INTRODUCTION TO THE PROGRAM

            The Department of Physical Education of the Federal University of Paraíba (DEF/UFPB) and the Higher School of Physical Education of the University of Pernambuco (ESEF/UPE) are higher education institutions traditional in the Northeastern region of Brazil. Both the UFPB and UPE have put extraordinary stops to enhance their joint actions, with national and international partnerships, focusing primarily on the program’s internationalization.

The implementation of the master program in Physical Education constitutes a historical milestone for the development of Brazilian Physical Education. The reason for this is not only because it was, in this level of teaching, the first program in this area in the entire Northern and Northeastern region, and mainly because it was constituted, at the starting point, for the fast development of research in physical education in these regions. The implementation of the master program also helped at the beginning of the transformation in the framework of the deep regional inequalities regarding the education and fixation of researchers.

As for the doctoral program, its first group began in 2013. Currently, we started to perform a continuous flow as a strategy to train human resources,  that will innovate the education of researchers, primarily, in the Northern and Northeastern region since it is also the first doctoral program in Physical Education of such regions in Brazil, demonstrating the program’s leadership and pioneerism.