EPISTEMOLOGIES, FRAGMENTS, REFLEXIVITY, AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: WEAVING CONNECTIONS WITH THE SELF-CONFRONTATION OF PRACTICES

Abstract

This essay emerges from reflections, dialogues, and learning experiences developed within the course Education and Epistemologies, bringing together philosophical, scientific, literary, and experiential contributions to understand educational and formative processes. By establishing a dialogue among Plato’s Meno, Ostermann and Cavalcanti’s Epistemology: Implications for Science Teaching, Marco Lucchesi’s Trívia, and the authors’ master's and doctoral research projects, the text discusses different conceptions of knowledge, learning, and teacher education. The metaphor of the fragment serves as the central analytical framework, enabling an understanding of teacher education as a dynamic, unfinished, and continuously reconstructed process. Within this perspective, self-confrontation is highlighted as a methodological and formative strategy capable of fostering critical reflection on professional practice and promoting the construction of new knowledge grounded in lived experience. The discussions underscore the importance of epistemological perspectives that recognize complexity, the plurality of knowledge, and the collective nature of knowledge production, advocating contextualized, dialogical, and transformative approaches to teacher education.