Gestão Democrática da Educação na rede pública municipal de Pelotas: experiências de democracia participativa.

Abstract

The present study has as its background the Brazilian redemocratization process, examined through the changes of the official pedagogical discourse found in the texts of the Federal Constitution and of the Law of Directives and Bases for National Education (LDBEN), concerning the democratic management of education and teaching. In the study, the process of recontextualization of the referred texts in the organization of the educational policies of the Municipal Secretariat of Education (SME), as well as in the discourse and in the pedagogical practices of the schools of the Public Municipal Teaching Network (RPME) is examined, considering the ongoing process of adoption of a participatory management in such schools. We have tried, by that, to understand how the communities of two Elementary/Middle schools of the RPME have been putting into practice the ideals of democracy and participations, as present in their Political-Pedagogical Project (PPP), during and/or after the 2001- 2004 municipal government, resulting or not of the initiatives of that government. For such, a qualitative research was carried out, aiming at identifying and describing experiences on participatory democracy produced by the school communities investigated. The research has involved documental analysis, observations and interviews with members of the segments that constitute the school community (students, teachers, employees, parents), as well as with members of the directing board of the selected schools. The development of the investigation has shown, in the exploratory stage, that the principle of democratic management is a constituent of the texts of the PPPs in the schools investigated. However, the forms chosen by the schools to put in practice what the PPP puts in writing manifest a degree of singularity originated from the context in which each institutions is inserted, although they adopt, to do that, common tools, such as pedagogical projects, different types of school meetings, festivities, and discussion forums. The data collected point out to a broader movement in the RPME, in the opposite direction to the hegemonic conception of democracy, as they reveal actions which attempt to enlarge the participation of every subject who constitutes the school community. Singularity has also characterized the process of recontextualization of the policies for democratic management conducted by the educational policies of SME, period 2001-2004, and taken into effect by each of the institutions. The experience of management of the School Council (CE), in Utopia, and the one of the Rethinking our School, in Perseverance, have appeared as spaces for participatory democracy within those schools, whose effects are contributing for the qualification of work and management in such schools.