Eu queria aprender a ser docente. Sobre a formação de mestres nos Programas de Pós-Graduação do campo da Alimentação e Nutrição no Brasil

Abstract

Training and employability of masters of the Brazilian Stricto sensu Post-Graduation Programs in Food and Nutrition were studied from the Bourdieu's concepts of scientific field, scientific capital, symbolic power and habitus, Kuhn's concepts of paradigm and scientific community and of network according to Collins. Of the 21 programs in the area of Nutrition accredited by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES), thirteen relied on graduates in the chosen period of study. Of these 13 programs, ten provided information for the communication with their students post graduated between 2000 and 2010. After phone contacts, we sent a questionnaire with open and closed-ended questions via email and we obtained 176 responses from masters, which corresponds to 32.5% adherence, above similar studies. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the open questions were analyzed by means of content analysis, according to Bardin. The majority were nutritionists (88%), female (88%), who entered the master's degree course, on average, at the age of 28, approximately four and a half years after the completion of graduation. They took about two years to defend their dissertations which were published by 63% of the graduates, mainly in the form of a scientific paper. After the completion of the master's degree course, 42% of graduates continued to publish and 10% had a doctorate. Teaching was highlighted on their expectations when entering the master's degree program. The inclusion in educational activities increased from 28% at the time of entering the master's to 57% in 2012; it quadrupled their presence in residency programs teaching and increased it from 18% to 38% in undergraduate teaching. About half of the graduates (55%) said that their expectations were fully met or even exceeded, this being attributed to the scientific improvement and to the good qualification of the professors of the programs. In contrast, the failure in the preparation for teaching, and the short time and the pressures for the completion of the master's were existent complaints. Of these masters, 38% are studying or have completed their PhD. Generally speaking, a profile tuned with the paradigm that guides the scientific community nowadays in Brazil from the federal instances of policymaking in science and technology: rapid formation of researchers accompanied by publication of articles, as a new habitus that is being established in universities. It is a Brazilian scenario which is in favorable conditions for a capitalist-pattern economic growth with the valorization of the scientific productivity of international visibility and guidance to science interference in the production and in the market for goods and services. In this study, we can consider this configuration of new rules in the scientific game with agile investment in technical training to research and the short time for the exercise of critical theory and for the pedagogical preparation of teaching activity as a limitation that may not be favorable to the reflection and the questioning of the scientific field. We highlight a scientific field in an advanced stage of consolidation, in a favorable time to rethink the paradigm and to reflect on the valorization of teacher training and the assumption of sociocultural dimensions in the scientific field of Food and Nutrition