Organizing Art and Culture Management Practices in a Public School ¹

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the organizing of art and culture management practices in a federal education institute. To that end, we utilize the contributions of two epistemological approaches, organizing and the practice lens. The study is characterized as qualitative research, developed in two main steps: an exploratory step, which involves the analysis of documents and two projective interviews; and a field immersion step, characterized by participant observation and by the analysis of management practices in the implantation of an Art and Culture Nucleus at the studied institute. As a result, an organizing approach articulated with art and culture management practices enables one to understand school management in a less orthodox manner in opposition to the usual binarism of the school management research field, which involves the disputes between elements and ideologies of the traditional school management and the democratic school management approaches. The study contributes by characterizing the process of re-signification of material aspects in the practice of school management, which makes it possible to problematize the use of administrative planning and the role of contextuality in the attribution of competences of group dynamics, and to point out the effects of decision-making in school management.

becoming of practice; practice lens; organizing; school management; art and culture in school

Resumo

Este artigo objetivou analisar o organizar das práticas de gestão de atividades artísticas e culturais em uma instituição federal de ensino. Para isso, utiliza as contribuições do organizing e da prática como lente como abordagens epistemológicas e se caracteriza como uma pesquisa de natureza qualitativa, desenvolvida em duas fases: uma exploratória, que envolve análise de documentos e duas entrevistas projetivas, e uma fase de imersão em campo, caracterizada pelo método da observação participante e pela análise das práticas de gestão na implantação de um Núcleo de Arte e Cultura na instituição federal de ensino estudada. Como resultados, obteve-se que a abordagem do organizing articulada às práticas de gestão de atividades artísticas e culturais possibilita entender a gestão de maneira menos ortodoxa em relação ao binarismo comum ao campo da gestão escolar, que envolve constante disputa entre elementos e ideologias da gestão democrática e da gestão tradicional. O estudo contribui por caracterizar o processo de ressignificação dos aspectos materiais na prática da gestão escolar, o que possibilita problematizar o uso dos planejamentos administrativos e o papel da contextualidade na atribuição de competências das dinâmicas grupais e apontar os efeitos das tomadas de decisões na gestão escolar.

devir da prática; lente da prática; organizing; gestão escolar; arte e cultura na escola

Introduction

In general, studies that explore artistic and cultural activities in Brazilian schools are interested in the promotion and trajectory of different activities, they present the benefits of extension activities for the school and for the community in which the school is situated, and may or may not be articulated with the School Extension research field (i.e. Crepalde, 2015 ; Francelino & Bregalda, 2020 ; Gagliardi, 1998 ; Japiassu, 1998 ; Madureira, 2013 ; Madureira & Moura, 2016 ; Silva & Neves, 2015 ; Sousa Carvalho et al., 2015) . A characteristic of those mentioned studies, which are an excerpt from a research survey, is the little attention given to the organizational aspects of such activities. The research survey was carried out in the Scopus, Periódicos CAPES and SciELO databases by combining search terms such as “art,” “culture” or “art and culture” and “school management” or “education management,” considering the period between 2017 and 2022, and it did not return significant results. Even search term variations such as “artistic activities” and “cultural activities,” when combined with “school management” or “education management,” did not return results, indicating a lack of studies addressing the organizing of artistic and cultural activities in the school management context.

Based on the research gap on matters of the management of art and culture in schools, we developed a study that combines the practice lens approach, discussed in Gherardi (2009a), with the implementation process of an Art and Culture Nucleus (ACN) in a federal education institute, observing a contemporary approach to Administration ( Bispo, 2021 ), with the aim of analyzing the organizing of art and culture management practices in a federal education institute.

The Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education, which creates the Federal Institutes of Education, based on Law nº 11,892, of December 29, 2008, is a milestone for the development of Brazilian public education ( Otranto, 2010 , 2012 ). Article 6 of the aforementioned law includes, among the purposes of the Federal Institutes, the production of local culture. Despite this, the institute is still drawn to a technicist approach to education (Nascimento, Cavalcanti, & Ostermann, 2020), in which activities focused on culture assume a diminished position. As a response to the legally recognized need to develop cultural activities, the ACN is a support organ for school extension activities. It was idealized by a teacher over ten years ago with the purpose of operationalizing the cultural policy of the Federal Institute in a Brazilian state through the organization and promotion of artistic and cultural activities, especially those activities related to the local culture.

Despite its existence on paper for a long period, the development of artistic and cultural activities under the banner of the ACN was only formally recognized in mid-2013, following a long process of implementation of the ACN throughout the Institute network. Currently, the nucleus is present on all campuses of the Federal Institute in the state. This research accompanied the last process of implementation of the nucleus, observing the implications of this journey for the studied school.

To support the dialogue between administration and the school extension research field, we base our study on Abdian, Nascimento and Silva (2016), Abdian (2018) and Andrade and Abdian (2019) , according to which we must seek new theoretical directions for studying school management, understanding that such directions and their real possibilities for transformation of education need to involve the study of everyday life. The authors also explain that school management has a binary characteristic set both in the traditional business administration approach and the democratic school management theory, which emerged from the Brazilian democratization process ( Silva, 2011 ). This binarism causes research studies on school management to distance themselves from the object studied due to an excess of prescription ( Abdian et al., 2016 ; Andrade & Abdian, 2019 ). To circumvent the binarism, we take an organizing approach, which is understood as a way of treating management as a continuous set of processes through which an organization is sustained ( Duarte & Alcadipani, 2016 ; Silva, Dias, & Santos, 2021; Souza, Costa, & Pereira, 2015). In the organizing approach, management is not treated as a rigid and binary structure, but as something constantly happening, in a movement which is apparently stable, combining various practices according to an apparent order.

