Resumen:
In this paper we investigate technical education at the secondary level in the federal network of education in Ceará. From a trajectory of 106 years of history, the current IFCE is experiencing its second Institutional Development Plan – PDI – 2014-2018, which presents as its institutional mission the holistic formation of the citizen. In this context we investigated the paths taken by this network faced with the challenges, advances and possibilities of the offer of polytechnic teaching for technical programs at the secondary level. The goal was to identify the factors which throughout Brazilian republican educational history countered or contributed to the offer of professional education at the secondary level founded in polytechnics. The initial hypothesis was that there is a significant lack of knowledge on the part of the institutional community about the conception of holistic formation. Even though this may be expressed in official documents of the institution such as the PDI, it has still not been incorporated into the pedagogical practices of the institution. A bibliographic review was carried out as well as an analysis of the main documents of the Education Ministry and of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology which guide this theme. It was observed that we are living, in the history of Brazilian professional education, the most favorable moment for the effectivation of polytechnic education in the secondary level technical education schools. The PDI of the IFCE corroborates with this conjuncture when it affirms the intention of guaranteeing a holistic formation of those who enroll in the institution. However, for the institution to reach the goals which it proposes it has the challenge of constructing its pedagogical project.
