Cartography at Elementary School Level: Continuing Education of Teachers and Experiences in the Classroom - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 62

memory, which stimulates and incommodes in the quest for transformation and
transcendence:
In the written report, we document our work of interpretation, through its gestures and
words, the evidence of the relationship they share with education, whether it is to evaluate it
or us, or to scrutinize our teaching practices (Fontana 2003 ).
[ ] None of us was prepared and ready to do it and nor was it necessary, as they made

(and make) us believe. When we were sharing experiences, it became evident that the
record as well as all the activities that make up the list of things that our teachers have to do,
go beyond the demands in the course of our professional training, producing complex and
arduous activities, which include difficulties that need be learned and developed in their
principles and fundamentals (they are those that guide the procedures) (Fontana 2003 ).
In detailing some aspects of the record, the author stresses that there are many
ways that you can get these records, asking questions, asking our peers for help,
sharing this knowledge with our colleagues, provided that pupils, together with a
teacher, dispense with routine practices whose meaning we had forgotten (Fontana
2003 ).
Given the statements exposed here, the record is a fundamental tool for the
teacher, giving concreteness to the ideas, fears, reflections, certainties and
uncertainties arising from the practice in the classroom. It should be seen as an
ally of the teacher who seeks self-knowledge and understanding of his/her profes-
sion, striving for continuous improvement of his/her performance in the education
of children and youth.
Training for Primary School teachers is not restricted to their initial training and
continuing education courses. As stated by the researcher Maria Lucia Giovani
(Giovani 1998 ) in a study on the formation (education) of teachers and on the role
of the university in this process:
It is recognized that the training of teachers and education specialists cannot be achieved
through accumulating information, attending courses and acquiring techniques, rather by
learning and real-life practice, individual and collective, critical reflection on practices and
work contexts, providing opportunities for reconstructing professional and personal iden-
tity. It also recognizes the importance of “knowledge through experience” and providing
opportunities to exchange experiences or “knowledge sharing” as a starting point for a new
professionalism of staff in service. It is, above all a starting point, to initiate and sustain the
effort of active appropriation of theoretical knowledge that supports and guides the
competency to be put into practice (Giovani 1998 ).
Thus, learning on the job, knowledge through experience , whether it be individ-
ual or collective, should be viewed as opportunities for the stimulation and the
appropriation of theoretical knowledge and instruments that enable the transforma-
tion of teacher practices in the classroom.
Also Freire ( 2005 ) in his lengthy debate of right thinking emphasizes the
importance of thinking and doing together, sharing, communication between
teacher and pupil, a communicative act , whose understanding is co-participated :
Right thinking is not—one isolating themselves, one hiding himself away in a secluded
place—rather it is a communicative act. There is no right thinking without understanding
and this understanding, from a correct thinking point of view, is not something transferred
but co-participated. [

...

] The task facing the individual, who thinks right, is not

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