The challenges facing Brazilian education are urgent, and making a real impact requires scaling up learning—which is no simple task. Fortunately, technology has been a great ally in this process, bringing educational content and learning pathways even to the most remote parts of Brazil.

But access to all this material is not enough to change classroom practices. If we want to educate students who are independent and possess strong critical thinking skills, we first need teachers capable of fostering engaging discussions that incorporate diverse realities and connect subjects across disciplinary boundaries. More than just mastering content, a good teacher must be able to reflect on their practice, allowing themselves to step outside their comfort zone to foster their professional growth.

We will not achieve these goals without ensuring that educators have access to training strategies and opportunities that involve the exchange of experiences and the collective, collaborative development of knowledge!

Being a teacher today requires rethinking old practices and developing new ways of teaching that promote engagement and reflection, rather than simply conveying content. But how can teachers do this without examples to inspire them in planning more dialogue-based and interactive lessons? Without having had these experiences themselves, it is very difficult for them to put them into practice.

The contemporary world calls for a new approach to the construction of pedagogical knowledge—one that is more dynamic and collaborative—integrating the insights of pedagogical practice with academic research, so that one feeds into the other, and both remain in a constant state of revision and (re)interpretation.

Studying on your own doesn't change the practice

Despite the benefits of scale, lectures in large auditoriums and self-paced courses have significant limitations when it comes to assimilating content and applying it to classroom practice. These formats, when used consistently, provide information but limit the educator’s opportunity to discuss or question it in light of their own experience.

Without reflection and without giving educators the chance to relate the content to their own realities, it is difficult to promote meaningful and effective learning, from the perspective of changing “ways of being a teacher.” Furthermore, according to researcher Justin Reich (2020), a professor at the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, educators’ success—when using self-paced learning programs—is proportional to their experience and prior knowledge of the subjects covered. This means that those who know more find it easier to learn from self-paced courses and video lessons, while those who most need new knowledge and to expand their repertoire are precisely the ones who have the greatest difficulty understanding and assimilating the content, due to the lack of interaction and dialogue.

How can we scale up dialogic education, based on peer-to-peer exchange?

The Redelê community was born out of a desire to develop strategies that support the professional development of educators—both new and experienced—and to address the need for scalability and peer interaction. We are a support and continuing education initiative, designed and built by female educators, for female educators, and with female educators from across the country. A young, dynamic, and collaborative project, it uses technology to facilitate virtual meetings among teachers and already brings together educators from 10 states across the country, all eager to discover new strategies for addressing common challenges in everyday school life.

Membership plans are available on an individual or bulk basis so that schools, educational groups, and school systems can offer this experience to their staff. At Redelê, we believe that the same autonomy we advocate for students should also be extended to educators. Therefore, it is up to them to choose their own professional development path from the available offerings, based on their interests and needs.

The freedom to decide which topics to discuss is directly linked to teachers’ agency, validating their interests and needs; the advantages of customizing professional development pathways go beyond individual benefits, also fostering the development of diverse skill sets and the exchange of knowledge within school teams themselves.

Discussion groups and book clubs provide a safe space for dialogue

Each month, four new topics—suggested by community members—are discussed in conversation circles, which give educators a voice and encourage the exchange of experiences and reflection on concrete classroom examples. To ensure in-depth exploration and systematization of the content, the meetings are facilitated by experienced trainers who, guided by clear theoretical and methodological principles that have been extensively discussed by the Redelê team, create a safe space for exchange and promote effective learning directly related to classroom practice.

In book clubs, a facilitator begins each session by reading a text aloud and then leads a light and fluid conversation, ensuring that participants broaden their repertoire, experience the joy of literature, and discover good texts for reading aloud—all of which has helped them feel more confident when choosing books and reading to their students.

Since the meetings, there have been frequent reports of members of the Redelê community rummaging through libraries and dusty boxes in search of the works discussed so they can read them to their students! The readings and discussions have revealed a sense of wonder among many professionals, which reaffirms our belief that the experience of listening to stories and talking about them can be (trans)formative, especially for educators who read little or who do not yet consider themselves good readers.

The experience with the Redelê community has laid bare the emotional vulnerability and helplessness of many teachers. But it is impressive to see how, after the second or third meeting, the educators begin to recognize themselves as a group. This bond stems from the stories they share, the examples they discuss, and the realization that—even though they come from contexts as diverse as rural Rio Grande do Sul, the city of São Paulo, and the riverside community of the Pantanal—the challenges they all face are linked to the difficulties of children with faces, names, stories, and personalities. The richness of peer exchange lies precisely in discovering that the strategies used by a teacher in the south of the country can greatly inspire students in the northeastern hinterland who are facing similar challenges.

Technology used to facilitate matchmaking

In recent years, technology has “bridged the gap,” bringing important content to every corner of the country. Now is the time to use digital tools to foster connections and facilitate the exchange and sharing of best practices among our educators.

The Redelê community is the response of experienced trainers to the training needs of the contemporary world. It is a project that brings together a team of specialists in various fields to help educators in early childhood education and the early grades of elementary school examine their own practices with a fresh perspective and the courage to reinvent themselves whenever necessary.

We are a learning community that views knowledge as a living entity and the educator as a lifelong learner. That is why we want students to learn from one another and build knowledge based on their own successes and challenges.

We know that fostering interaction and dialogue is no easy task, which is why we at Redelê are always mindful of making the necessary adjustments to our methodology, relying on systematic evaluations and regular meetings between the facilitators and the project’s pedagogical coordinators. We are committed to ensuring that every member of the network feels welcomed and finds the support they need within the community.

It is time to trust teachers and give them the chance to design a professional development path that values their knowledge and enhances their skills. It is time to view trainers and teachers as colleagues, capable of working together to build the quality education our children so richly deserve. It is time to view education as a team effort.

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**This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bett Brasil.

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