The context of influence of curriculum adaptation to the Brazilian National Common Curricular Base: the Federal District case

• In Event: How does learning environment impact outcomes?

Proposal

In school systems, where formal education takes place, the curriculum can be understood as an instrument that carries various ways of understanding the world, thus pointing to possibilities on how this world can be transformed. In the literature, some authors recognize the non-neutrality of the curriculum (Apple 2012; Costa 2018; Galian and Louzano 2014; Gama and Newton 2017; Louzano et al. 2019) because it changes historically, being permeated by conflicts for the selection of what should, or should not be taught, that is, what visions of society and identity it promotes.
The NCCB (Brasil, 2018b) is a normative and mandatory national curricular document instituted in 2017 that entrusted all Brazilian states to reformulate or adapt their basic education curriculums by the year 2020. In this study, I investigated which factors could influence the adaptation of the primary education curriculum of the Federal District (PEC-FD) to the National Common Curricular Base (NCCB), having as a premise the identification of the different pre-existing purposes that could be in conflict during this process.
Using the Policy Cycle as a theoretical-analytical approach (Ball 1994; Ball, Bowe, and Gold 1992), the analysis focused on the context of influence, as it contemplates the stage in which occurs the construction of discourses and the discussion for the elaboration of the text. This context considers the power relations that seek to influence definitions about the social purposes of politics and education in the text. Thus, the literature review took place around the creation of the two main documents investigated here: the first version of the PEC-FD from 2014, a state-level curriculum document that should be updated; and the creation of the NCCB, the national level guideline. I sought to understand the possible contexts of influence of state-level policymakers, who should adapt their 2014 local curriculum to the national orientation, as well as the context of influence of national-level policymakers, who should manage this adaptation.
The elaboration of the first edition of the PEC-FD took place between 2010 and 2014. That document was recognized (Distrito Federal 2014a; Santos 2018) as a commitment to democratic participation by different sectors of the school community, not just curriculum specialists, because it included public consultations, plenary sessions and various revisions. It is also recognized that this curriculum did not ignore previous versions of the curriculum, at the same time it broke with prescriptive and fragmented conceptions of pedagogical practice (Silva 2016) as well as supporting historical-cultural and critical conceptions (Distrito Federal 2014a; Nunes and Melo 2013 ; Oliveira 2017).
Regarding the elaboration of the NCCB, discussed since around 2010, there is a defense by the Government that considers it as a means to ensure the learning rights of students, as well as the democratic participation during its elaboration (BRASIL 2018a). However, there are criticisms that the final version disregarded the various contributions it received in its previous versions, or even positions contrary to its publication (Aguiar and Dourado 2018; Costa 2018). There is a resistance to accept the NCCB, mainly by the academic community, which delegitimizes the document after the presidential impeachment that took place in 2016 and the transition to a new government more aligned with private interests and that considers that it is not possible to reach the established standards due to the inequalities that schools face (Ready 2018).
To this extent, this study found significant divergences in relation to the recognition of the forms of participation for the elaboration of the analyzed documents, as well as their premises and conceptions. Such findings suggest that the context of influence of the adaptation of the PEC-FD to the NCCB may be marked by resistance movements between policymakers at the state and national levels with divergent purposes for the new curricular educational policy.

References
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Author

• Adriana Mitiko do Nascimento Takeuti, The University of Tokyo