The Impact of a Progressive Social Movement on the Development of Brazilian Activist Educators' Identities

• In Event: Transformative Resistance: Learning to Teach for Social Justice and Equity

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to discuss the role the Landless Workers Movement (MST) has played in helping eleven women, who have participated in the author’s research, construct their identities as activist educators. The MST, one of the largest and most important social movements in contemporary Latin America, has struggled for agrarian reform as well as social and economic justice in Brazil. Education is also a quite important dimension of the MST’s struggles. This paper reveals, therefore, the complex mechanisms of the construction of an identity as activist educator and some of the main experiences in the landless movement that have made the development of this type of identity possible among the participants in this research.

Author

• Julio E. Diniz-Pereira, Federal University of Minas Gerais