This Project is geared to investigate the discourse on curriculum policy for secondary education in the 2003-2010 period, during the Luis Inácio Lula da Silva administration. Based on Ernesto Laclau’s theory, and occasionally supported by Chantal Mouffe, we sought to explore the understanding of curriculum policy as a discursive struggle to constitute representations. If we understand negotiation in curriculum policies as discursive articulation, we are also stating that some specific social groups are capable of articulating among themselves, in temporary and contingent ways, to defend their different curricular demands. In this fashion, they are constituting those representations for the curriculum. Hence, the following interrogations have become general research questions in this project: how do we understand the current struggles for representation in curriculum policy for secondary education? How can we investigate the meanings circulating in the constitution of those representations? Which discourses favor certain meanings in policies? The following signifiers will be especially examined: innovation/ curricular change, education quality, best practices, as well as different adjectives attached to curriculum, such as flexible, dynamic, diversified, creative, compatible with the requirements of contemporary society. We will seek to understand the disputes in the process of fixating the meanings of those signifiers, as well as the fluctuations of meaning that favor a given discourse through the analysis of metaphors and metonymies. For this analysis, we will focus on the curricular documents distributed by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) during the period mentioned above, emphasizing the Curriculum Guidelines for Secondary Education, in the proposal Innovative Secondary Education and in the Curriculum in Motion Program. Based on Stephen Ball, those documents are viewed as the production of multiple social sectors active in policy and as attempts at policy representations. Our argument will be developed taking into account that in the theory of discourse all representation implies a relation of mutual constitution between representative and whoever is being represented, in which full transparency is impossible. It is not possible to evade representation in the democratic process, but we can insert its analysis in a radical contingency. In our case, we will work with the hypothesis that policy representations are constructed by the articulation of discursive elements from curricular traditions – using Chantal Mouffe’s concept – related to knowledge and school disciplines, cultural diversity, the centrality of contents marked by a critical-social approach, as well as the demands linked to the scientific-technological discourse, and competences.
Período: 2011 a 2015
Coordenador(es): Alice Casimiro Lopes
Equipe: Bruno Silva Godoy ● Camila Costa Gigante ● Danielle de Almeida Galante Ferreira ● Denise de Sousa Destro ● Érika Virgílio Rodrigues da Cunha ● Geniana dos Santos ● ● Jean Mac Cole Tavares Santos ● Lívia Moura Cardoso Bastos de Farias ● Marcia Betania de Oliveira ● Priscila Campos Ribeiro ● Rafaela de Sousa Paiva ● Rosanne Evangelista Dias ● Rozana Gomes de Abreu ● Soledad Andrea Casttilho Trittini ● Veronica Borges ●
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