Distance Continuous Training of School Managers

Abstract

The chapter deals with the continuing education of school administrators of basic education in partnership with the Brazilian public university through the implementation of postgraduate courses in School Management (Lato Sensu) in the distance teaching mode in agreement with the National School Program Managers of Public Basic Education (PNEGEB) of the Ministry of Education (MEC) in Brazil. To bring them together in this text is to expose to debate the importance of continuing education in the postgraduate course with the perspective of the articulation between the training of school managers in effective exercise in the public school system and the possible changes in the pedagogical practice that leads to. The methodological approach of the present work is based on the bibliographical review, a qualitative approach, which allows to work with the material during the research, with its organization and greater exploration, making possible the articulation between the theoretical presuppositions of the study and the data of the reality for a better understanding of the phenomena that need to be unveiled. The proposal of these policies of continuing education through distance education to train school principals demonstrates awareness of the importance of training a critical professional in school work, a manager of the development of participatory and collective planning, allowing a constant reflection on the responsibilities of a school committed to the real learning of its students and of effective democratic management.

1. Introduction

The article deals with the continuous training of school administrators of basic education through a partnership with the Brazilian public university through the implementation of postgraduation courses in School Management (Lato Sensu) in the distance teaching modality in agreement with the National Program School of Managers of Public Basic Education (PNEGEB) of the Ministry of Education (MEC) in Brazil.

This initiative has been developed through PNEGEB. Initially, the program was started in 2005 as a pilot project for extension in school management offered by the National Institute of Studies and Educational Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP). On an experimental basis, the pilot project in comparing five programs aimed at training school managers, indicating their main characteristics in relation to new educational trends. These are distance learning program for school managers—PROGESTÃO; national program of basic education managers—PNEGEB; continuing education program for early childhood and fundamental education managers—PROGED; and interdisciplinary continuing teacher training center—CINPOP, Brazil [1].

The general objective of the program (PNEGEB) is to form, at the Lato Sensu specialization level, effective educational managers of the public schools of basic education, including those of youth and adult education, special education, and vocational education. These will only be established and carried out through well-prepared professionals committed to building knowledge and sharing experiences that are experienced on a daily basis.

Based on the local reality and the search for new ways for the school manager to direct his pedagogical practice to carry out the actions determined for the improvement of teaching quality, PNEGEB is a component of the All for Education Commitment, which is a goal plan Education Development Plan (EDP), aimed at contributing to the improvement of the basic education development index (IDEB) of schools and education systems.

The National School of Managers Program has been a continuous professional training structure, characterized as a distance learning modality, as well as a space for reflection and debate among the participants, who in turn have direct involvement with basic education. Its importance lies in the link between the school environment in harmony with various themes of education and the virtual environment in the process of continuing education, which implies relevance and concreteness to this approach. We perceive that it is necessary to seek to. The teacher is urged to take a new stand in the face of such a scientific, technological, and cultural revolution. It will no longer be the center of pedagogical practice, of the process of knowledge transmission [2], but will necessarily become an organizer, planner, and articulator of information dispersed, tacit knowledge, and scientific knowledge, (re) constructing, linking, (res) meaning, and integrating them into a critical-reflexive process that understands or helps to know how the determinants of information and communication technologies by manifesting themselves in the school space from the perspective of a group of school managers who are enrolled in the said course.

The expansion of the offer of postgraduate courses has been trying to resignify the formative processes from the reconsideration of the necessary knowledge to the teachers, besides the purpose of granting a legal qualification to the professional practice of teaching. In this perspective, it is understood that the training courses can articulate the actions of the teachers with the pedagogical practice through the reality and the school experience.

The expansion of the locus of initial and continuing teacher training has proved to be one of the important demands for updating and training teachers.

It should be noted that the 1990s are marked by great interest in the formation of educational managers, propagating in Brazil the dissemination of the expression continuing education as a modality of improvement of the educator in the exercise of his/her function, becoming in recent times a theme present in the discussions in the national and international academic scene.

