A nova gestão pública na educação em Minas Gerais e Pernambuco: as políticas, os atores e seus discursos

Abstract

The reforms undergone in recent decades in educational systems in Brazil follow a more or less global trend towards the need to measure the effectiveness of education systems through the school's responsiveness to the goals and targets set for it. The educational policies that are undertaken are based on the demand for more information on the results of these systems and consider the managers and other members of the school team as co-responsible for the level of performance achieved by the institution. Minas Gerais and Pernambuco have stood out on the national scene with deep reforms in their education systems promoted in recent decades. Both states have guided their educational policies within a framework of rationality produced by the so-called New Public Management (NGP), in which the search for improvement of educational results as a means of reducing social inequality and promoting greater justice has stimulated the adoption of a business logic in the public school management, often contradicting the purposes for which it is intended. The most recent educational policies have assigned special attention to the actions carried out by school management, making their activities increasingly diverse. Having this educational scenario in mind, this thesis aims to identify and analyze the epistemological foundations that guided the latest reforms in the educational systems in the country in regard to school administration and how this has been replicated at the subnational levels, having as context of analysis the state public school networks of Minas Gerais and Pernambuco. It was also sought to identify how these matrices are translated into state action, expressed in the institutional policy and professional practice of the school director manifested in their speeches, as well as identify the concept of "school education" that is latent in these individuals. In this thesis, we also sought to identify how such matrices are translated into state action, expressed by the institutional policy and by the professional practice of the school principal manifested in their speeches, as well as to identify the concept of "school education" that is latent in these individuals. To this end, this research has the text as the central element of investigation, transcribed in the speeches of the school principals captured through the in-depth interviews carried out within two national surveys developed by the Study Group on Educational Policy and Teaching Work (GESTRADO / UFMG), as well as in the production of the institutional policy of these two states throughout their cycles of reforms. For the analysis, we focus on the theoretical-methodological contributions of Critical Discourse Analysis. The results show that, although the reforms of the “managerial” matrix have been more strongly expressed in these two states since the second half of the 2000s, the model was established in the previous decade, allowing its consolidation in the governments of Aécio Neves and Antônio Anastasia, in Minas Gerais, and of Eduardo Campos, in Pernambuco. The principals' speech assumes an unequal distribution of power in the State’s hierarchical structure with reflections on their autonomy at the local level. In addition, factors such as violence and the precarious working conditions seem to establish a direct relationship with the level of action of this individual that is compelled to comply with the performance agreements established with the State. However, we observed that in order to achieve the goals and targets centrally defined in these agreements, the principals use, in the course of their actions, different matrices that don’t necessarily align with those expressed in the state action. The social relations established at the local level still seem to determine the agency of the individual as well as the managerial structure that overlaps it.