Repositório RCAAP

The organization of the production process has modified substantially during the last five decades, or rather, there has been a development from a rigid to a flexible type of production. The flexibilization of production, followed by that of products and processes, demands new forms. Within this context, the educational proposals which are systematized in official documents that, in the long run, direct the curricular organization, such as in more general discussions on education, currently expected, require emphasis on the development of critical thought. This may occur through the valorization of the student’s real world as a necessary trait for the 21st century citizen. Current essay, foregrounded on the presuppositions of the Critical Theory, describes the limits of formation for the development of thought that should be denominated ‘critical thought’. Critical thought necessarily implies the undertaking of an experience whilst it presupposes theory, intellectual activity, reflection and analysis of the phenomena so that their determinants could be revealed.  

Some recommendations are provided to the challenges that the evaluation and accreditation processes raise to higher education systems in Latin-American and theCaribbean. Necessary and urgent changes are required in the systems of evaluation and accreditation in the region. We have identified seven challenges: Inequity; formalism and bureaucracy; uncritical acceptance of the ‘World Class Universities’ model; preference of indicators measuring economic growth (often not sustainable) to the detriment of indicators that measure key values such as equity, social harmony and environment sustainability; the challenge of ‘academic corruption’; the challenge of international accreditation; and the challenge of innovation. Some policies and actions are recommended to face adequately these challenges and to carry out a transformation within the evaluation and accreditation processes. 

A critical appraisal of the normative regulations regarding the implementation of nine-year Basic Education, published by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC), between 2004 and 2010, is provided so that current changes in Basic Education in Brazil could be understood. Based on the national legal support and on arguments forwarded by several authors, current essay describes the building of a policy for the inclusion of six-year-old children in the elementary school and contextualize this historical moment in Brasil. A qualitative approach focused on documentary research showed the procedures for the location, selection and analysis of sources. Documents produced by MEC seemed to prove and convince the reader that most Brazilian states had the necessary conditions for the expansion of primary education already in 2003. Such policy may have originated within a historical moment of discourse exacerbation on childhood protection and about the establishment of educational policies that address and include all children. In fact, it was part and parcel to the worldwide movement for the education of children at an earlier age bracket.  

Based on photographic sources of a school parade during Getúlio Vargas´s New State period, current historiographic essay shows how, within a specific historical place and time, the photographic records identify the relationships between civic school parades and the primary school and the period´s political ideology and environment. The article is divided into two parts. The first part provides brief considerations on the nature of the photographic image as evidence for historians and defines the manner it will be examined. The second part deals with the analysis and interpretation of photographs of the parade involving students of the Elementary School Dr. Manoel Pedro in the town of Lapa, Paraná State, Brazil, in 1941. 

In the early twentieth century, population’s whitening policies were incorporated in schools in the state of Paraná, Brazil. Whitening policies were rooted in racial theories prevailing in Brazil since the nineteenth century. Current research deals with such issues as: How were racial theories applied in the schools? How were the mixed-race Brazilians (caboclos) and settlers taught physical and mental hygiene? Research sources comprise Government Reports in the 1920’s, the magazine O Ensino, published by the Board of Education of the state of Paraná in 1922, school journals, such as Imprensa Escolar, published by the schools in the state of Paraná from 1939 to 1942, the Revista Labor, published in the state of Paraná from 1940 to 1942 and the Revista Escoteiro do Brasil of 1939. The above sources demonstrate how the state’s whitening policies and its endeavor to ‘civilize’ the population´s attitudes and manners were incorporated in the schools of Paraná. Hygiene and education were associated in the shaping and homogenization of the population to discipline bodies and attitudes. Eugenic speeches were broadcasted by lawyers, educators and philanthropists and teachers had to combat evil for the conversion and the production of the national citizen who should be healthy, disciplined and hardworking. 

Current investigation shows how the university formation process contributes towards the development of the idea of the professional by students through the identification of concepts and through attributes relevant to future performance. Features related to the profession (values and rules to be followed), to intervention subjects (behaviors and attitudes of students or professionals) and to professional activities (characteristics linked to the activities´ specificity) were identified by the Focal Group technique employed by Physical Education students at the State University of Maringá, Maringá PR Brazil. Analyses of the research involving students show that the professional formation stance within the BA course in Physical Education is determined by the ability to evaluate and judge the procedures and values that will be part of the activities and not merely by knowledge of the scientific content.

