Nova filantropia: negócios e mercados na formação continuada de professores

Abstract

The offer of continuing teacher education courses has increased in recent decades. Some factors of this growth are: the new skills required in the development of teaching practices; pressures from social groups and structural frameworks of the contemporary world translated into ‘heterarchies’; networks that combine different institutions that cooperate with each other, influencing policies for the education area. Another factor is the creation of jobs. In the educational sector, there is the offer and production of a variety of products, including the continuing teacher education, a lucrative market for private institutions. Thus, this paper discusses the implications of a business model involving private and public institutions that offer con-tinuing education for teachers. To understand this phenomenon, we point out how the educational policies favor this growth, we present the networks between public sector and private initiative and we discuss elements to rethink a continuing education that contributes to the professional development of teachers.