The Internship Report as a Diffuser of Reflections on Graduation: Analysis and Interpretation of Data in the Internship Reports of the Reading and Writing Program

Abstract

This paper is part of the discussion about writing and teacher training in Brazil. We pay special attention to the written production done in the internship because it is at this moment that the teacher in training focuses on the school reality, confronts it with the theories learned throughout the course, and has the possibility to follow his or her own paths, intervening towards the changes deemed necessary. Our main objective is to analyze and interpret the writings of students in the pedagogy course in the internship report of the Read and Write Program. We question to what extent the records kept in the internship reports are configured as data capable of generating reflections and producing knowledge. The focus of our attention is not on what the researcher-student observed, but on how he or she records the process of being observed. Theoretically, we rely on Barzotto and Eufrásio (2009) who consider that the internship report is an important instrument to start from the concrete and arrive at theoretical wedge reflections. Following these authors, as a strategy for the internship report to have a more scientific character, we suggest that the graduate in the field assume the posture of a researcher and be inspired by the skills that an ethnographer should have in collecting data and using the field notebook. We observe in the internship reports, on the one hand, descriptions that do not receive academic treatment, and, on the other hand, data collections that seem to be inspired by the ethnographic posture in the classroom, but they still do not have a solid analysis. We concluded that, in order to produce an internship report that contributes to the production of knowledge at the university which reflects on issues of school reality, we consider the pertinence of the committed use of the field notebook and the collection of data inspired by ethnography.