El presente trabajo, que hace parte de una investigación con aporte teórico de la Teoría de los Campos Conceptuales, investigó el desempeño de académicos que entraron en cursos de Ciencias Exactas de la Universidad Estadual de Maringá en la resolución de problemas del campo conceptual aditivo. Aquí se presentan los resultados obtenidos por estos académicos, evidenciando algunos tipos de razonamientos implicados en la estructura aditiva que aún permanecen como obstáculos para el aprendizaje de las Matemáticas, pudiendo interferir en la continuidad de sus estudios. Entre los tres tipos que constituyen el campo conceptual aditivo, propuestos por Gérard Vergnaud, los problemas de transformación fueron los que presentaron mayor índice de resultados insatisfactorios. Sin embargo, en todos los problemas del test diagnóstico, fueron detectados errores cometidos por alguno de los estudiantes. Estos resultados nos llaman la atención en cuanto a la necesidad de una discusión más amplia en el ámbito académico, que tenga en cuenta las dificultades encontradas en el test en relación a los razonamientos de la estructura aditiva, para fomentar cambios en la estructura curricular de los cursos de Ciencias Exactas. 

Current analysis discusses and reflects on the tension points between the professor as researcher and the researcher as professor within the university professorship and also analyzes the dilemmas of the complex situation in the professionalization of teaching in higher education. Partial results of current qualitative, hermeneutic and exploratory research show the need for a continuous re-professionalization process involving the professors’ professional, personal and institutional development.   

Current paper rethinks the history of Sociology as a school discipline, by reconstituting its trajectory marked by absences and presences in the school curriculum, and by reflecting on the reasons for its intermittence, with other arguments as yet not developed by researchers in this field. Research has been developed in two parts: a) the first part analyzed the presence of Sociology in the curriculum of the first half of the twentieth century, investigating the process of its introduction and withdrawal; b) the second part focuses on the process of its gradual reintroduction in basic education through an analysis of the meanings attributed to it and to institutional progress and impasses that marked its advance.  

Discussions on university teaching, teaching initiation and the necessary teacher support during the initial phase of their career are provided. The above mentioned discussions foregrounded a study by a research-formation collaborative Group. Sharing participants in the Group were involved in reflections on their professional practice to (trans)form themselves in the process. The text focused on a Group member, a fledging female professional in university teaching, and the support provided by co-trainers during this difficult phase in her career. Support comprised the provision of conditions for dialogues with the teacher, prompting her to understand the reasons that underlay their practice. Different strategies were used, esp the ‘formation letters’. The above contributed towards the production of an autobiographical narrative in which the professor reflected on her formation process as a professor. The reflective narratives on the teacher’s life, produced within the Group’s mediation and shared with its members, constituted important formation themes not merely for the teacher but also for those who interacted with her in the collaborative Group.   

The procedures and results achieved with the use of literary texts in the English language classes in Padre Anchieta School, Parana State, Brazil, are reported in this article. The literary composition chosen was Macbeth, by the English writer William Shakespeare, and the target public was the students from the tenth grade of high school. During the development of the project besides reading Macbeth, the students were exposed to the biography of the author, some summary of his works and watched films. This work culminated with the rereading of the composition in form of plays and videos. 

School records from the Italian colonies in Curitiba PR Brazil are analyzed as a source of representational forms of childhood. The categories that ordained childhood within the ethnic and school community perspective are identified through the schools´ attendance rolls. The requirement to maintain school records was in fact an administrative tool to transform schooling and teaching into an institution. The practice in schools in immigrants´ colonies provided children’s names, classified the different profiles of children who attended school and measured the regularity of their teaching and learning achievements. Attendance rolls were a legal instrument which showed the school´s capacity to ordain childhood by schooling the social subjects and transforming them into schooled subjects. 