Practice, in this study, is a type of ongoing, socially justified activity and it develops from the reproduction circuits of doing that institutionalize it. Such circuits involve actions, learning, knowledge and recursion ( Geiger, 2009 ; Gherardi, 2009a; 2009b; Schatzki, 2018 ). The notion of practice adopted is anchored in the contributions of the “critical power” approach presented by Gherardi (2009a), in which, according to Corradi, Gherardi and Verzelloni (2010), management practices are studied in three dimensions, namely: the articulated set of activities; the way in which doing is signified; and the effects of practice, based on the metaphor of the lens, that is, as something that can be seen.

The work is divided into six main sections, starting from the theoretical articulation between school management and the practice lens approaches. Then, in a second section, we describe the methodological characteristics of the two research steps, as well as the observed limitations. At the end, we present three sections: one containing the results of the two steps of the research, a data analysis section and a third section to discuss the contributions of the study beyond the ACN. The analysis of the results is based on four key elements, namely: the use of technology, the becoming of practices, the group dynamics and the effects of the practice. Finally, we present the final considerations of the study.

Democratic school management and traditional school management approaches

According to Paro (2010 , 2018 ), school administration/management is the most important aspect for the discussion of Brazilian education. For this author, school management is the “. . . means towards ends and towards a conception of politics as coexistence (conflicting or not) between subjects . . .” ( Paro, 2010 , p. 765). In another approach, studies such as Oliveira and Carvalho (2018) and Lima, Fonseca and Santos (2018), which analyze the role of the manager at a school, demonstrate how school management does not reach a prescribed ideal. According to Paro (2010 , 2018 ), school management is bad and inefficient, which could be a justification for it failing to meet such prescribed ideals. In our account, the dissociation between the real school and the prescribed school involves historical aspects that are beyond the discussion of efficiency. It is instead related to the way school management is studied, which conflicts with the way it is practiced ( Abdian et al., 2016 ).

Until 1980, Brazilian public school management/administration was based on the theoretical contribution of different business administration schools (Abdian, Hojas, & Oliveira, 2012; Abdian et al., 2016 ; Russo, 2004) . Then, during that decade, school management was combined with the critical paradigm of pedagogy ( Maia, 2010) . This led to an epistemological breakthrough with the emergence of studies on the school routine that posit the school itself as an object of development of its management ( Abdian et al., 2016) .

According to Abdian et al. (2016) , from this epistemological breakthrough the so-called theory of democratic management emerges and it refers to school management considering the specificity of the school and the participation of the community in the decision-making process. The theory of democratic management builds a critical framework for analyzing the school, offering tools for its transformation ( Abdian et al., 2016 ; Russo, 2004 ). However, for this transformation towards democratic ideals to really take place in Brazilian education, it is necessary to rethink the school in relation to the bureaucratic organization model. For Russo (2004) , the great challenge in the field of education is, starting from that critically oriented research, to place education at the service of the popular classes, transforming it into an instrument of emancipation and construction of the hegemony of the working class and recognizing that there is, historically, a divergence regarding the way management occurs and how it is presented, discussed and studied ( Maia, 2010 ).

According to Souza (2007) , amidst the divergences of the education research field is the emphasis on studies on school management aimed to demonstrate how the school must organize itself to be democratic, with less attention given to the description and analysis of how school management has actually been organized. Poubel and Junquilho (2015 , 2019 ) converge on the contributions of Souza (2007) and criticize the low recurrence of research focused on what people actually do in school management. For the authors, there have been many studies focused on the efficiency of school management that result in demonstrating that the school is simply not democratic.

While the discussion about the dissociation between the studied and the practiced school is relevant, according to Abdian et al. (2016) , we should not limit ourselves to analyzing it, as many studies in the school management field are already dedicated to this issue (see Passone, 2019 ). Abdian et al. (2016) suggest that we should take a different path, seeking new directions for the study of school management instead. This “third path” involves the study of everyday life, like in the study by Gobbi, Carvalho and Dumer (2017), in which daily routines, discussed based on dialogue practices, present a relevant factor for the study of school management. The authors demonstrate that school management can be studied as an emerging process anchored in the balance between multiple perspectives and the need to keep the school functioning. In any case, administration studies that address the daily life of school management in Brazil are relatively recent. Almeida and Junquilho (2013) , Poubel and Junquilho (2015) , Abdian et al. (2016) and Almeida and González (2018) are some examples of research in administration that offer contributions to school management.

We argue that there are still unexplored possibilities in approaching school management from everyday life. For us, potential knowledge in everyday life does not end by demonstrating how prescribed goals are not met, nor by prescribing management practices, but in the use of everyday knowledge to generate those new directions proposed by Abdian et al. (2016) . Accordingly, like the studies by Almeida and González (2018) and Almeida and Junquilho (2013) , we understand that management is an emerging and continuous open-ended process, and that a path to new forms of studying school management can lean on the contributions from organizing and practice lens approaches.

