Ten years of Education and Research
Lúcia Emilia Nuevo Bruno; Teresa Cristina Rego
Editors
This is a special issue of Education and Research, with the aim of celebrating the 10th anniversary of the journal under its current format. Like other rites of passage, anniversaries are cultural milestones that tend to stimulate symbolically assessments and reckonings, and also to invite the making of new projects. We shall not decline the invitation.
Although the journal has been in circulation since 1975 (under the title of Revista da Faculdade de Educação), it was only in these last years more specifically since 1999, when having Professor Belmira Amélia de Barros Oliveira Bueno as its editor that this publication of the Faculty of Education of the University of São Paulo (FEUSP) started a new phase, establishing itself in the following years as one of the main publications in the field of the scientific research in Education in Brazil. It is, therefore, this new stage that we celebrate with the present issue. The trajectory, as well as the more recent achievements, were made possible by the endeavor and commitment of all those involved along the years in the creation and development of this publication: its successive editors, member of the editorial board, deans of this faculty, and journal staff.
Along the 35 years of its existence, Education and Research has seen significant social, political, cultural and economic changes that involved the society as a whole. Similarly, it had to face the changes in the reality of Brazilian education that impacted the universities and the scene of scientific publications. In this latter aspect, there is cause for celebration, but there is also much to be problematized. In this respect, the contents published and the mode of operation of the journal through the years reflect these transformations and bear witness to the pace and proportions they have acquired, as well as the challenges put before it.
From an internal point of view, and after much learning, the journal has, across this wide span of time, grown from its infancy and youth to adulthood, particularly during the last decade. Dr. Marília Pinto de Carvalho was the journal's second editor in this new phase, succeeded by Dr. Lúcia Emília Nuevo Bruno who in 2009 began to share this post with Dr. Teresa Cristina Rego. Despite going through different phases and guidance, the journal retained its original commitment to becoming a periodical sensitive and open to every high quality investigations and reflections produced by the academia, regardless of theoretical or methodological orientations. It has thus kept its purpose of serving as a prime vehicle for the circulation of original articles of the field of education, especially the results of studies of theoretical or empirical nature, surveys of the literature in educational research, and critical reflections about pedagogical experiences.
The academic spirit that values plurality and openness to new and original views remains like that of previous times, but we are aware of the fact that the journal of the Faculty has grown and acquired new contours, just like the Faculty of Education itself (which is also in celebration, since it has recently completed 40 years of existence).
Despite the difficulties inherent to a publication of this character and size, important achievements were made during the last decade. During this period, apart from acquiring regular triannual periodicity, being fully reformatted, and obtaining better financial autonomy from FEUSP (currently a large portion of the publishing costs is financed by public research agencies), the journal attained all basic requisites that qualify it as a high level scientific periodical: it complies with the most stringent standards of edition, has international distribution, is sold in bookstores, by subscription and library exchange, is edited simultaneously in printed and electronic forms, is indexed (online) in important national and international academic search portals and databases (Qualis/Capes, Scielo, Scopus, RedAlyc, Iresie, Psicodoc, Latindex, Sociological Abstracts, ERA, Doaj, Aera Sig, Edubase e SiBi/USP), receives for publication works developed in research institutions throughout the country and also abroad, is managed by a permanent committee of editors, is overseen by an independent editorial board with international qualification, and has systematic collaboration of a large and diversified body of ad hoc reviewers. As an expression of recognition by the scientific community, the journal has always received the highest classification (A1) of the Qualis/Capes assessment, accrediting it as one of the top publications in the area of education among national and international journals.
These are flattering indicators for any editorial board, but in fact impose great challenges. The first is related to the substantial number of articles submitted for publication and, consequently, to the increased workload involved in the whole process of reviewing and publishing the texts.
To face this challenge we have developed a group of actions aimed at keeping delays in the reviewing process to a minimum, and also to better coordinate the whole workflow. Along these lines, improvements have been made to the journal's infrastructure, the editorial board has gained an extra member, and a large basis of ad hoc reviewers has been consolidated. Additionally, in early 2009 the new posts were created of editorial manager (today occupied by Wilson Gambeta) and co-editor, as mentioned above, in order to allow more people to share the responsibility for the editorial coordination of the journal, as well as to help in the follow-up of the routines. To speed up the process of submission and reviewing of the articles, the journal has recently (February 2010) joined the SciElo Submission electronic system. For that, a new page was developed inside SciElo for the submission of texts, as well as a wide ranging and detailed database of ad hoc reviewers.
