Gestão democrática, trabalho coletivo e qualidade de ensino: potencialidades e protagonismos na escola pública

Abstract

This thesis presents research carried out with the main objective of analyzing the experience of democratic management carried out in a school that belongs to the Rio de Janeiro’s municipal school system, seeking to highlight the role of the school principal and school team in the promotion and redefinition of democratic management, autonomy, and quality of life concepts. Our work is anchored in the conceptions of historical-critical Pedagogy (Saviani, 2007, 2011), and Freirean Pedagogy, especially its emancipatory perspective and the concept of autonomy (Freire, 1979, 1996), as a theoretical approach. We resorted to Paro studies (2001, 2012, 2015) on public school administration and the role of the school principal, and Freitas (2012, 2014) regarding to the implementation of public policies, centered on management, standardization and control of educational actions, meeting market demands on a neoliberal bias. Guided by a qualitative approach, this study was structured in stages of investigation, which included a literature review, document analysis, field research and analysis of collected data, in line with the theoretical framework and support from Minayo (2002). In the field research, we interviewed members of the management team, regent teachers, teachers and parents representing the School-Community Council, totalizing ten participants. The chosen methodology allowed us to bring notes regarding the manager's possibilities of action, covering issues such as the educator's social commitment and teaching quality. Our study suggests that the work implemented by the management team of the investigated school, carried out in a democratic and collective way, prioritizing the broad participation of the school community, had a positive impact on student learning, promoting an improvement in the quality of teaching-learning processes and the school climate. We defend the commitment to transforming and emancipating education and the exercise of democracy as an essential principle associated with the quality of education, which we consider as guiding pillars for confronting educational policies that impose a managerial conception of education, following neoliberalism principles.