Gerencialismo e gerencialização: uma análise sociológica do chão da escola pública estadual no RS

Abstract

This research seeks to understand the relationship between education and the world of work through reflection on the encounters and intentions between school culture and the demands of the business market. This is to analyze the impacts of the transpositions of management technologies resulting from toyotism to the education system of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), in the period corresponding to the years 2015-2020. The objective is to show the specificities of the transformations in the education processes that took place via managerialism and managerialization. For the theoretical mediation in the transposition of managerial technologies to the education system is made a characterization of the crisis of the capitalist accumulation regime since the 1970s and its policies of fiscal austerity. On the one hand, one considers the technical bias associated with management technologies in the field of work and education and, on the other, the possibilities and limitations that are placed on the horizon of the so-called democratic management of the school. For this, it is made use of semi-structured interviews, document analysis and bibliographic analysis. In interviews with different education professionals (teachers, director, pedagogical coordinators and deputy director) subjective aspects of the teacher’s working conditions are observed, changes in curricula aimed at a logic that meets the needs of the world of work, school projects, among other issues. The documents produced by the Department of Education of the State (SEDUC) point out what the state government has implemented in terms of policies for education. The bibliographic analysis, among other important points, provided the basis for the theoretical mediation of the transpositions of managerial technologies from the universe of the company to the educational system. On the school floor, it is identified the specificities of the transformations in the processes of education that were constituted via managerialism and manageriality. Management technologies, therefore, have not simply been shifted to the education system. Such specificities can be observed: in the search of schools for funding through the logic of competition, which contributes to the implementation of a quasi-market in education; in the continuous search of the school for better results in different types of evaluations; in the mercantile logic and entrepreneurship in the curriculum - where one engages the work of the teacher and the school in purposes that benefit the labor market. The effects of managerial technologies are also notorious when it comes to the school "doing more with less", and in increasing the teacher’s working time beyond the pedagogical dimension. In addition, there is an intensification of the teacher’s work activity through rationalization and control over the work that emerged with the use of new technologies in the period of the new coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Finally, the research points out some barriers that interfere in the implementation of democratic management in the school, such as, for example, difficulties for collective participation to be carried out in the school space because of the intensification of the teacher’s work. It will also be presented projects that reduce the unilaterality of the decisions and the tensions caused with the management technologies in the education system, allowing practices inside the school that corroborate the democratic management process.