Regime Especial de Atividades Não Presenciais (REANP): um estudo de caso sobre processos de implementação de uma política pública educacional nas escolas estaduais em Minas Gerais

Abstract

This research examines the implementation of a public education policy of the Minas Gerais State Department of Education (SEE/MG), the Special Regime for Non-Presential Activities (REANP), implemented between 2020 and 2021, regulated by SEE Resolution No. 4,310/2020 to continue the teaching and learning process during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, I chose a qualitative research approach, guided by principles of ethnography as a research logic (Green; Dixon; Zaharlick, 2005) and conducted a case study (Freitas; Jabbour, 2011) as a research strategy. This study was developed with teachers and students from a state school located in the city of Santa Luzia, metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte. The dataset was also generated from document analysis, classroom observation, application of a questionnaire with open and closed questions to thirty teachers at this school, individual and group interviews with some teachers and students, in addition to the production of field notes and recording of audio interviews. The analysis of documents issued by SEE/MG and federal and state agencies showed that the department created technological tools to be used in REANP, such as the Conexão Escola app, the Estude em Casa educational website, and the Plano de Estudos Tutorado (PET), the latter being the most used. To analyze how these materials were prepared, I examined four different PETs for Portuguese Language for the 2nd year of EM, made available between 2020 and 2022. The analyses showed that all proposed activities were based on the Common Core Curriculum (CBC). In the 2020 PET, there was little conceptual content and the resolution of many questions depended on the students' prior knowledge. Most of the questions were about locating explicit information in the text. There was no space for the answers to the exercises or references to the sources consulted to prepare these PETs. These absences in these teaching materials result from the immediate and emergency way in which they were produced and from the teachers' lack of experience in formulating activities (Araújo, 2017). In the 2021 and 2022 PETs, the references and location for answers were recorded. There was also a variation in the types of exercises, but with few inferential and interpretative questions. The examination of the process of delivering and returning the activities revealed that TDIC (Digital Information and Communication Technologies) established as official by SEE/MG were used, for example, Google Classroom, and complementary to the teacher, such as Google Forms. Managers used other technological resources to interact with the school community, such as Instagram, and teachers used WhatsApp and YouTube to receive and correct PET activities. The construction of a telling case (Mitchell, 1984) to investigate the use of TDIC after REANP demonstrated that SEE/MG created the Technology and Innovation curricular component to comply with federal legislation of the New High School for the teaching of TDIC in Basic Education. In the analysis of the literacy events that occurred in a class of this component to assess students' learning on the digital resource Google Forms, it was found that there was a lack of investment in technological resources both for the teacher's use and for the students' teaching and learning process. This precariousness of resources imposed limits on the teachers' working conditions and impacted the evaluation process. The limits of students' learning opportunities in the processes of implementing these public educational policies and the reproduction of social and educational inequalities are highlighted (Pires; Lotta, 2019; Oliveira; Oliveira, Jorge; Coelho, 2021).