Initiation at Unilab: contributions Brazil – Cape Verde contributions

Abstract

The University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (Unilab, in Portuguese) is marked by the dual mission of international integration and regional development. Over a little more than a decade, public policies aimed at teacher training were developed at Unilab. These include Pibid, which aims to provide opportunities for the insertion of undergraduate teaching courses students in the daily life of elementary public schools. This article seeks to reflect on the experience of Pibid at Unilab and its contributions to education in Cape Verde. With a qualitative approach, methodologically, this study narrates the life story of a Pibid/Unilab Cape Verdean graduate student as a strategy to approximate it to reality. The findings reveal that the experience in question contributed to the achievement of Unilab’s mission, that is, the process of international integration and social insertion, with the participation of students, especially international ones, in basic education public schools. These institutions constituted formative spaces of dialogue, (re)existence and (re)cognition of cultural diversity, contributing to reduce the prejudice and racism, still present in today’s society. We concluded that the performance of undergraduate teaching students at Pibid/Unilab enabled learning, reflections and partnerships on initial training in the university’s activity areas that were resignified by the graduate students in their professional practice in partner countries, notably in Cape Verde.