It has been highlighted in the field of continuing education the evidences that there is unanimity in pointing to distance education as a fundamental mechanism for the implementation of distance courses by higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil. These experiences are gradually being affirmed as innovative pedagogical experience for the formation of citizens, which has its peculiarities and reveals itself as a prosperous field of study.

Taking stock of existing initiatives in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil, the reflections emanating from the experiences and the work carried out in the postgraduate course of the Federal University of Viçosa by the authors served as motivation for the elaboration of this chapter. We take as a starting point the experiences of the team that makes up the National School of Managers Program (PNEGEB) in the respective HEIs, in order to present its importance for the ongoing training of in-service school managers in public basic education. It is worth mentioning that despite the fact that so many other Brazilian public universities are committed to the educational demands aimed at systematizing the goal and proposal of the training program, each institution brings its existential experiences, but with a single common goal, which is to open spaces to build a process of training school managers that contemplates the conception of the right to school education and the perception of the public school in the perspective of social inclusion and human emancipation.

The methodological course of the present work is based on the bibliographical revision, through theoretical productions that guide the research work in the understanding of questions, concepts, or phenomena, describing them and interpreting them in order to subsidize information, affirmations, and statements that justify the research work, as well as the systematization of the bibliographic studies carried out, in order to know the paths that point to the discussion of the proposed themes [3]. Lüdke and André [4] show that the approach taken shows that the approach taken by school managers in Brazil, in partnership with the MEC training policy, qualitative, enterprising, and methodologically rich, allows to work the material during the research, with its organization and greater exploration, making possible the articulation between the theoretical presuppositions of the study and the data of the reality to better understand the phenomena that need to be unveiled.

2. Distance education

It should be noted that government investment has been fundamental in the search for partnerships with higher education institutions for the implementation of distance learning courses.

Distance education (EaD), understood in the context of education in general and organized to train the new generations, transmits the scientific and cultural knowledge produced by society as a whole, becoming an option for the citizen of the twenty-first century, bringing limits and contradictions of modern society and also the possibility of social inclusion.

According to Faria [5], distance education has been associated throughout the world with the democratization of access to new information and communication technologies, being recognized as a public policy with potential for the training of subjects, as well as a sign of the construction of new paradigms in the expansion of knowledge.

For Mello and Soares [6], the advancement of information technology and telecommunications, as well as the emergence of the Internet, has made the EaD to renew itself and cover courses of differentiated levels, such as undergraduate and postgraduate courses in different levels of knowledge. In this context, with numerous educational proposals at a distance, the Federal Government created its own legislation in 1996 in order to regulate EaD and to promote the accreditation of public and private institutions able to launch courses in this modality. The legal bases for EaD in Brazil were established by the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education (Law 9394, dated December 20, 1996), regulated by Decree 5.622 of December 19, 2005¹.

Mello and Soares [8] point out that the important advance of Law 9394/96 was to ensure the right of young people and adults who could not complete their school life at regular age, the right to provide studies through distance education. It is also worth noting the participation of the public power in the incentive to the development and promotion of programs of distance education and teacher training, as well as the regulation of the requirements for the examination and registration of diplomas related to distance education courses.

By recognizing the changes in the world scenario and, consequently, in the educational scenario, it is expected that teachers are also in the process of change, after all, they must be in tune with all the novelties that are inserted in the school context. The new technologies impose on the human being in the face of the epistemological, social, and technological transformations that take place.

Gadotti [9] allows to produce knowledge based on the various media sources. “Educators, in an emancipatory vision, not only transform information into knowledge and critical awareness, but also form people.”

According to Mello and Soares [8], it is important to understand and identify the different conceptions that underlie the different modalities of education with or without the use of technologies. There are courses of EaD focused on the transmission of content, communication in conventional formats in EaD, with contributions in the industrial way of teaching and learning or, at the opposite extreme, to justify the use of communication networks to promote interaction, reflection, the collaboration and the construction of knowledge in any learning environment, whether it is face-to-face or at a distance. In this point of view, Aretio [10] differentiates several types and modalities of education with the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Among them, it highlights: (A) online or virtual education; (B) distance learning; (C) total distance education; (D) e-learning; and (E) blended learning.