Education and Research faces, however, other challenges that must be dealt with in the medium and long terms, amongst which the main ones are an effort to increase the international insertion of the journal, and the relentless search for original and stimulating contributions from Brazil and abroad. To such aim, our first challenge is to translate to English the totality of the articles published in each issue (today this proportion is only of 30%). As to the second challenge, besides stimulating the more active participation of foreign authors (with original articles and translations of classic texts unpublished in Brazil), we intend to adopt an editorial policy that will balance the publication of original works spontaneously submitted by researches with the publications of texts produced by demand (which will also be rigorously reviewed). Planned and divulged in advance, the guided demands will seek to gather relevant articles around a central theme chosen by the editorial board among those that will raise the highest interest and enquiry from the scientific community and educators in general.
The present commemorative issue, organized by the two editors, reflects to some extent this proactive attitude that the editorial board wishes to adopt. As a first experience, we have taken on the responsibility of creating this issue and working with invited articles and not actually with a guided demand, as it is our proposal for the coming issues. However, it is important to emphasize that every procedure already established in our working routine has been followed, that is, all articles published here have been submitted to reviewers, despite the excellence of the articles received and the reputation of the authors. It is not a mere repetition of bureaucratic ritual, but the belief that even authors and texts regarded by the editorial board as of exceptional quality must follow peer review, for there is always something to be questioned, added, trimmed, or better explained. Besides, even those already celebrated by the national and international academic media are not immune to theoretical fragility, analytic inconsistencies, and obscure explanations of their ideas and objectives.
The opening text of this special issue, written by the current dean and vice-dean of the Faculty of Education, Professors Sonia Teresinha de Sousa Penin and Maria Cecilia Cortez Christiano de Souza, presents an assessment of the 40-years anniversary of FEUSP, of the 35 years of the Journal of the Faculty of Education and of the 10 years of Education and Research.
As to the themes, we have opted for a wide-ranging subject, namely, Education in Contemporaneity: challenges, difficulties, and theoretical perspectives, which allowed us to draw an ample, although not exhaustive, picture of the issues under debate today.
We have tried to organize a collection of articles produced by specialists from various areas, with the objective of offering to our readers a survey of academic productions that might help them to investigate different aspects of education in the contemporary world. Our aim was, therefore, to gather works with differing approaches, produced by researchers of several nationalities, theoretical-methodological perspectives, and researches interests.
The articles were grouped under three main fields of study, whose contributions alongside philosophy, history, anthropology, and economy seemed to us fundamental to understand and problematize the reality of education in the present. We are referring to political science, to sociology, and to psychology, here represented by articles authored by researches of recognized quality in Brazil and abroad, and about which we shall now make a few comments.
The first one, Political Science and Education, comprises three articles that bring to the Brazilian public a sample of the German academic production which, despite being solid and very stimulating, is still little known in Brazil. The first text is by Karin Amos, professor and researcher at Tübingen University, and a prominent member of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. Her article Governance and governmentality: relation and relevance of two prominent social scientific concepts for comparative education deals with two concepts that can be used as analysis tools to study the ongoing transformations in education, especially the relation between National States and "their" education systems: the concepts of governance and of governmentality. The former, "governance", according to the author, is more closely related to technical aspects, that is, to instruments, procedures and agents, apart from their constellation and forms of cooperation. It directs the study to questions such as: who offers educational services, what is the relation between public and private schooling, amongst other, and turns out to be extremely useful in the investigation of the relation between the various levels of analysis (national, international etc), showing to be particularly important to a proper theoretical understanding of the role played by the international organizations in the formulation of educational policies. "Governmentality", by its turn, in spite of sharing many characteristics of governance, is a Foucauldian concept related to the production of distinct subjectivities through techniques, and modes of regulation and conduct in a broad sense. Governmentality, therefore, includes investigations of the typically Foucauldian knowledge/power nexus. The author considers both perspectives together in order to discuss their implications for comparative education in contemporary society.
The article by Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, a researcher associated with Tübingen University, is entitled Public education policy and its international dimension: theoretical approaches, and discusses public policies for education, arguing that the activities of the international agents in this filed cannot be understood solely from a national perspective. With the purpose of better conceptualizing the international dimension of educational policies, the author presents three theoretical approaches: that of the neoinstitutionalism/isomorphism, a formulation centered on the concept of externalization, and the theory of the international regime, showing their contributions and limits. At the end of the article the author develops his analysis of the international education policy from the viewpoint of the regime theory.
The article by Franz-Olaf-Ratke, professor and researcher at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Germany, whose title is Education in the 'Postnational Constellation': the weakening of democratic, expertocratic and ethicoprofessional legitimation and control, deals with the transformations that are taking place in education systems, focusing on the actions of the European Union and of OCDE as important agents of the world system. The author argues that such transformations imply in a triple "economization" of education policies that can be observed at all levels of the education sector. The process would not be restricted to the subordination of education to the demands of economy, or to the transformation of education services into commercial goods, but would rather impact the operational dimension of education. The logic of production is imposed upon the self-description made by the institutions of the education system, which stopped being bodies bureaucratically managed to be conceived as agents of a commercial activity managerially controlled in which business actions are necessary. This new form of governance brings to the discussion the issue of the democratic legitimation of the political decisions that should ideally combine the three elements mentioned above: the democratic, the "expertocratic", and the professional ethics. The backdrop of the author's analysis is the German situation.
