The Complexities and Challenges of Building Learning Communities in Brazilian Public Schools

• In Event: Cultivating Equitable and Racially Just Teaching in Brazilian Public Schools Amid COVID-19, Racism, and Entangled Pandemics

Abstract

In Brazil, teacher education has a long tradition of prescriptive curriculum-based and skills-centered models comprising discrete activities such as workshops and training courses, in which simplistic conceptualizations of teacher learning were conveyed. Only recently, this trend has shifted towards promoting teachers' agency in their own professional development. Furthermore, establishing communities of learners at the school level can promote collaborative and critical actions towards equity. Such an approach of valuing a school context and building on concrete conditions is vital for transforming school activity, empowering teachers with tools to produce knowledge and reflect on actions. Effective teacher professional development programs have encouraged reflective inquiry into practice; as a result, collaborative action research has become popular. This approach addresses problems in school through context-driven investigation, analyzing real data and generating knowledge. When it is done in collaboration with researchers, the process is called university-school or teacher-researcher partnerships. The strength of such partnerships lies mainly in the exchanges of skills and knowledge among participants, in a space where teachers can have more opportunities to theorize their teaching while enhancing expert thinking about actual classroom practices. In this work, we reflected on the challenges faced ‎while building one partnership based on teachers' inquiry during the pandemic. Data come from interviews with teachers and school leadership. For instance, the commitment to the school calendar brought considerable fragmentation to the intervention; the meetings were reduced both in time and frequency. While online meetings facilitated the agreement around the agenda and reduced the costs of visits, the interpersonal relationships were colder and did not contribute to building a trustworthy community. In addition, having all teachers available for the meetings caused demands for the system; the students were sent back to their homes, and parents were critical of such shifts. Finally, the lack of a collective inquiry and discussion culture led to strong opposition to the lesson recording, making it impossible to analyze classroom data. Overall, despite the school leadership being willing and committed to the ‎program, the implementation revealed how the schooling system does not value or ‎create conditions for TPD. Moreover, the cordial culture among teachers and researchers did not offer space for critical reflection on practice.

Authors

• Juliano Camillo, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

• Leonardo Lago, Federal University of Santa Catarina

• Cristiano Mattos, Universidade de São Paulo