Online education or virtual education or education supported by new ICTs involves both the face-to-face and distance education modality. It is developed by telematic means, for example, the Internet, videoconference and teleconference television, and digital telephony. Communication can occur synchronously (communication occurs at the same time), or asynchronously, in situations of regular and/or corporate courses, in diverse levels and educational modalities (from basic to postgraduate education). ICTs can also be used in totally virtual programs, without physical contact between tutors and students, in semipresential courses, in regular classroom courses with activities that complement each other beyond the classroom, through the Internet. Interactivity can favor interaction and communication one by one (e-mail between two people); one-to-many communication (discussion forums, chats); and communication of many people to many people (website or the creation of a collaborative virtual community) in which everyone participates in the creation and development of the community itself.

In the semipresential EaD, the physical separation between teacher and students is partial, that is, part of the course is structured considering the occurrence of physical encounter(s) between educators and students and part of it is effective at a distance, in virtual environment or the use of other technologies (self-instructional material, audiovisual resources, and others).

The total EaD does not predict physical face-to-face meeting between teacher-student. However, there may be simultaneous synchronous communication, via computer, Internet, telephone, or asynchronous, through electronic mail and virtual learning environments. In this case, the course is structured to happen entirely at a distance, using audiovisual resources, printed or electronic self-instructional materials (as in correspondence courses, television, and CD-ROM among others). It can also be structured in the virtual or online EaD format, which takes place through virtual learning environments.

Aretio [11, 21] describes e-learning—electronic learning—as a form of distance education with exclusive support in digital (Internet) systems. It has been used to promote the training of people and employees, with a view to improving organizational processes. Research by the author reveals, however, that in e-learning, the interactive, collaborative activities, problem-solving, exchange of experiences, and information are very small, which has been generating, according to the author, low student productivity.

Blended learning or b-learning, according to Aretio [11, 21] and Belloni [12], is the education trend of the future. In this educational modality, the public or private conventional HEI can implement courses that take place in mixed environments and combined education and integrated between online education and distance education. They are called by some as bimodal EaD mode, partially distance, or semipresential with times distributed in present moments and distance and other electronic formats. However, it is not a question of simply “blending,” “mixing,” or “combining” teaching formats. It is a question of “integrating, harmonizing, complementing, and combining the most appropriate means, resources, technologies, activities, strategies, and techniques to satisfy each concrete learning need,” in the search for the maximum balance between these curricular variables [13]. Thus, there is a strong propensity to combine online education, distance education, and face-to-face education, which is already a reality in several HEIs. It means that the “future of higher education will not be online, but in networks between us, computers, classrooms, and the place where each student and teacher are.”

One cannot fail to consider as fundamental for the training of managers the great expansion of offers of courses in the distance modality by the Institutions of Higher Education, which instigates the development of the education process, since this happens to have its peculiarities, but reveals a thriving field of study. In this perspective, distance education has been providing profound changes to the situations set in the organization of the educational process, serving as an alternative to empower and make available the knowledge to an increasing number of individuals interested in improving their knowledge, to update or to qualify. However, in higher education, in a special way, the expansion movement of postgraduate courses has been growing in significant indices beyond the sphere covered by the face-to-face education.

This type of education is associated with the strong development of digital technologies, mediated by new information and communication technologies. In this perspective, the National Program of Basic Education Managers has as one of the main axes distance education, evidencing the possibility of democratization of knowledge, consolidating as a strategy of in-service training policy for school managers and a vehicle for dissemination of content aimed at adapting the school with a fundamental role in this process of democratization.

Sette [14] adopting creative proposals and possibilities for good school management opens space for a more active and permanent participation of all actors in the educational process, which, combined with the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), enhances the process of knowledge construction, citizenship, as well as facilitates the interaction between the actors of the educational process, extending the special frontiers, reaching external partners outside the school, the city, and perhaps the country. According to Teixeira [15], it is the one that enables the attendance of a significant number of subjects in their places of work with a reasonable cost. In her research work, the author reports that the Ministry of Education (MEC) is interested in the dissemination and use of distance education and justifies its position affirming the need for flexibility in the organization and development of the students throughout their studies, since, according to the MEC, this would strengthen the intellectual autonomy and guarantee access to the TICs. In addition, the author argues that EaD is a modality that facilitates, at least from an economic and practical point of view, initial and continuing training programs in countries with a broad territorial extension, such as Brazil.