Organizing, the lens metaphor and the becoming of a practice

Organizing is an approach in which management is seen as a continuous set of processes through which an organization is sustained ( Duarte & Alcadipani, 2016 ; Silva et al., 2021 ; Souza et al., 2015) . In this approach, we defend the possibility of addressing the ACN as an organization; in addition, we avoid a traditional conception of school management based on the aforementioned binarism.

As for the practice lens approach, an alternative to study school management involves the contributions of the “critical power” of the practice lens to investigate management (Gherardi, 2009a). In this approach, the lens facilitates the analysis of the effects of practices ( Geiger, 2009 ; Gherardi, 2009a; Reckwitz, 2002 ).

According to Corradi et al. (2010) , the practice lens approach is associated with Practice Oriented Studies (POS). This understanding of practice addresses what people actually do as opposed to what they say they do. The authors point out that, when studying what people do, it is also relevant to consider the consequences of such doing. That is, the metaphor of the lens is one of the ways of studying what people actually do and the reproduction circuits of their doing ( Corradi et al., 2010 ; Gherardi, 2009a).

The lens metaphor was first introduced by Orlikowski (2000) . The author's objective was to study technology from an alternative perspective to the structuralist propositions that, hegemonically, are focused on the use and meanings of the material dimension of the organization. Later, the lens metaphor was revised by Gherardi (2009a), who attributes a questioning power to it. According to Gherardi (2009a), the lens can be used to show the “critical power” of the practice.

This critical power comprises the ethical and moral implications of studying how practices can be signified (Gherardi, 2009a). Geiger (2009) and Gherardi (2009a) defend the existence of two concepts of practice. In the first one, what people do is taken into account, while in the second one, the authors explain that what people do is the tip of the iceberg of something socially established. In this second concept, the practice is fluid, socially justified and develops in reproduction circuits that institutionalize it, involving actions, learning, knowledge, recursion, etc. ( Geiger, 2009 ; Gherardi, 2009a, 2009b).

Since Gherardi (2009a), the “critical power” of the practice approach has been taken in different studies, of which we emphasize the one from Davel and Oliveira (2018) , which deepens the contributions on reflexivity in both the position of the researcher in the field and, specifically, the relevance of the construction of an intensive posture of reflectiveness in education. Another study to highlight the lens approach and its “critical power” is that of Bjørkeng, Clegg and Pitsis (2009), which discusses the becoming of a practice. For the present paper, the becoming of the practice refers to the circuits of reproduction and institutionalization of the practices in the ACN. According to Bjørkeng et al. (2009) , though every practice is constantly becoming, some characteristics of the becoming process are more evident when researching a new practice that has not yet reached the point of crystallization. According to the authors, these characteristics are: (a) a process of defining boundaries, in which the contours of the practice in question are formed; (b) a competence negotiation process, which involves the attribution of tasks; and (c) a materiality adequacy process, which involves the process of technology signification. These characteristics are reinforced by later studies, such as Pimentel and Nogueira (2018) , and characterize the fluidity and malleability of the ways in which practices are established, giving them effects accordingly to the articulation of these three elements.

For this present research, the notion of becoming is relevant because what we expected as effects of the ACN's management practices are ways of doing school management combined with the contributions of organizing artistic and cultural activities. We depart from contributions of the critical power of the lens (Gherardi, 2009a) to capture the becoming of school management practices.

Methodological procedures

We aimed to analyze the organizing of art and culture management practices in a federal education institute. For this, we adopted a qualitative approach (Cassell, Cunliffe, & Grandy, 2018; Creswell, 2010 ; Kvale, 2007) , assuming that people participate in the development of the social order we study (Gherardi, 2009a). Taking the organizing approach ( Duarte & Alcadipani, 2016 ; Silva et al., 2021 ; Souza et al., 2015) , practice lens approach (Gherardi, 2009a) and the role of practice in the study of school management approach ( Almeida & Junquilho, 2013 ; Almeida & González, 2018) , we argue that there are possibilities that have not yet been explored in studying school management from the everyday life perspective.

We summarize that organizing is a continuous set of processes through which the organization is sustained ( Silva et al., 2021 ); practice, based on the lens metaphor (Gherardi, 2009a), is a type of institutionalized activity that involves three dimensions: (a) what people do; (b) the way they signify their actions; and (c) the effects of these actions ( Corradi et al., 2010 ). Finally, school management refers to an emerging and continuous process ( Almeida & González, 2018 ; Almeida & Junquilho, 2013) . From this, we developed the research in two main steps: first, an exploratory step, developed from documents provided by one of the research participants and two projective interviews featuring key participants; then, there was a field immersion step, in which we developed participant observation that resulted in two field diaries on the implementation of the ACN at the studied institute.

Exploratory step

In this research, we used a series of institutional documents as a starting point for developing a narrative about the ACN. The material is composed of the cultural policy of the studied school, the normative guidance that instructs the implementation of the ACN, the ordinances that establish the nucleus and approve its statute, the internal regulations with the objectives and competences of the organ, the briefings from the meetings, a magazine produced through the efforts of the cultural policy development team and, finally, the registered documentation of programs and projects developed and managed by the ACN. These materials characterize the first contact with the field, early in October of 2017, and they were provided by one of the research participants, the creator of the ACN, who was very interested in our research due to the opportunity it gave to publicize his work, as he pointed out.

