permeates educational practice, fostering the development of ethical and autonomous subjects to transform this world into a more just and equitable one.