Current paper analyzes an important teaching instrument, at university level, produced during the First Brazilian Republic, called History of Brazil (1900) by João Ribeiro, a professor at the Pedro II College. The functions undertaken by the compendium within educational relationships and through the characteristics of its didactic contents are discussed. The Triple Alliance War (1864-1870) theme is chosen as an example. Scholars on João Ribeiro and his works acknowledge the originality of his theses and the renewal he brought about in Historiographical studies and in Didactics. Although his concepts on history are innovatory, the validity of his ideas on Didactic should be questioned. Results show the compendium failed to surpass the previous ones with regard to objectification and simplification of the teaching task.   

The concept of a group of universities being better qualified than others has always existed within the stratification of higher education systems. Whereas at the top of the higher education hierarchy are first class universities, or rather, universities with the highest prestige and reputation, the institutions that provide democratic and universal access to higher education may be found at lower levels. Current essay argues that higher education reputation is being defined increasingly by national and international ranking systems. It also provides a history of the establishment and development of ranking instruments for higher education and highlights the transition towards a production of university reputation. Whereas in the past reputation was evaluated through a process of prestige accumulation and tradition, without the confirmation of any foregrounding data, this process is currently quantified and systematized by the introduction of tools to measure the institutions’ performance. The ensuing discussion also identifies the implications of the ranking system and identifies myths produced by these instruments that broadcast and compare university performance. 

The issue on the right to education in the Constitution of the state ofParana,Brazil, in 1892, is debated. Priority was given to discussions on the education issue by parliamentary representatives due to the fact that primary education was placed under the tutelage of each state. The economic, political, social and cultural conditions that triggered the development of the propositions on Education are also determined in current research. Public education was treated with extreme care by the Constituents, although the final text received only a single article by which gratuity was underscored. There was a hearty interest among the population with regard to the provision of primary schools and the need to regulate their supply by the State Constitution, so that education, among other issues, became an object of parliamentary debate. 

The pedagogical and conceptual bases of the teachers´ formation program in Literacy and Language (Pro-literacy) for the early years of elementary education are problematized. The reduction in schooling knowledge to basic abilities found in the current evaluation reference for literacy and initial schooling of the ‘Provinha Brasil’ is also investigated. Results show that the reduction of the educational process to the teaching of Mathematics and Portuguese in the first years of fundamental education leads towards curriculum degradation. The reduction of literacy and language knowledge to reading is against the children’s right of expression and fails to promote the quality development of schooling in Brazil.   

Current discussion deals with an understanding of childhood asan analytical category that visualizes the child within early childhood education and elementary education to provide reflections and challenges for the school in its endeavor to organize time and space as from the concept of childhood. The understanding of childhood will be undertaken from the three-fold axis of time, experience and invention. The essay will show how the concept of childhood should address early childhood education to primary education and investigate a type of early childhood education that would implement and not prevent the exercise of childhood.   

Current essay intends to be a sharing for a greater knowledge about the situation of school libraries in Brazil, more specifically in Caxias do Sul, Estado do Rio Grande do Sul and in Portugal. The description of the situation of school libraries in Caxias do Sul, Estado do Rio Grande do Sul and in Portugal reveals that, although with different settings, there is still a long way to go before schools and the educational community envisage this segment as the nerve center of the school.   

Relationships between the challenges of Basic Education, especially those related to contemporary school, and the research-linked educational challenges are investigated, based on theoretical reflections on the employment of research in the classroom as an educational principle. The arguments are foregrounded on the analysis of aspects associated to the genesis of education and school crises. Current paper focuses on the importance of the teachers’ reflective practice and on their constitution as researchers-teachers for the implementation of the language game provided by classroom research, taking into consideration Freire’s dialogue. It underlines the active teaching methodologies that try to bridge the communication gap between school cultures and children’s and young people’s cultures, linked to everyday life dilemmas and with experience-built knowledge.   

Current assay is motivated by the fast evolution that society has been undergoing during the 20th and 21st centuries and its effects on universities. The being of the university is analyzed from a social, historical and philosophic point of view, coupled to the demands that the 21st century make on higher institutions. Foregrounded on several documents (among which may be mentioned ‘The Magna Carta of European Universities’ and the ‘Salamanca Declaration’, signed by the Rectors of the oldest universities in Spain and South America) and disregarding the differences between public and private universities (common aims should be sought when the aim is the development of peoples), certain principles (given as objectives in the text) are proposed and justified as basic for the satisfactory development of all peoples. A summary of the main aims proposed are provided as a conclusion.