Educational policies vs pedagogical praxis in Portuguese and French primary education: an overview of the challenges and complexity of being a teacher

Abstract

The educational policies and the principles that underlie directed learning are legitimized by each country of the European community. It is up to teachers to reflect critically on the epistemic assumptions that frame curricular programmes in a daily life of great sociocultural and environmental complexity, and design their educational practice. To boost innovation in the field of lifelong learning and training, the European Union provides European teachers with international mobility projects. It was in the context of an Erasmus+ mobility to Portugal of a primary school teacher from France, that this study was developed. In a reflexive logic, the Portuguese and French educational systems are compared and being a teacher is analyzed in an observational context of formal education. International mobility constitutes an axis full of potential to promote a professional profile of an investigative nature on educational praxis, since it has been possible to verify that the observational contact with another educational space and the exchange of experiences have encouraged a reflection on the adequacy of the role of the teacher faced with the educational challenges of this complex European multicultural society.