According to Godoy (1995) , documents are useful for accessing information over long periods of time, as is the case with the history of the ACN. The documentation we have is very diverse and involves issues beyond the interest of our research. Using a simple initial reading technique, we organized the materials chronologically to get an idea of the formal version of the ACN history that is not limited to events at the studied school, but to the trajectory of the teacher who idealized it. There was no in-depth analysis of this material; instead we chose to use it for conducting two projective interviews.

According to Batista, Matos and Nascimento (2017), projective interviews refer to the production of reports about a certain phenomenon by using artifacts, documents, videos, images and/or audios to project the interviewee in a live experience. In the present study, the interviews were recorded in person using a smartphone application and they were later transcribed manually with the aid of audio player software. We used the interviews to understand the context both of the ACN and of the studied school; for that, the interview script was the organized documents which we had. In addition, the reports served to (a) meet the reflexive principle of co-construction ( Davel & Oliveira, 2018 ), giving space for a perspective of the research participants, assuming that (b) such a perspective reflects what the school personnel consider relevant to compose a study about the school.

After the contextualization, the data production turned to the immersion of one of the researchers in the field. This intended to participate in the organizational process of the management practices of the ACN during its implementation. In this step of the research, the documentation and reports previously collected were used for contextualization.

Field immersion step

To carry out the field immersion step, one of the researchers became a full member of the ACN. We developed participant observation more focused on participation than on observation in order to get as involved as possible with the narrated process. Creswell (2010) presents this model of participant observation, characterized more by participation than by observation, as one of the variants of the participant observation technique. The method consisted of five main activities: (a) development of a field diary characterized by the researcher's observations in the field; (b) production of a reflective diary together with a key participant, based on the reinterpretation of the field diary; (c) participation in ACN management activities, including the development of programs and regulations; (d) production of reports on how to write in the study about a given subject matter, for example, the organization of research steps and some historical aspects were brought to the study at the request of research participants and in the way they proposed, since our intention was for them to participate in the study development process; (e) dialogue with the research participants, inviting them to analyze the produced information.

Regarding the two diaries, we emphasize that they were not developed at the same time. The field diary was developed during the activities of the ACN, in which the researcher participated over thirteen months of field immersion, between October 2017 and October 2018; the reflective diary began to be developed in May 2018, based on the dialogue between researchers and research participants, with emphasis on the ACN coordinator. The content of the second diary is a revised version of the first diary, understanding that this would make it possible to look at what had been done based on the perspective of at least one of the researched participants.

Data analysis

The projective interviews were entirely transcribed, including speech mannerisms and notes of the researchers during and immediately after the interviews. To analyze them, we resorted to a coding process based on the data itself ( Gibbs, 2009 ), organizing the ideas in relation to the relevant aspects of the history of the institute and the creation of the ACN.

The analysis of the diaries, in turn, involved a continuous study of the content produced ( Cavedon, 1999 ; Serva & Jaime, 1995 ). From reading and interpreting the information, using the theoretical framework of the study, the field itself and the diaries, we note that the implementation of the ACN in the studied institute can be divided into three major activities, namely: (a) the development process of the Internal Rules of the ACN; (b) the daily management of the ACN, with formal monthly meetings and informal meetings between members; and (c) ACN activities at the studied school that combine ACN management with school management.

There were many subjects observed: professors, students, administrative technicians and members of the external community. However, one of the characteristics of the ACN observed throughout the implementation process was the constant departure of members. At first, there were about twelve members in the nucleus; in the end, only the coordinator and creator of the ACN and the researcher himself remained throughout the thirteen months of research. This situation caused the main limitation of this study, which is the strict focus on these two participants who, over the period, were those who effectively implemented the ACN. In any case, as we consider this a limitation, we also need to point out that it is a result of the very characteristic of the campus in regards to the development of artistic and cultural activities. We will return to this reasoning later.

Results

The Federal Institute and the Art and Culture Nucleus – exploratory step

The results presented in this section are based on the two interviews. One of them was carried out with a public servant identified as ACN coordinator, who works as an educational administrative technician and has already performed several functions in the school administration, having even helped in the implementation of the campus where the research was developed. This participant has a history of about 15 years at the federal educational institute. The other interview was conducted with a professor of Portuguese language and literature with a career of more than 30 years at the federal educational institute, having even been a student while the institute was still a technical school – this participant was identified in the research as creator of the ACN.

The main result of the exploratory step concerns the way in which the history of the institute has a series of details that have an impact on the development of artistic and cultural activities. To illustrate this impact, we used excerpts from the interviews organized according to the chronology of events. We started with the implementation of the school itself, which

. . . despite being located in a metropolitan area, the campus had a very late implementation . . . the idea of the campus had been around since 1998, however, due to political differences between the mayors of the city, there was no place to build the school . . . (ACN coordinator, interviewee 2, 2018)

The institute only received a place for the construction of the unit in question when a local politician was elected mayor of the city, in 2009. The drama of the land illustrates the inefficiency described by Paro (2010 , 2018 ), which also involves the political dynamics and laws that overlap in public school management.

