Avaliação institucional da extensão nas universidades federais brasileiras

Abstract

This research has as its central question the discussion of the evaluation of university extension, questioning the place of extension in institutions and in institutional evaluation related to the social function of the university. The objective of the study is to investigate and analyze the extension evaluation policy in the scope of the Higher Education Assessment System (SINAES) and in the proposals of the Forum of Pro-Rectors of Extension of Public Higher Education Institutions (FORPROEX), and the its implementation in Brazilian federal universities, specifically, in the institutional self-assessment processes of the Own Assessment Commissions (CPA), considering the extension policy in these institutions. The theoretical framework is based on historical-dialectical materialism in seeking to understand the movement of educational policies, based on the historical apprehension of its determinants, contradictions and mediations, in the totality of social relations within the framework of the capitalist system. The apprehension of this movement is also supported by the understanding of the relationship between State, Society and public policies based on the concepts of “Extended State” and “State as a relationship”. The discussion of higher education evaluation policies starts from the consideration that there is a tension in institutions between the perspective of “evaluation as an instrument of educational reform” and the “institutional evaluation in the perspective of integration” teaching-research-extension. The study revisits the trajectory of extension in order to establish the links between this dimension and the social function of the Brazilian university, based on the issue of cultural heteronomy in dependent capitalism. The methodological procedures consist of a systematic literature review, documental research and content analysis. The systematic review of the literature mapped the studies that seek to highlight aspects related to the evaluation of extension in federal universities. The work carried out made it possible to discuss important aspects, in particular, related to the induction capacity of higher education evaluation policies regarding the evaluation of extension and the place of university extension in institutional evaluation. Documentary research and content analysis focused on documents related to extension and institutional evaluation in the set of 63 federal universities, created until 2018, considering two main levels of analysis. In the first one, it was possible to build an overview of the extension and its evaluation in these institutions. In the second, the analysis was particularized in a federal university, considering its historical legacy in Brazilian extension, as well as its most recent experience in the area and the institutional evaluation of extension, in particular, the evaluation process conducted by the CPA. The results demonstrate that the extension is institutionalized in the administrative, collegiate and normative structure of the federal universities, finding itself in consolidation at the academic level, given the ongoing process of its insertion in the undergraduate curricula and recent valorization in the evaluation of teaching performance. Unlike teaching and research, academic dimensions hegemonized by external evaluations, extension evaluation, still endowed with greater autonomy, is, to some extent, on the agenda of federal universities, either as a perspective of implementing or consolidating the evaluation processes already developed, in particular, by the Deans of Extension, pointing to their valorization in the institutional evaluation. However, given the centrality of the demands of external evaluation, the integration of extension evaluation in the evaluation processes developed by the CPA needs further deepening, reflecting the hierarchy in the valuation between teaching, research and extension in the institutional evaluation and in the fulfillment of the social function of the heteronomous university.