Work-based learning: possibilities, limits and perspectives of professional education

Abstract

The present text initially discusses workers' education in the perspective of work-based learning, focusing on the field of Health, based on the principle of Integrality. The Integrality principle is approached in its three senses: as an attribute of the professionals' practices; as an attribute of services organization; and as governmental responses to health problems. Thus, Integrality places the sense of Health work in the constitution of people's humanity in light of their Health needs. The text discusses the need to view competences as a pedagogical and ideological construct that is present today in the theories of education and work. Finally, some perspectives to health workers' education mediated by work are approached.