The campus started operating in 2010, offering technical and undergraduate courses. Between 2010 and 2019, the range of technical courses increased, with professional bachelor's and master's courses and various specializations also being created. The expansion process involved a significant increase in the number of students and activities taking place on campus. However, art and culture never had much space. According to the ACN coordinator,

. . . although there are disciplines related to culture in the degree course and there are professors in the humanities who are aware of how artistic-cultural actions can contribute to the construction of a professional, there are professors in the technical area who are not aware of this . . . (ACN coordinator, interviewee 2, 2018)

It was also in mid-2010 that the creator of the ACN became recognized for developing, on another campus of the institute network, a theater festival that, at its peak, had an audience of around 3,000 people per day, according to the interviewee. Because of the success of his early work, the ACN creator was invited to develop the cultural policy of the Federal Institute of the entire state. However, some excerpts from his interview show how the lack of art and culture was a network issue, which first needed to be resolved in the political sphere.

. . . there was no room, no computer, no table and the time I could work was on a computer shared with two other people. . . I realized that I was the only person there, in that department, in the rectory, in the administrative department, thinking about the cultural development of the Institute. . . At the federal institute things only work if they have legal support. . . So I went looking for justifications to institutionalize cultural policy, thinking that. . . with institutionalization there we could require attention to artistic and cultural activities . . . (Founder of the ACN, interviewee 1, 2018)

In contrast, the ACN coordinator compares the efforts in favor of the development of activities related to art and culture between the studied school and other campuses of the institute.

. . . the lack of recognition of the relevance of art and culture is a characteristic of the [studied] campus, as on other campuses it is possible to identify greater interest in these activities, such as at the [other campus] , the birthplace of the [Founder of the ACN] , which is the most active in the development of artistic and cultural activities . . . At the [another campus] and at the [another campus] there are public servants allocated exclusively for the development of the institute's cultural policy, so much so that there are professors who are maestros and are only maestros, not teaching. There are teachers who are maestros of the choir and they are maestros, they don't teach, better, they teach what they work for, like musical instruments, singing, etc. . . . (ACN coordinator, interviewee 2, 2018)

A comparison of the information from both interviews shows that, in addition to the fact that art and culture were not institutionalized in the institute network, there was some resistance on the studied campus to artistic and cultural activities due to, mainly, technicism, as this was pointed out by Nascimento et al. (2020) as one of the obstacles to thinking about education in a less orthodox way. Our analysis also shows that the lack of openness to art and culture in the studied school involves a historical process characterized by national political issues that impacted the receipt of investment for the proper implementation of the school ( Nascimento et al., 2020 ), in addition to the fact that the campus was implemented at a late date. Some excerpts from the interview with the ACN coordinator illustrate this:

At the time of the implementation of the Campus, the director had the vision that something was needed that included art and culture. . . there was a wonderful project, with a theater, an exhibition area, a huge library with living areas. . . with the end of the Lula government, money started to become scarce. . . the projects initially developed for the campus ended up badly affected and could not be executed. . . it is very difficult to develop art on campus because there is no infrastructure. . . it doesn't even have an auditorium, the minimum to receive anything, the classrooms are disputed, because there are many classes… what space are you going to use and to do what? So, even today, it is used within a very short limit . . . (ACN coordinator, interviewee 2, 2018)

Another issue related to the non-institutionalization of artistic and cultural activities is the shortage of personnel. Based on the speeches of the ACN coordinator, we understand that the people who participate in the implementation of artistic and cultural activities are the same few who are most engaged and interested in this subject matter, mainly professors in the humanities area and some public servants. One of the current concerns of the Federal Institute, also discussed by Nascimento et al. (2020) , is that, despite the growth of the network, investment in human resources does not receive enough support, either in personnel or in stimulating continuing education that guarantees the quality of education. In an excerpt that summarizes the combination of these two difficulties, the ACN coordinator, interviewee 2 (2018), complains that “ school employees work at their limits, which makes it difficult for them to be able to bear an extra workload, extra because initially these are activities that are not institutionalized in the school. ”

To summarize, we identified as results of the interviews that the main characteristics of the context of the implantation of the ACN in the studied school concern: (a) the matter of the institutionalization of the artistic and cultural activities; (b) the lack of personnel, which at times is characterized by a shortage of staff and at times is related to the low adherence of the academic community to this subject matter; and (c) the lack of infrastructure, caused by issues that have persisted since the implementation of the campus.

ACN implementation – field immersion

The results presented in this section are based on the two field diaries produced during the field immersion step. The main result of the diaries repeats the aforementioned gap between the prescribed management and the management that takes place in everyday life (see Abdian et al., 2016 ). The roots of this gap are related to the dispute between the traditional management model and the democratic management model, in which the use of business administration techniques compete with the concern about putting education in service of itself ( Abdian et al., 2016 ; Abdian et al., 2012 ; Maia, 2010 ; Russo, 2004 ).

The founding members of the ACN were, among the administrative technicians, the ACN coordinator, the ACN secretary and ACN communicator, and, among the professors, the creator of the ACN and two other chemistry professors. This setup of members only lasted until the end of 2017, and even then, the first meeting was the only one where all the initial members participated. The ACN's communicator continued to actively accompany the organ, and her activities were centered on publicity through the institutional website and social networks.