3. Continuing education and ICTs

Candeias [16] implies that the search for continuing education under the perspective of postgraduate distance courses deserves to be highlighted, due to the fact that we will have an increasing contingent of teachers who will make the option of a training linked to a Lato Sensu Postgraduate course, something that is not decontextualized from the reality of basic education, which is configured as a constant and that seems to have come to stay, imposing on the universities and, in particular, the Postgraduate Programs of all Brazil, the debate about their role. In addition, establishing an analysis of the continuing education of basic education teachers articulating with information and communication technologies and postgraduation has been the challenge in the present time. The importance of the relationship between these themes is in line with the vision of Mill [7] that investigated CAPES bank, theses, and dissertations that bring tangible points, to the growth in the country about the appearance of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The author noted that there are few academic papers that relate continuing education of basic education teachers to information and communication technologies and postgraduation, as well as most initiatives are restricted to specialization or improvement courses.

Distance education, mediated by the different information and communication technologies, has been used as an alternative to expand the offer of continuing and postgraduate courses, especially in regions where the offer of training alternatives is still insufficient. At the heart of this debate, Mill [7] and Candeias [16] impose questions that point to the need for this articulation. For these authors, it is still necessary to make much progress in this articulation between a model of teacher training committed to educational changes, under the dynamics of ICT within the perspective of postgraduate studies, from the design and structuring of the matrix curricular of the course, going through the structural aspects, such as access to computers and concreteness, among other issues.

In this sense, the continued formation of managers has been widely questioned and investigated, although we do not want to exhaust the causes, we seek to emphasize that this resource is at the service of the development and learning of students, effectively favoring the possible democratization of the teaching, and becoming through this ongoing mechanism accessible to all of the public school. In this context, it is not enough just to build knowledge, but also, access to it which through distance education, provides technical support in line with the didactic-methodological context of the formative process capable of creating a protagonist position on the pedagogical work necessary to the demands and expectations of changes in management and in school.

In view of the technological revolution, one of the most visible consequences of this process was the incorporation of information and communication technologies in data organization and in the intensification of online access that collaborate to boost educational performance.

Hessel [17] inserted in a social space where there is a growing need for interaction and participation of the subjects to face their challenges, the educational agency can facilitate connectivity, with the adoption of ICT. The issue is not limited to assimilating ICT as a teaching and learning tool, research, routine automation, or as a provider of managerial information. It is about supporting and expanding communication channels, whether internally, because decentralization of power should promote the integration of school staff, either externally, because the school needs to share information, establish contacts of all kinds, and to activate a communicative network that facilitates the interaction among parents, students, teachers, etc.

This situation is anchored in the search for an understanding of the relations that are established in the interaction of the education and technology components. If we take into consideration the thematic axes of work and discussed in each discipline of the postgraduate course in school management, all planned as a means of possible intervention in the school reality, we must realize that ICTs have been raised as new perspectives for the management of the educational process, with a view to promoting initiatives that stimulate the involvement of the trainees and as a work strategy of the professionals in EaD. It means to say that regarding the professionals working in higher education establishments and in tune with the use of ICT cannot lose sight of the use of these to interpret the new and advance the didactic-methodological content of the training process from the experience and the experience of each student in his way of being and unveiling the school reality.

In this sense, distance education has been stimulated as the fastest and most economical means of responding to the legal requirements of teacher qualification, which in the context of school organizations has affirmed principles and practices of school management. Castro [18] points out that the implementation of policies and training programs in management aims to strengthen leadership, communication, negotiation, and problem-solving skills, and teamwork to optimize the opportunities that the autonomy brings to school.

