“Fact or Fake?” The Power of Creative Alternative Projects in Counter-Hegemonic Education

• In Event: Counter Hegemonic Struggles

Proposal

In a scenario of neoconservative and neoliberal challenges and attacks against Brazilian education, it is even more important to use theories that understand the deep relations between macro and micro dynamics of power and to act as secretaries of creative and counter-hegemonic alternatives in education. Supported by Critical Educational Studies, I understand the school as a place of disputes that reflect conflicts of societal projects. In Brazil, scholars have been documenting the actions of neoconservative and neoliberal groups in education and their articulations to maintain hegemony (GANDIN; HYPOLITO, 2000). These can be seen in initiatives of a market rationality, competition, and also in initiatives to eliminate gender and sexuality discussions in schools. In order to struggle against these initiatives we need to understand the fractures and contradictions in them. But, even more importantly, it is essential to investigate counter-hegemonic initiatives, with alternative projects of education and society, that have been created in schools (APPLE; AU; GANDIN, 2011). This presentation will highlight exactly this: a real example of a teacher creating creative and counter-hegemonic educational alternatives. Teachers are the ones who have historically occupied an important place of struggle and resistance and are the ones who can teach us how practices can be more democratic and meaningful (GANDIN; HYPOLITO, 2000).
In this research I used Relational Analysis (APPLE, 2003) and the Tasks of a Critical Scholar/Activist (APPLE, AU, GANDIN, 2011) as epistemological and methodological approaches. Combined, they allowed me to understand broader relationships and phenomena involved in the investigation in a careful and politically committed way. Relational Analysis emphasizes both material and ideological aspects, aiming at connecting micro and macro contexts. As for the Tasks of a Critical Scholar/Activist, it helped me to act as a secretary for teachers´ transformative practices.
As an empirical field, I choose to analyze the projects developed by teachers within an in-service teacher education initiative offered by a local department of education of a large city in southern Brazil. This initiative was horizontal, with teachers stimulated to created their own projects with the students, which provided fertile ground for many projects like the one I chose to highlight in this presentation (among many other that I analyzed). The data collection was based on interviews and a document analysis of the paper written by the teacher, which documented her project.
The project “Fact or Fake”, which I consider to be an educational alternative, was developed by an eighth grade Portuguese language teacher, in response to the widespread emergence of fake news during the 2018 presidential elections in Brazil. The objective was to alert students to the impacts of sharing false information on social networks and to construct with them a way of critically navigate information on the internet. For this, the teacher developed a sequence of activities articulated with mandatory curricular contents of Portuguese language.
One of these activities was a survey on the topic of Fake News, with questionnaires given for the community surrounding the school. Students participated in all stages: elaboration, data collection, analysis and, in the end, they developed ways to disseminate the results to raise awareness among others. Both the research developed and the sharing stage are creative educational alternatives, committed to the idea of social transformation through education, extending to the community. As Freire (1970) claims, research is necessary to overcome common sense and stimulate creative capacity and also organized counter-hegemonic knowledge dissemination (APPLE, AU, GANDIN, 2011). The project of this teacher can be characterized as an act of protest against the dissemination of neoconservative and neoliberal fake news and an example that shows that collective actions contribute to confronting injustices and promoting social awareness.
I claim that the project developed by this teacher can be considered a counter-hegemonic initiative. According to Apple (2003), many teachers have already learned alternative ways of reinterpreting the texts of conservative materials or curricula so that a transformative approach occurs, something that the teacher in the Fact or Fake project certainly did. Instead of working in a fragmented way with Portuguese language content, which is a hegemonic curricular trend, she taught from a theme of interest, connecting language content with everyday issues in a series of meaningful activities so that students are active constructors of meaning and can act responsibly and democratically in their social environment (APPLE, 2003).
Actions that go against instrumental pedagogy and mere technical teaching, can counter the hegemonic trends in education. The teacher who developed the project Fact or Fake does not merely transfer content, but creates a language that is creative and attentive to the students' everyday experiences, making them the content of the analysis. These are the actions of a transformative intellectual who combines methodologies, imagination, and theory to encourage critical and socially committed students to act (GIROUX, 1988).
Considering the impact that social networks have on students' lives and on the formation of opinions and worldviews, by working with this theme, the teacher promotes a series of activities for reflection. Among them, the critical analysis of news and advertisements that students consume, individual questionnaires, community research and production of materials. This is what Paulo Freire (1970) calls teaching to read the world and not only the word.
The last important consideration is that this project is not developed outside the formal curriculum. On the contrary, the transforming actions were planned based on the prescribed curriculum, covering contents of persuasion and argumentation, interpretation, and spelling. It is not the case that official knowledge is ignored; what this teacher does is to teach students to think critically about what they learn, so that it is not a mere meaningless reproduction (GIROUX, 1988). This creates powerful alternatives to the narratives and practices of the neoconservative and neoliberal initiatives and should be studied and the construction of counter-hegemonic practices.

Author

• Rúbia Taís Johann, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul