Diálogo entre tradição e atualização: uma análise dos documentos orientadores da gestão da educação jesuíta no Brasil (1980 – 2019)

Abstract

This research seeks to analyze the educational apostolate of the Society of Jesus, idealized by Iñigo de Loyola, in the sixteenth century, focusing on the historical process of Jesuit education, dialogue between the secular tradition and the updating of its pedagogy in the twenty-first century. The study uses the documentary analysis method proposed by André Cellard, with the objective of analyzing, based on the guiding documents of the educational apostolate, formulated between 1980 and 2019, the leadership conceptions of educational managers, both Jesuits and lay people, who guide the development of their attributions and functions, and how these relate tradition and updating in their performance in contemporaneity. The context of Jesuit education in the final decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century is articulated; The conditions of production of the analyzed documents in their socio-historical and educational conjunctures are also presented; The main conceptions and means of action of the Ignatian leadership of Jesuits and lay men and women in the management of the colleges of the Jesuit Education Network (EJN) are identified in the different documents analyzed; and, finally, the dialogical relations between tradition and updating inherent to educational management presented in the documents are identified, thinking about them in their relations with the socio-historical and educational context in which they were formulated. The selected documents reflect, in part, the historical narrative of the Pedagogy of the Society of Jesus, attentive to people, times and places, over these almost five centuries. We can conclude that the exercise of leadership and the pursuit of excellence require technical, academic and human skills, a basic triptych of Ignatian Pedagogy. The tradition of Jesuit education, the practice of educational management, and the updating of the practices of Ignatian Pedagogy emerge from the process of discernment as a tangible expression of the characteristics of Ignatian Pedagogy and the commitment in the present to the delivery of quality education. The collaboration, communication and organization of the global network of Jesuit institutions are perceived as indicators of the management practice of the EJN colleges today. Thus, the Network seeks to keep alive practices of excellence, the ethos of Jesuit education, supported by the legacy of tradition and the commitment to updating, characterized by its way of being, way of proceeding and way of examining. The constant search for creative fidelity to humanistic principles and values is understood here as directing the management and pedagogical practices, in contemporaneity, of the EJN, in which the bureaucratic paradigm of educational management is translated into a paradigm of service with a focus on the mission, capable of bearing fruit in generosity and wisdom of the processes of discernment and adaptability of actions.