Educação aberta e Formação de professores: construindo verbetes na Wikipédia

Abstract

The present study deals with the initial training of teachers in the context of digital culture, using Wikipedia as a training proposal in a context that calls for open education practices. Since the advent of the Internet, there has been an expansion in the production and use of goods and resources in the field of culture, marking the speed of all sharing and distribution of documents, content and information. Ambiguities arise when the ease of making these contents available and sharing them digitally encounters regimes of artificial scarcity (Simon, 2008), which mainly through legal regimes (copyright laws, patents, international agreements) impede the free circulation and enjoyment of non-rival resources. From this contradictory context, the idea of ​​Wikipedia is part of the concept of collaborative and sustainable use, based mainly on the use of free software and open content. The main question of the investigation is to know which material devices can collaborate in the initial training of teachers with open education in mind? Thus, our general objective is to understand how the use of resources that promote open education can collaborate in the initial training of teachers. The research methodology used was the qualitative approach (Denzin; Lincoln, 2006; Minayo, 2007), which enabled the construction of data from the study and analysis of Wikipedia, bibliographical review, empirical research and investigation on the Wikipedia platform. To collect data, a Wikipedia study group (WikiGEC) was created, consisting of two undergraduate students, two graduate students, and a higher education professor. Two online questionnaires were subsequently administered, one to students and the other to professors of the undergraduate Pedagogy course at the School of Education of the Federal University of Bahia (FACED/UFBA). The researcher also used semi-structured interviews with some WikiGEC participants and a field diary. These questionnaires yielded 10 teacher respondents, 5 of whom use the Wikipedia platform, and 31 student respondents, all of whom said they were familiar with and used it. However, their practice was mainly to access information for consumption, not as editors. Only one undergraduate student mentioned having edited on Wikipedia, but this was during her basic education career. The results show a high level of usability in terms of the use of resources available on Wikipedia, much more so for students than for teachers. The lack of knowledge about the platform leads to a low level of attention to editing and content production. Furthermore, teachers have observed a low perception of its potential for initial teacher training, which is probably attributed to the low reliability of the entries produced. The conclusion is that although Wikipedia is highly recognized and used as a source of reference among teachers and students, its potential as a device for initial teacher training is still underexploited, especially with regard to collaborative content production. However, it is seen as necessary to provide more training for teachers in OER, transforming these devices into excellent critical and collaborative trainers for future educators.