These are, therefore, articles that deal with issues related to the organization of education systems, with the rationality that guides it, repositioning the relation between education systems and National States, among others, making it clear that education has long stopped being treated as a national issue, to be thought about at a level that we could call transnational. This process has far-reaching implications which, at the moment, we have but begun to see and problematize.
The second field of study represented here is the Sociology of Education, with the presence of three articles whose contributions we now summarize. The first one is by Daniel Thin, from Lumière University Lyon 2, and is entitled Popular families and school institutions: between autonomy and heteronomy. The author analyses theoretical problems related to the study of the relation between popular families and the school, dealing with the relation of these populations with the institutions and with the dominant social reality. It explores the possibilities of overcoming the dichotomy established between a strictly legitimizing perspective that tends to reduce the popular classes and their practices to a relation that alienates them into a heteronomous relation, and the relativist perspective so prevalent today in the social sciences that sees them within a radical alterity (autonomy), hiding from sight the social relations of domination in which they are immersed. The author insists in the ambivalence of the logics and practices of popular families, and this may be his major contribution with this article.
The next article is by Danillo Marticcelli, professor at the University of Lille 3, and by Káthya Araújo, from the Academy of Christian Humanism University, and has as its title Individuation and the work of individuals. The point of departure of the authors is the recognition of the growing importance of the individual to the understanding of societies at the present time. Simultaneously, they discuss the impasses arising from the fact that socialization or subjectivation have been privileged as strategies to that end. The authors formulate a series of criticisms to those two paths, and put forward other possibilities in which one can, starting from the individuation, account at the individual scale for the main features of a given society whilst analyzing concretely the ways in which, within this sphere, the individuals are capable of constructing themselves as subjects.
The last article of this group is written by Marília Sposito from the University of São Paulo, and is entitled Transversalities in the study of young people in Brazil: education, collective action, and culture. The author "examines the possibilities of analyzing the collective action of young people, especially that which derives from cultural practices within a perspective that tries to recall the guiding lines of the Brazilian sociological thought which denies a rigid segmentation of study fields". Based on a survey the author conducted on the academic production of graduate students of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work "new challenges for the research on youngsters and their collective practices" were outlined. According to Sposito "A deeper understanding of the diversified presence of young people in public settings points to a necessary transversality that requires that other dimensions of juvenile experience are not disregarded in the analysis", such as the transformations following the intense expansion of the school systems in Brazil during the last decades, the new situations of working conditions, and the forms of appropriation of the urban space.
The third field of study included here, Psychology and Education, opens with the text by Drs. Marta Kohl de Oliveira and Teresa Cristina Rego, both from the University of São Paulo, and is entitled Contributions to contemporary research of Luria's cultural-historical approach. It is an essay where the authors explore "the fecundity of the postulates of Alexander Romanovich Luria to contemporary research. More specifically, it will seek to elucidate the vigor of the premises, ideas, and investigation procedures adopted in his studies on mental processes in their relation to culture throughout a career that spanned almost six decades. The contributions of the Lurian approach are illustrated by the description of some of the studies he carried out last century". According to the authors, this investigative approach to human development makes it possible to "understand the phenomena in their complexity, the need to create research instruments and procedures capable of ensuring this understanding, and also the active role played by the researcher in the formulation of questions and in the conduction of empirical research. The presentation and analysis of features representative of the various themes explored by the author reveal a researcher determined to understand the complex process of the human constitution through the fertile combination of investigations on the biological roots of psychological functioning and the historical making of the human psyche".
The next article, presented at the Second International Interdisciplinary Conference on Perspectives and Limits of Dialogism in Mikhail Bakhtin, Stockholm, Sweden, 3rd 5th June 2009, has as its title Text and dialogism in the study of collective memory, and is written by James Wertsch, professor and researcher from Washington University, St Louis. The author states that "Bakhtinian ideas about text and dialogism provide important tools for bringing order to the otherwise chaotic and fragmented field of collective memory studies". As Wertsch himself admits, "[w]hile the definition of collective remembering may remain unsettled at this point, some appreciation of the range of options can be derived by situating discussions in terms of the contrast between strong and distributed versions of collective remembering. Building on the notion of semiotic mediation and associated claims about a distributed version of collective remembering" the author invokes "[ ] Bakhtins notion of dialogically organized text. The fact that the 'language system'‖ envisioned by Bakhtin includes the dialogical orientations of generalized collective dialogue as well as standard grammatical elements means that it introduces an essential element of dynamism into collective remembering". The major contribution of this approach is to bring forward the political dimension of collective memory as conferred by the dynamics depicted by Bakhtin.
