Citizenship Education through NGO-State Partnerships: Networks for “Good Citizenship” in Brazilian High Schools

• In Event: Educational Policies in a Digital Age: Comparative Views from Latin America

Proposal

Over the past decade, Brazilian schools have undergone curricular changes with new laws and national learning standards (Tarlau and Moeller 2019). In high schools, the former curriculum, which consisted of a set of core subjects, now also includes formative itineraries (itinerários formativos), which are elective educational tracks. Schools have the flexibility to create tracks based on their resources (for instance, financial means and teachers’ subject expertises). Additionally, this new model allows teachers, schools, and state secretariats of education to develop the tracks’ curricula and pedagogical guidelines on their own as well as in partnership with external organizations, both public and private. This flexibility has consequently opened new opportunities for education non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to systematically introduce their programming to Brazilian classrooms, facilitating state-wide changes to high school education through NGO-state partnerships.

Although recent education research has begun to address the interactions between NGOs and schools, there is a lack of neo-institutional analyses of how education systems enable or constrain NGO action in classrooms (Sleegers 2019). This study seeks to contribute to such analyses by investigating the paths and obstacles that the new curricular structure in Brazil has provided for NGO-state partnerships. In particular, the study researches the development of partnerships between the NGO Politize! and various state secretariats of education. Since 2022, Politize! has partnered with eight secretariats to promote its Active Citizenship School (Escola da Cidadania Ativa, or ACS) program in Brazilian high schools. What motivations prompted Politize! and the secretariats to establish those partnerships? What networks did Politize! utilize in that process? From what systemic opportunities did Politize! benefit? And what challenges did Politize! face while adapting to local educational and political realities?

To track the development of those partnerships, the study conducts a network ethnography (Ball 2016; Tarlau and Moeller 2019) involving document analysis and interviews. The data consists of contracts between Politize! and secretariats as well as curricular and pedagogical guidelines. These documents are the basis for comparing the actors responsible for the partnerships, but also ACS modules and details across different states, paying attention to potential similarities and differences in how each secretariat agreed to the program. Additionally, I will interview members of Politize! and of the secretariats to understand “the relationships, events, and exchanges that make up network activity and evolution” (Ball 2016).

The research hypothesizes that Politize! had to adapt ACS—its curriculum, pedagogical guidelines or ‘sales pitch’—for each secretariat. These adaptations could result from differences in states’ educational policies and political leanings, despite the national learning standards. In particular, these modifications could be a consequence of varying conceptualizations of ‘good citizenship’ by politicians, policymakers, and instructors across states who would hence have differing preferences for citizenship education content. By analyzing the evolution of the Politize!-secretariat partnerships across states in the context of the new national learning standards, this study will provide an intranational comparison (Carnoy et al. 2017) that will help scholars understand how NGOs navigate educational systems and why NGOs and states might partner to systematically shape school curricula.

Author

• Giácomo Rabaiolli Ramos, Stanford University