Reflections on the role of the Agricultural Internship

The aim of this research was to investigate the role that the compulsory curricular internship (ECO) has been playing in the training of the Agricultural Technician at the Federal Institute of Education of Ceará, Campus Crato, from the perspective of the students. As is well known, the Compulsory Curricular Internship is a complementary stage in the learning process and involves a pedagogical structure that ranges from appropriate curricula to small actions within the school environment, in order to make this activity a reflective action aimed at cohesively developing the relationship between theory and practice. In order to better interpret and attribute meaning to the phenomena analyzed, we opted for a qualitative approach. The instruments used to collect the data were questionnaires with open-ended questions aimed at students who graduated from the Integrated Agricultural Technician Course (CITA) in 2010. These instruments enabled us to identify some discrepancies in relation to the articulation between school, internship and the world of work, which have been compromising the role of the Agricultural Technician in his area of insertion.