Belloni [12] studied that in the first decade of 2000, courses, especially at a distance, were launched, either online or semiresources, directed at educational managers, carried out nationally on a large scale by the Ministry of Education, the National Institute of Education Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (MEC/INEP), and by the National Council of Secretaries of Education (CONSED), as well as others offered by companies and higher education institutions, both public and private, since, during this period, efficient and effective management was prioritized as an essential element for the good quality of the education system and school, that is, management focused on the responsibility for raising the quality of teaching in public schools, as well as the emphasis on democratic management as a social achievement. This process resulted in the final proposal of the specialization course in school management, in the form of distance education, with the aim of expanding the possibilities of acting and training of school managers by reflecting on the issues involved in democratic management and the apprehension/construction processes and procedures that favor the practice of management and the realization of the right to basic education. This requires radical changes in the field of education to which it is necessary to reevaluate theories and to reinvent strategies and practices in which the quality school will have to integrate the new communication technologies in a way efficient and critical, without perceiving the humanist ideals of modernity.

The creation of the Open University of Brazil (UAB), by Decree no. 5800 dated June 8, 2006, institutionalizes distance teacher training programs as a teacher training policy, with the objective of expanding and internalizing the offer of courses and public higher education programs, at a distance, offering, as a priority, courses undergraduate and initial and continuing training of teachers of basic education, higher courses to train managers, managers and workers in basic education. Behind these guidelines, there is a need for pedagogical assistance, technical and educational training, with the aim not only of training people capable of using computers, but also of questioning, creating, and using this means of communication as a means of participation in society. These translate into the innovation of pedagogical processes when giving teachers and managers access to new knowledge of distance learning.

By empowering manager-trainees to use the virtual learning environment, it is hoped to support school management in promoting the autonomy of the subject, interaction in learning, and knowledge construction that helps the school understand its current level of organizational development. Therefore, the use and appropriation of technologies should be used as a means and not as an end, in a resized vision in the relation action /reflection/constant action and emphasis in the practical application in the teaching work, reflecting its effectiveness.

In this sense, adopting creative proposals and real possibilities of carrying out a joint work is of paramount importance. We reinforce the idea that teacher training is the first step toward the completion of the renovation project in order to truly introduce change in school, as well as discovering its potential to provide a new environment for questioning and transforming education.

Aretio [10] and Belloni [15] found that the answers to this question are many and far from being unanimous, but they seem to signal a tendency to group around the idea of reflection (emphasis added) on the pedagogical practice conducive to integration, the technical means of communication and computer science and to the educational processes, since the reflection on the practice itself “necessarily leads to the creation of a specific knowledge and linked to the action, that can be acquired through the contact with the practice, because it is tacit knowledge, personal, and not systematic.” As a process of professionalization, the reflection must be directly articulated to the expansion of the decision-making capacity and the interpretation of the social and school dynamics, by the teacher. In this sense, the principle of a formation that seeks to transform social reality, which is at the heart of the formative policies and especially to the graduate programs of all Brazil, the debate about its social role.

It is also important to consider encouraging the creation of distance education courses, such as initiatives and training programs for educators and the concern with the objective conditions of work that teachers involved with virtual distance education are submitted.

With this in mind, citizenship training, government investment, and the search for partnership reveal indispensable instruments, particularly favoring good training or professional qualification, since the number of people who have access to available technologies in the field of education. Currently, education has been widely questioned and investigated, but with the great expansion of offers of courses in the distance modality by the Institutions of Higher Education, instigates the development of the process of training of school managers.

Brazil [19, 22] continuing education has its peculiarities, but it proves to be a prosperous field of study due to its importance related to the link between the virtual environment and the school environment, as it aims to provide opportunities for capacity building such as analyze and solve problems, elaborate and develop projects and activities in the management area with the support of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The involvement of the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), in the process of continuous training in partnership with the MEC/National Program School of Public Basic Education Managers, intended to establish a link between this institution and the MEC/SEB training policy. A process of knowledge production, beyond the training of state education professionals, will allow the construction of a potential institutional space for teachers, technicians, and students. The basic objective of the program is to contribute to the effective training of public school professionals so that they have theoretical and practical elements that enable a basic school education with social quality. The All for Education Commitment and the Education Development Plan (EDP) relate to the mobilization around the improvement of basic education in Brazil, contributing to the improvement of the IDEB of schools and education systems.