Some field diary records narrate the departures of the other members:

. . . The seven-member setup didn't last long after that first meeting. ... The ACN secretary changed post on campus and that brought her many assignments, forcing her to leave the nucleus. In her place I informally took over the ACN secretariat providing a revised version of my notes for the development of the meeting briefings. . . . One of the teachers went on maternity leave. Year-end assignments, which are always a rush at school, alienated the other teacher, who only came occasionally . . .

As the attributions of the ACN and the extension department were mixed with one another, after the new year these people started to dedicate themselves to extension activities, effectively leaving the ANC . . .

In the end, the ACN, though it had ten registered members, had only four members still meeting and carrying out activities with the nucleus. These people were me, the coordinator of the ACN, the creator of the ACN and the Communication of the CAN . . . (Researcher, field diary, 2017, 2018)

The first three months of the ACN is characterized by a tumultuous process. The establishment of the nucleus was tangled up in the activities of the campus extension department, and the members acted without much coordination, in a mess of extension activities together with ACN activities. This turmoil can be explained by the gap between management in practice and the traditional school management tools, which, according to Abdian et al. (2016) , are unable to respond to everyday demands, as was the case with the implementation of the ACN. In addition, there was a desire to operationalize a 2018-2022 action plan, which became, according to the researcher's reflective diary (2018), a questionable ideal. Bearing in mind the reality of artistic and cultural activities on campus, the plan seemed to be too robust and unclear about the ACN's attributions versus school extension department attributions.

Despite the concerns of the researcher, in the first months of 2018 the plan even gained momentum.

. . . the operationalization of the 2018-2022 Action Plan could be initiated at the hands of the creator himself, who formed partnerships with a local private university, with a nearby public school, with an association of conguistas and with the city hall. . . During this period, the ACN of the campus outlined projects for Theater, Choir, Maculelê and Capoeira . . . (Researcher, field diary, February 2018)

The 2018-2022 plan had a strong characteristic of traditional administration. It was too robust on paper for a core of seven people, three actively participating, to operationalize. We note that the construction of the plan did not consider the institute's lack of resources and financial difficulties, which were in such an alarming situation that it affected basic services on the campus. Faced with this reality, it was not possible to develop the partnerships that the extension department had formalized, and therefore, the ACN could not operationalize the planned activities. The 2018-2022 plan was – for us researchers – the most transparent tool of the bureaucratic excess of index production that characterizes the traditional management criticized by Abdian et al. (2016) , mainly for creating unattainable goals, far removed from what was faced in practice.

The lack of support for what was really happening at the school in relation to the plans caused the projects to fall away.

. . . The choir did not succeed because the maestro was already facing problems in her personal life; as we had no other maestro, the project was shelved. The theater could not be performed, as there was no means of transporting students to the university. The conguistas needed help to develop the capoeira and maculelê projects, but the school was unable to provide this help and the projects were reverted to the Teaching Department . . . (Researcher, reflective diary, 2018)

In general, the process repeatedly shows a lack of experience with the daily life of the ACN, specifically with regard to the management's difficulty in organizing its own activities based on what was really happening at the school. Robust plans, a mix of assignments, a series of partnerships built on top of each other. The very fact that the ACN, at that time, was just an unattached name among the activities of the school extension department is characteristic of a conflict that started because of the combination of management itself with a bureaucratic management model.

The results of the immersion step point to an unfolding of the difficulties announced by the exploratory step ( Table 1 ).

Table 1
: Breakdown of results between steps and their relationships with the theoretical framework

Exploratory step	Immersion step	Theoretical overview
Need for institutionalization of artistic and cultural activities.	Attachment to the development of the Internal Regulations of the ACN, a document that institutionalizes the ACN in the school.	School management is still strongly characterized by the contribution coming from business administration ( Abdian et al., 2012 ; Abdian et al., 2016 ; Maia, 2010 ; Russo, 2004 ).
On-campus staff shortage.	Membership turnover and abandonment, low adherence to the theme of art and culture by the academic community.	The Federal Institute feeds a technical model of education ( Nascimento et al., 2020 ), of uncritical training, distanced from cultural issues. Russo (2004) already pointed out the difficulty of putting education at the service of the popular classes.
Lack of infrastructure, caused by issues that have persisted since the implementation of the campus.	No resources, no space, no support, all good ideas were just good ideas. The problems with the infrastructure worsen with the bureaucratic nature of the management. We noticed that, many times, developing projects and plans was what could be done.	The Federal Institute, despite having grown since its implementation, has been experiencing budgetary difficulties in all spheres of management ( Nascimento et al., 2020 ). In addition, the aforementioned bureaucratic attachment creates a management concerned with the production of indexes ( Abdian, 2018 ; Abdian et al., 2016 ).

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Analysis and discussion

Four topics analyze the implementation of the ACN based on the members’ spheres of action. In each of them, we explore the combined practices in a different way. We begin with a section on the statute, in which we mainly explore aspects related to the becoming of the practices and use of technology. Then, we continue to analyze the role of technology based on the ACN meetings, in which we were able to follow its use, mainly to describe the becoming of the practice of meeting. The topic on the ACN's participation in school activities involves the discussion of practices in time, exploring the way in which management practices at the ACN present their own temporality. Finally, in the topic on the effects of practices, we deepen the analysis of the effects of practices on the school.

