‘A seed opening the ground to germinate’: the training process with EdPopSUS popular educators

ABSTRACT

Popular education in health is a strategy to strengthen popular participation in the rearticulation of the Brazilian Sanitary Reform. As a result of the National Policy for Popular Education in Health, there is the Free Course of Popular Education in Health (EdPopSUS). EdPopSUS educators go through a public selection made up of a 40-hour course. The coordination of Ceará carried out, independently, a permanent education process after the selective stage. This article aimed to constitute a look at the initial formation and permanent education experienced by the educators, analyzing the conflicts of these processes in the light of popular education, in dialogue with the overcoming produced from limiting-acts. In this qualitative research, based on the case study, content analysis of a corpus consisting of 23 interviews was carried out. Four categories were highlighted: initial process, principles of popular education, limit-situations and action-reflection-action. The course made it possible to implement the principles of popular education. The competition for selection, the non-participation at all times and the formation of pairs were some of the limit situations experienced by educators. Such situations were mediated by the experience of the principles of popular education, pointing out limiting-acts for its exercise in the current situation, especially within the scope of the Unified Health System.

KEYWORDS:
Popular education; Education in health; Permanent education; Health promotion; Unified Health System