Professional Master's Degree in Education at UFPR: theory and practice as a challenge for the future of Basic Education teacher training

This article reflects on the ten years of the Professional Master's Degree in Education: Teaching Theory and Practice at UFPR, mainly in relation to its objectives and its training perspectives centered on educational practices in Basic Education. We maintain the understanding that to do is to think, calling for the opening of research practices in education, involved in thinking about pedagogical activity in depth in order to interfere in the way education is done. Using philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Michael Foucault, we argue that it is necessary to think in a different way, to find other means of interpretation and orientation that distance themselves considerably from theories as expressions of truth, and from practices as the simple application of techniques. Methodologically, we problematize the relationship between theory and practice by analyzing the already consolidated perspectives, but also by proposing other ways of thinking about this relation. In conclusion, we believe that discussions about the ends and means of a Professional Master's Degree in Education are still very much dependent on the demarcation of a scientific status, which systematizes some capacity for effective guidance for teaching and learning activities in schools, and the inclusion of new perspectives, mainly arguing about the need to include not only the training of teaching practices, but also the management of education.