For the development and offering of the postgraduate course in school management, the multidisciplinary team is composed of tutors, effective teachers of the UFV Education Department, temporary teachers, and coordinators, as well as administrative and technological support, highly qualified to offer a teaching of quality. Without elaborating the function of each one in detail so as not to exhaust the pertinent subject to the competences that the function requires, these professionals keep as general traits the relevance of performance in EaD with differentiated and clear characteristics as to the role, since each one in its specificity has been an incentive for students seeking knowledge in the distance learning modality.

In EaD, ICT can be adopted with the aim of facilitating the teaching-learning process, either to construct the educational material or to stimulate the collaboration and interaction among the participants of a course, facilitating the collective construction of knowledge. Many educational platforms and environments have been created to promote learning through the use of an Internet-connected computer. These environments favor access to educational technologies, such as platforms or learning environments, we mention—PVANET (PVA of the expression Pavilion of class and net, of the Internet)—virtual learning environment developed at the Federal University of Viçosa in Minas Gerais to Courses in distance mode. This environment allows you to create, maintain, and administer Internet-based courses.

The methodology of the course is based on students’ own knowledge construction. They experience dialogs with videos, chats, forum, online evaluations, mural, questions and answers, reports, and virtual library, in order to answer, question, and appropriate new knowledge. These resources are at the service of the development and learning of students, effectively favoring the democratization of education, and becoming, through these mechanisms, the necessary instrument for their formation in a form accessible to all who participate in it.

In developing and answering questions about particular subjects, students develop a critical attitude toward learning and build their own knowledge. In addition, addressing different perspectives for implementing changes in school and constructed experiences may lead us to rethink the practical activities of students, their reflections, and their critical questions.

The search for distance learning courses, evidenced by the rapid increase in the search for enrollment in the course of managers of the Federal University of Viçosa, sends us, without pretending to be audacious, to meet the demand and the quality of courses in the mode of distance learning. Therefore, for the seventh consecutive year, the institution has been contemplated with the renewal of a contract with the MEC, a fact that has generated a continuous flow with the institution.

Moreover, each year and each course, the demand for professionals in the field of education who choose to take Lato Sensu Course through this mode of teaching grows, as it makes it accessible to all. And there are several reasons: the convenience of studying anywhere, at any time, and sometimes even the way to organize time are the great attractions for those who choose this mode of teaching. We may also notice that in many cases, these subjects have discontinued their studies for some reason, and are able to return through distance learning. Each day distance courses are becoming common for those seeking qualification and career plan and in this panorama, in the course offered in partnership UFV/MEC/School of Managers, there is a demand around 400 students enrolled and divided into 10 classes so that they can have better use and follow-up.

The ease that these perspectives engender for the academic work and for the managers-students allows to reach goals that previously seemed impossible. These initiatives suggest a process of constructing a new paradigm in educational projects in Brazilian society, in which the question of the training and qualification of these professionals in education is brought to the center of the academic discussions, the communication, pedagogical and interactive potential they come promoting in the possibilities of socialization and learning, since, the performance of the manager in the school context consists of a space of mobilization, organization, and involvement in the educational processes, that by their active and competent participation, promote the accomplishment of its objectives.

Felinto [6] explained that with regard to the EaD in this program, it is important to emphasize that it plays an important role and is perhaps an indispensable condition for its accomplishment, since it makes it possible to attend a significant number of subjects in their work places at a reasonable cost. In her research work, the author reports that the Ministry of Education (MEC) has an interest in the dissemination and use of the modality, and justifies its position affirming the need for flexibility in the organization and development of the trainees throughout their studies, since, according to the MEC, this would strengthen the intellectual autonomy and guarantee access to the TICs. In addition, the author argues that EaD is a modality that facilitates, at least from an economic and practical point of view, initial and continuing training programs in countries with a broad territorial extension, such as Brazil.

