O programa mais educação na arena da prática um estudo de caso sobre a perspectiva dos gestores e professores da Rede Municipal de São Leopoldo/RS

Abstract

This research aims to know and understand the Programa Mais Educação (“More Education” Program - PME) and the discourses on learning in the practical sphere from a case study with managers and teachers of the public school network in the city of São Leopoldo, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The research was guided by the theoretical and conceptual perspectives of Ball and Bowe’s policy cycle approach (1992) and based on the works of Mainardes (2006), which provided an analytical model for studying policies that allows the coming and going among different spheres that constitute policies in general and the PME in particular. To attribute meaning to discourses by teachers and managers, the theory of Discourse Analysis, in its French formulation by Michel Pechêux, was used (1988). PME documents were analyzed and semi-structured interviews with managers and teachers were conducted. The analyses of educational policies were based on Teodoro (2011), Afonso (2010, 2013), Ravitch (2011), Werle (2005, 2010, 2011), among others. From the data produced in the interviews and the object of the study, the following analytical categories could be drawn: (Re)appropriation of the PME in the practical sphere and interferences in educational policies; the PME: a school within a school; learning in the PME, its concepts, and evidences: concrete or abstract?, the PME structure: school’s responsibility; supervisors in the PME: the third way’s ideas and the discourses of not knowing rendered concrete. The categories used evidenced that the (re)appropriation of the PME in the practical sphere was inceptive due to the few possibilities of discussion and re-elaboration of the policy within the studied school. The PME is understood as another school within the school due to the managerial and fragmented way in which the Program’s activities are not known and articulated by the teachers. The PME was seen as in line with the principles of globalization, neoliberalism, and the new managerialism, brought forth from the sphere of influence. The PME proposes strengthening the school’s functions, attributing the responsibility for social rights for children and adolescents to the school. Finally, learning is evidenced in the speech of managers and teachers from the results of large-scale evaluations through the IDEB.