[Nursing teaching in times of change]

This paper is a reflection on the teaching of nursing in Brazil. Our main goal is to trace it from 1923 to 2003, trying to identify any changes occurred and the direction the nursing education process has taken over this time frame. Our analysis concentrates mainly on recent decades (eighties and nineties), a period when the country's redemocratization process was undertaken and a wide debate on the health and educational fields was initiated. It focuses on the Sanitation Reform Movement in Brazil and on its contribution to the training or health professionals and nursing teachers. As of that period, a wide discussion has been going on among professors, students, service nurses, and other individuals, in an effort to build a political-pedagogical project that would stand out as a political accomplishment for the nurse profession. The collective efforts seen during this process surpass all the changes in the history of nursing teaching, because of the social relevance of its conceptual frameworks, as well as due to the effective participation of all actors involved in the educational process.