The organizing of the ACN's statute and the use of technology

The Internal Regulation is an institutional tool of the studied school. Several departments of the school have internal regulations, including the campus itself. At the ACN, the statute is a document that, for the members, formalizes the nucleus in the school management (which can be attributed in advance to the process of adequacy of materiality, according to Bjørkeng et al., 2009 ). The creator of the ACN himself was one of the defenders of the need to develop an Internal Regulation for the ACN. According to him, “ It is through this document that the development of artistic and cultural activities is formally linked to the management of the school” (Creator of the ACN, field diary, 2017 ).

Knowing this, the development of the statute became one of the main activities of the members, but it was carried out mainly by the ACN coordinator and one of the researchers. The document took approximately one year to be ready and involved, mainly, three types of action: (a) extensive dialogues between the ACN coordinator and the researcher; (b) formal and informal ACN meetings; and (c) the use of computerized tools such as instant messaging, image projectors and e-mail.

The dialogues between the ACN Coordinator and the researcher were, on many occasions, mediated by the use of technology. As we lacked physical space at the institute, we replaced personal meetings with the use of instant messaging. Considering the contributions of Orlikowski (2000) , we knew that people give new meaning to technologies according to the specificities of the context, and, despite instant messaging successfully replacing face-to-face meetings and making the work fluid, there were disagreements and we were faced with the difficulty of conveying our ideas clearly through the virtual environment. Some excerpts from the field diary reproduce statements by the ACN coordinator about the difficulties we faced throughout the process:

. . . The ACN coordinator complained that it is 'difficult to deal with regulations from other campuses because each one has very different characteristics and there is no standard between them’ when we try to use the ACN statute from another campus as a guide . . . 'one of the things that paralyzes me in the development of this document is that I think the ACN makes no sense,’ when we did not find adherence to the process of meaning attributed to the document . . . The ACN Coordinator often seems distressed about the [school name] website, he says that it is 'difficult to find other ACN statutes, the institutional website is very bad, the platform we use is outdated’ . . . (Researcher, field diary, 2018)

The deadlock that technology-mediated work caused was only solved when the activity we were developing became a practice, understood as a type of institutionalized activity that involves what people do, the way they signify their actions and the effects of these actions (Corradi et al. al., 2010; Gherardi, 2009a). The practice of “writing the regulations” encompasses dialogues, the use of technology and meetings as main actions, it has a meaning attached to the value of the regulatary apparatus for those involved and, as an effect, it formalizes the ACN in the institute.

For “writing the regulations” to become a practice, the activity had to be endowed with its own meaning. Gherardi (2009a) calls this process crystallization of practice. In March 2018, in a meeting that took place on the campus, the actions converged to form the writing of the regulatory practice. Before March, the importance of the statute was related to the bureaucratic nature of school management. At that time, document writing was a secondary activity. During the meeting, which had the Rules of Procedure as an agenda, we observed a convergence of actions around the writing of the document. This turn marks “writing the regulations” as an ACN activity.

The processes of becoming a practice characterized by Bjørkeng et al. (2009) were also highlighted, which in the development of the Internal Regulations we understand according to Table 2 .

Table 2
: Becoming of the internal statute based on Bjørkeng et al. (2009)

Elements of the becoming of practice	Empirically observed elements
Boundary definition process, in which the contours of the practice in question are formed	This involved the delimitation of what we intended to develop with the Internal Regulations and it was characterized as a document that provided the core normative support to act with extension in the institute. We wanted the ACN to be understood as a reference in art and culture at the institute and we achieved that.
Skill negotiation process, which involves assigning tasks	This involved the attributions of the researcher and the coordinator of the ACN, a tenuous process in which the researcher assumed the role of critical reviewer of the document, so that he did not lose sight of the objective of characterizing the ACN as a reference in art and culture, while the coordinator took care of the normative support for this to happen.
Materiality adequacy process, which involves the meaning given to technology	This involved the resignification of the idea of the Statute itself. One of the unyielding features of the state's Federal Institute is its exacerbated bureaucratic attachment, which also involves a normative excess that stands between the school's practical and planning capacity. We understood very early on that we would not be able to change this characteristic of the institute, so we appropriated it, giving the Internal Regulations the necessary content to be practical and justified. It is little wonder that the development of the Internal Regulations was an activity that began as soon as we entered the field and was only completed in mid-2018.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

It should be noted that, in relation to Bjørkeng et al. (2009) , our study presents a fourth element that characterizes the becoming of practice in addition to what the authors point out about the recognition and legitimacy of something being practiced, and it involves the reproduction of impressions that the subjects create about each other. As an example, the creator of the ACN was seen as a visionary, creative and very easy to communicate with; the ACN coordinator was seen by members as organized, fair and punctual; another employee who was present at the March 2018 meeting, and had a relevant position in the development of the statute, was recognized as a reference in procedural devices. When asked about the way they saw the researcher, they characterized him as a kind of assertive critic of the ACN.

