O Projeto Formativo do Engenheiro Agrônomo no Curso de Agronomia da UFC em Fortaleza

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate if the Agronomy graduation project at UFC provides the necessary professional skills to attend the emergent and current challenges and demands of the rural area. The study was motivated by the opportunity of penetrating in a little explored professional environment, the academic graduation, related to researches on relationships between curriculum , graduation course, profession, social demand and agrarian reality, particularly conflictive, where legal , social, political, economic and technological arguments, are constantly evoked due to the interests of many different actors in which they co-star . Therefore, the main hypothesis is that the graduation Project of the Agronomy course practiced at the UFC does not provide the necessary Professional skills in order to attend the emergent and current challenges and demands of the rural area. For that reason, a qualitative research was performed, delineated in the case study, with a descriptive approach, using semi structured interview as instrument. From this point interviews were performed with the main subjects involved in the graduation process, making a total of 75 subjects, 15 professors, 20 students, 10 graduates and 30 graduates of the Agronomy course at the UFC, object of the research, investigating many questions pertinent to the theme aiming to obtain answers to reach the objective of this study and verification of the hypothesis. The data was processed in the informational qualitative analysis program NUD*IST. The highest point of the investigation and doctorate‟s thesis process is in the effectiveness of dialogue which the empiric investigation made possible, and from the findings of this work the construction of a synthesis which might contribute on the Agronomic graduation. The theory focuses on relevant, transversal themes. Initially the teacher formation is discussed, which involves a reflection about the agronomic knowledge which is necessary and specific of this area; after that, the agronomy engineering course is questioned, under the perspective of the Paulo Freire about this problem, to also assume the role of an educator and ends with a thought about agronomy in Brazil. Still, dealing with curriculums in the Agronomy course at UFC: The minimum Curriculum (old one) investigated in this academic work and the new curriculum. The data made a long description possible, involving the researched subjects in many questions which are pertinent to the graduation Project of the agronomy course of UFC. In the conclusion, it is highlighted in the thesis that the graduation course is influenced by the technical tendency, Teachers with teaching practice with the “bench” conception, lack of practice classes and experience with the farmer‟s reality as the biggest gaps in the graduation course. Maximize, that the graduation project does not make the necessary Professional skills possible in order to attend the emergent and current challenges and demands of the rural area, according to 81% of the interviewed subjects. It is an agreement that teaching in the agronomy course, in the format in which it is practiced today in the CCA at UFC, has not been offering adequate professional skills in order to have graduates from this course exercising their agronomy professions as educators, dialogic and agents of the rural reality changes, with the farmers. The conclusion still offers some suggestions to improve the graduation course, and contributions of this research.