Porto Alegre Municipal Education District and its curricular policies: an analysis of the curricular processes in the school context

• In Event: Brazilian curricular issues in three layers: educational policies, curriculum in school and subject curriculum

Proposal

This paper analyzes the transformations that occurred in the Porto AlegreMunicipal Education District (that in the 1990s lived the Citizen School project) after the introduction of managerial policies, especially since 2005. The research examined the changes in curricular policies as well as the movements made by schools in the process of implementing such policies. The way the teachers constructed their curricular practices in this context was also the subject of research. The theoretical-methodological concept of relational analysis (APPLE, 2006) was the basis for the collection and analysis of the data, bringing to the analysis the goalof explaining the diverse relations that make up the curricular phenomena examined. The study was based on the theoretical assumptions of Critical Sociology of Education and, in this perspective, on the conceptions of curriculum specially formulated by Michael Apple (2006), J. GimenoSacristán (2000) and Antonio Flávio B. Moreira (2006, 2012). Using these authors’ perspective, the school curriculum is understood as a set of material and symbolic practices which orbit around school knowledge, through which a certain way of seeing and understanding the world is constructed. For the understanding of the processes of mediation of the school curriculum performed by teachers, Bernstein’s (1996) concept of recontextualization was used. This led to the understanding that the processes carried out by the teachers in relation to the curriculum, within their planning and pedagogical practices, involve adaptations, recreations, reconstructions, and, finally, the creation of new meanings.The data collection involved the ethnographic approach. Observations, interviews, and document analysis were carried out at three schools and at the Municipal Education Department (SMED). The paper concludes that the changes taking place in the curricular policy of the Porto Alegre Municipal Education District and the weakening of the Citizen School project have brought important challenges to the curricular processes experienced by the schools.

Author

• Graziella Souza dos Santos, Universidade do Vale do Itajaí - Brazil