The third article, Creating an idioculture to promote the development of children with cerebral palsy, is authored by Michael Cole, professor from the University of California, Lucia Willadino Braga, neuroscientist and president and director of the Sarah Network of Neurorehabilitation Hospitals of Brasília, and Lucina Rossi, psychologist and master in Rehabilitation Sciences, coordinator of the Neurorehabilitation Program in Pediatrics at the above institution. The text presents "preliminary results of the adaptation of an educational system called the Fifth Dimension (5D), in which social interaction is a means for generalizing information and a basis for the development of skills [ ]. Originally created by Michael Cole Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) this system was, for the first time, applied to a rehabilitation setting with children with brain injury, at the SARAH Network of Neurorehabilitation Hospitals, in Brazil. Undergraduate college students majoring in psychology and education participate in the program and interact with children who have cerebral palsy [ ]. While interacting with the child, the student is encouraged to put formal theoretical concepts and personal experience into practice." The article "describe[s] the changes made to the original program to adapt it to the rehabilitation setting as well as the artifacts that mediate the activity, necessary for the interaction and expression of the child with cerebral palsy. Also discussed and presented are the effects of the activity on the child's development based on the parents' reports and the impact on the learning process of the undergraduate students. The program opens alternative pathways for a reflection on, and education of, the child with brain injury, based on the development of individual potential, context and interests."
This special issue also brings to the readers an interview and the translation of a text previously unpublished in Brazil. The interview was conducted by the editors with Bernard Charlot. In it the French professor and researcher analyzes his professional experience in Tunisia, France, and in Brazil, where he currently lives. With sharpness and wit, he makes important reflections on the situation of scientific investigation today, and on the new challenges put before educators and researches in education.
The translation offered to the reader is of an article by Raewyn Connell from the University of Sydney, and is entitled Good teachers on dangerous ground: towards a new view of teacher quality and professionalism. (This text was translated by Carlos Malferrari from the original in English which will be published in Critical Studies in Education, Sydney, Australia).
It presents thoughts about what has characterized historically the "good teacher", stressing the open and controversial nature of this issue. Based on the Australian experience, the author analyzes the existing models from the colonial period to this day, in which teachers' competence list tend to dominate. She discusses the way in which the authorities responsible for registering and accreditation of teachers under neoliberal governments define the "good teacher". Finally the author puts forward proposals for a new understanding of the concept that defines the professional suitable for the exercise of teaching, basing them on the understanding of the work process and occupational dynamics of teaching, on the intellectual structure of the studies about Education, and on the logic itself of education as a whole. At a moment when teacher education in Brazil acquires remarkable visibility within the educational and public policy debates, this text is extremely timely.
As the reader can observe, the set of articles published in this special issue represents a significant diversity of themes, approaches, and outlooks related to the field of education. The authors gathered here are distinguished representatives of the new trends and study perspectives in education today. Together they examine, under different looks, pressing themes of our time, stimulating the creation of a pluralist vision, sensitive to the challenges of contemporaneity. Education and Research aims at reaffirming once again its objective of serving as an instrument for the dissemination of ideas and studies in the educational field.
The publication of this issue would not have been possible without the dedication and commitment of many people who collaborated in different manners toward its realization. Some of our colleagues helped in naming and contacting the foreign scholars that contributed to this volume, among them Ana Luiza Bustamente Smolka, Marta Kohl de Oliveira, Marília Pontes Sposito, Marília Carvalho, and Graça Setton, as well as Marcelo Parreira do Amaral who, from Germany, put us in contact with academics and researchers of the educational field, and kindly translated to English the texts by Karin Amos and Franz-Olaf Ratke. Other colleagues, the ad hoc referees, contributed evaluating rigorously the quality of each article appearing here. Our warm thanks to all of them. Similarly, we wish to thank here the translators, reviewers, and members of the editorial committee Drs. Denise Trento Rebello de Souza, Martha Marandino, Valdir Heitor Barzotto and professor Pedro Roberto Jacobi, this latter until recently a member of the editorial committee, all of which gave substantial support to the preparation of this issue throughout the year. We also want to acknowledge the help of the journal staff, Rosangela Borges de Oliveira, its secretary, and Wilson Roberto Gambeta, editorial manager. Lastly, special thanks go to professor Sonia Teresinha de Sousa Penin who, during her time as dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of São Paulo spared no efforts to guarantee all the institutional support required to face the new challenges posed to the journal during the last years.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
11 Nov 2010 -
Date of issue
Apr 2010
