This article presents part of the results of a research developed at national level - Full-time Complete Education in Primary School: Conceptions and Practices in Brazilian Education - which analyzed the experiences of extending the school time in different areas of Brazil. In this context, the analyses of the school experiences developed in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná were the basis which enabled a dialogue between empiricism and theory in order to comprehend the meanings and implications of the use and extension of educational school time. In this dialogue, we sought to understand the impact caused by the modifications in traditional school time, which is of four daily hours and without the effective and constant participation of other forming agents. The process of data analysis identified the changes in the organization and functioning of schools, as well as in the relationship with their communities. More than thinking of schedules and routine, the work thought of concrete hours, of periods when students stay in the school communities and of the meaning represented by this presence to the people engaged in this process and to our society itself.
full-time education; southern Brazil; school time
