A CASE STUDY WITH STUDENTS ATTENDING A FIC PRONATEC COURSE IN SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Public policies on professional development got significant investments in Dilma's first term. The so-called Programa Nacional de Acesso ao Ensino Tecnico e Emprego (Pronatec) had eight million students enrolled in high school technical courses, besides early and continuing education ones (FIC). This study aims at identifying whether the technical qualification provided by the FIC courses was developed along with students' social and political education so that they could gain knowledge of social and environmental issues. This qualitative-quantitative research and its methodological procedures comprised the use of questionnaires with ten students attending the technical qualification course or the FIC one, a part of the Pronatec in the area of civil construction at the Instituto Federal Sul-rio-grandense (IFSul), in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. Several documents, such as the political-pedagogical plan, the syllabus, the contents of each discipline and the legislation regarding Pronatec, were analyzed in the light of authors that deal with professional education, Environmental Education, besides civil and environmental construction. The course was observed to provide little knowledge on environmental issues which have only been part of a single discipline, rather than belonging to a field of study which works on it as a whole.