Entre receitas e monstros: educação baseada em evidências científicas e seus desdobramentos na Política Nacional de Alfabetização

Abstract

This research aims to question the meanings of evidence-based policy, which has gained visibility in the field of Education in Brazil. To this end, I strategically investigate the National Literacy Policy (PNA), emphasizing the discussion of the idea of evidence-based policy and how it is articulated within the field of curricular literacy policies. This problematization unfolds in a context where the discourse of evidence-based education is being strengthened in the country, paradoxically accompanied by a movement of reduced investment in Higher Education. I understand that this discourse gains greater prominence within curricular literacy policies with the implementation of the PNA and its advocacy for the centrality of scientific evidence in the literacy process. Based on an analysis of the ABC Project and in dialogue with poststructuralist references in curriculum studies, I problematize the use of the discourse of scientific evidence as a regime of truth— a prescriptive formula to achieve an alleged truth— which, in turn, seeks to legitimize a specific conception of science with a structuralist bias, aiming at curricular centralization and epistemological unification. In this sense, I seek to highlight the use of political strategies to establish a will to truth. I argue that the attempt to ensure quality literacy through scientific evidence is linked to a scientistic stance that seeks to establish a truth status in the name of science, as it imposes a singular meaning on the literacy process, disregarding its ethical commitment to otherness. Finally, I advocate for an interpretation of science, literacy, and curriculum through the lens of unpredictability—produced in relation to the other and open to the emergence of other possible experiences, embracing the monsters that arrive.