Academic course curriculum for training health professionals in Brazil: where should interprofessionality be?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to contextualize the critical theory and the meaning given by this theoretical conception to the area of the curriculum. The applied methodology was bibliographic and documental analysis. We analyze texts with reference to the continuous cycle of policies (Bowles and Ball, 1992) at the level of the context of influence and the context of text production, which will serve as a basis for the problematization of the pedagogical-curricular models adopted by the Faculdade Pernambucana de Saúde - FPS. The documental analysis allowed us to deepen the theoretical knowledge about the official institutional documents that sustain the mission and the pedagogical projects of the Faculdade Pernambucana de Saúde's course programs, while situating the frameworks for regulatory policies about the curriculum for health professionals in the world and in Brazil. It also intended to deepen the knowledge, meanings, and processes that characterize the course curricula for health training, both in its political, theoretical, and conceptual justification, as well as in its procedural and planning dimensions and the teaching methodologies used in its implementation. The article builds the initial framework of an analytical approach to the relation between the concepts of curriculum, teaching-learning methodologies, and interprofessionalism, from the perspective of training health professionals. It starts with understanding the integrated curriculum as a promoter of collaborative learning. It is presented, for this analysis, the conceptions of Problem-Based Learning (PBA) and Meaningful Learning (SW) that determine a methodological orientation that sustains the curricular proposal of health courses directed to interprofessional training. The results point to the importance of including, in the curricula, innovative methodological approaches that are committed to the context in which they occur. It is important, as well, the motivation and collaboration of student and teacher/tutor, which facilitates active, autonomous, problematizing, and meaningful learning for all those involved in the healthy teaching-learning process.