These aspects are part of the proposed structure initially planned for support. If we take into account the supports of the program and distance learning courses using a variety of digital technologies, we might think that the greatest desired change in education should be associated with how these educational resources will be designed, developed, managed, and to be made available and appropriated by the trainers.

In this sense, the training of school managers becomes a necessity and a challenge for the education systems. It is common, in training programs, to hear some participants express that “in practice, the theory is different.” Such an understanding in Lück’s [20] view can be explained by the theorizing, content and book character of training programs, without the need to show, through situations that are simulated, by dramatizations, case studies, and other exercises, to application and the expression in reality, of the theoretical conceptions treated.

In order to revert this picture, propositions of activities in the course are woven to rethink the commitment that the managers-curators have with the exercise of their profession. Within this perspective, it is possible to search for the elements that would be “constituting,” such as its attributions, tensions, challenges, and problematizations for the definition of pedagogical guidelines and to give a broad knowledge to what has been happening in basic education. Lastly, monitoring, stimulating, and provoking some tensions and promoting their periodic review has been the minimum differential for the completion of the course and for the implementation of a meaningful and transformative formation of the education by the managers-students.

The process of continuous training presupposes the exercise of reflection for professional development. For this, it is fundamental to create solidly grounded and critically situated study opportunities. It should provide a deeper understanding of the school reality, the transformation of pedagogical practices and working conditions, as well as the consolidation of the identity of the education professional. At the same time, it must consolidate an understanding of the school as a formative space, in the perspective of which it is fundamental to construct, in the school routine, moments, spaces, and processes in which teachers and other subjects of education develop training practices articulated to educational practice.

4. Final considerations

The text points to the fact that with the growth of distance courses in the country. The School of Managers of the Federal University of Viçosa has been qualitatively determining the horizon of professional development and adequate continuing education for those who seek to improve their professional training.

The proposal of these policies of continuing education through distance education to train school principals demonstrates awareness of the importance of training a critical professional in school work, a manager of the development of participatory and collective planning, allowing constant reflection on responsibilities of a school committed to the real learning of its students and of effective democratic management.

In this way, to lead the Institution of Higher Education that promotes the participation of all the actors involved in the formative process, so that the search for improvement of the educational process in a democratic way takes place, it needs to help it to relate the didactic exercise of accomplishment of the activities with the concrete situations of its pedagogical practice, in order to continually improve it, has at its base the academic management, the use of EaD, and the opportunity of a variety of activities of innovative learning.

The challenge in the present tense is the ability to know how to use them and the skill that is gained through practice. It is a well-known fact that the EaD has received many criticisms, which instigates us to inquire about what is manifested and what is proposed in educational actions, regarding the use and appropriation of information and communication technologies in the school space. And it is around this question and because of it that it constituted the path that we seek to probe and to perceive, so that we can know the behavior of the students, desires, anxieties, desires, and their conceptions through the proposed actions that should contemplate in the internal structures in the school, relevant knowledge acquired during the course in the course of the School of Managers.

The identification of the need to prepare school managers in the field due to their important task in basic education has led us to seek to establish the mission and objectives both the policy of continuous training that proposes access to all and the actions of the coordination of the course together. To the MEC for the inclusion of teachers in the course, for believing that in the future, these may be future managers of basic education.

We have a transparent and ethical commitment to call into question the meanings of formation and the contexts that shape it, which now show the possibility for action by the students, who now break with the contradictions that emanate education. And from this, it is important to emphasize that in the form of institutional organization of the policies of continuing education has brought positive marks and that has enabled the search to deepen the discussion and reflection on the degree of effectiveness of this professional qualification of school managers in EaD programs.

Faced with the reflections emanated in this study, the perception regarding the quality of the postgraduate course in school management is centrally related to the persistence, dedication, and motivation of academics, tutors, and teachers due to professional commitment, seriousness, commitment, and constant search of quality. We value the deepening and improvement of the knowledge of the school managers, in a continuing education and distance education course, based on the theoretical and daily development of school management, in order to promote dialog and interaction among peers, so that they understand the historical, political, social, technological, and organizational contexts involving their school and themselves as professionals.