Educação profissional e conselho de classe: a experiência no curso de informática do IFRN/ Caicó

Abstract

Historically speaking, the popular participation in the educational processes in Brazil is marked by an elitist vision of the State. Education Counsels are made by a chosen group of scholars and the population that are not part of this group is not allowed to mediate or participate in the shared management of public policies. From 1988, with the democratic reconfiguration of the country and the new Federal Constitution, items such as participation and democratic management started to be strong and, gradually, have become usual in the core of Brazilian society. This new model of conceiving the people in the public management has brought Brazilian citizens, however timidly, to value their participation as members of a system that holds the responsibilities towards the decisions such as the public policies for education. This research starts from the understanding that the effectuation of democratic management, implicit in the title, occurs through the synergy between mechanisms such as class counsels, institutional documents and principles such as participation, decentralization and autonomy that outline the public management. The Class Counsels of the Vocational Professional High School Computing Course at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN) Campus Caicó emerge as study object. Its general objective is to comprehend the experience of class counsels as a mechanism of participation at the IFRN/Caicó. It highlights the dimensions of teaching and learning the Vocational Professional Education modality in the period between 2012 and 2016. It aims at perceiving if its movement goes towards the conception of democratic management as declared in the official documents. The specific objectives are discussing the Class Counsels at Vocational Professional Education based on a participation perspective; highlighting the conceptions and the necessary knowledges for the strengthening of the principle of participation and, consequently, the democratic management; analysing the implementation of class counsels at IFRN/Caicó from the conception of managers, the faculty, staff, students and parents. We used the following Brazilian legal documents: The National Legislation of the Brazilian Education, The current Institutional Legislation at IFRN. Also, we used bibliographical resources from authors that support the discussion about Vocational Professional Education and the Democratic Management such as Moura (2010; 2013); Moll (2010); Frigotto (2010); Ramos (2010); Vargas (2013); Santos (2002); Celibertti (2005); Kuenzer and Grabowski (2006); Libâneo, Oliveira and Toschi (2012); Lück (2013); Gadotti (2014); Paro (2016), among others. This work has a field research as well. It used the researcher participation in the class counsels, recorded interviews and questionnaires. This research is an ethnographic case study and a qualitative approach. Although bearing weaknesses such as the lack of continuous teachers’ formation for the members of the faculty, the results point out to a well and alive class counsels at IFRN/Caicó. It features a school community participation in the processes of teaching and learning.