Theoretical implications on shared impressions among practitioners concern the affective dimension articulated in the becoming of a practice. If the process of defining boundaries delimits, by action, when a practitioner takes part in a practice, the process of reproduction of impressions delimits when a practitioner takes part in the practice by the shared way in which practitioners reproduce impressions on one another.

It is worth noting that what we are calling the reproduction of personal impressions among members is not the same as the competence negotiation process, since this concerns the performance of the activity itself ( Bjørkeng et al., 2009 ). Specifically on the competence negotiation process, we add that the competences in the ACN went through a social process of institutionalization, characterized mainly by that reproduction of impressions among the members. That is, the recognition of a practitioner's performance is related to the impression reproduced about him (i.e. it was expected that the document would be organized because of the impression that the ACN coordinator was an organized person who also assumed the attribution of organizing the document).

Finally, in addition to re-signifying the statute, something that fits into the approach of Bjørkeng et al. (2009) , we observe a relevant process of resignification of technology ( Orlikowski, 2000 ), either in the use of instant messaging or, as will become more evident in the next topic, in the use of technology as a guiding element of the practice.

Organizing ACN meetings

If the use of technology caused certain limitations when we wanted better dialogic capacity, it was a facilitator when we needed to make decisions. This was evidenced in the use of computerized tools in the meetings. In total, we participated in nine ordinary ACN meetings, between October 2017 and October 2018, in addition to the meetings in which we asked to develop the research, the meetings in which the projective interviews were recorded, and the meetings between researchers and the ACN coordinator.

Meeting is one of the most recurrent practices in school management. At the Federal Institute anything and everything becomes a meeting, again appealing to the bureaucratic characteristic of school management ( Abdian, 2018 ; Abdian et al., 2016 ). We highlight an excerpt from the second diary to illustrate the practice of meeting mediated by technology.

. . . The way the meetings were organized as a practice is quite peculiar. The [ACN creator] created spreadsheets with his ideas for artistic projects. From the beginning, the use of these spreadsheets helped to organize the ongoing process of the meetings. This technological mediation crystallized as a practice when the ACN coordinator used a spreadsheet to try to organize several overlapping dialogues at the fourth meeting [February 2018]. Unlike what had happened in the first meetings, which was the use of the projector to present ideas and discuss them, in the fourth meeting the activity started to be mediated by the spreadsheet of information built during the meeting. From that moment on, using the projector became a practice in which decisions were taken together, a practice that was even repeated later on in the development of the Internal Regulations . . . (Researcher, reflective diary, 2018)

We observed that several meetings held by the management are in compliance with regulatory procedures and are not related to actions or decision-making that effectively generate results. Of the nine meetings of the ACN members, for example, we can highlight three that had some development beyond brainstorming, producing and approving reports describing the different ideas and creating different plans. Among the three relevant meetings, one took place in March and had the regulations as an agenda, and the other two took place in June and September for planning artistic activities at the school.

In this process, despite the fact that, from a practical point of view, the use of technology was configured at the meetings as an asset for the organizing actions around materiality ( Orlikowski, 2000 ), when we analyze the contribution of technology for school management, we highlight an expression of one campus teacher (2018), according to which “ it's like riding a porsche into the abyss. ”

A final analysis on the way we signify technology during use concerns the way in which the same activity can be repeated with very different meanings ( Orlikowski, 2000 ). In this case, it is about the presentation of contents using the projector. At the first meeting, this use of the projector was a way of delegating tasks, but as the group organized itself around a more participative ideal, the presentation of content using the projector became a way of informing members of parallel activities that took place informally and to update absent members at meetings.

The organizing of practices in time, planning of extension events

Another relevant aspect of management practices is that they develop at their own pace. The development of the Internal Regulations, which seemed like something that could be done quickly, took almost the entire period we were in the field to finish. On the other hand, some projects were initiated, discussed, elaborated, but never further developed, as is the case of the calendar proposed by the 2018-2022 Action Plan and the 2018 calendar, which were two plans developed but never implemented, or, at least, not completed. These two examples of activities that ended up being cast off are not so uncommon in business administration.

Considering that school management incorporates elements of business administration ( Abdian et al., 2016 ), what happened with these activities demonstrates that, by incorporating such elements, school management also incorporates the problems of business administration. According to Abdian et al. (2016) and Abdian (2018) , we can reflect on how the quality of management is related to the production of indexes. What happens is the creation and overlapping of many indexes on top of each other – there was a 2018-2022 action plan, a 2018 plan, the plan to develop a Cultural Immersion, the plan for an extension program, the plan for partnerships with the external community – and all these plans ran over each other, materializing different experiences. This does not mean that planning is a bad thing, but that it is necessary to rethink organizing management as something emergent and procedural, as pointed out by Duarte and Alcadipani (2016) and Gobbi et al. (2017) .

For Gherardi (2009a), the practices reproduce this same characteristic of fluidity. Dealing with it and understanding that the effective operationalization of plans happens based on the context is a way of getting rid of the production of indexes that sustain a decontextualized (and unattainable) picture of the development of activities in a school.

Effects of ACN practices on school management

According to Reckwitz (2002) , a practice can present two dimensions of effects: a social-theoretical one, which concerns the heuristic view of the activity articulated by decisions and actions; and an ethical and moral dimension, which relates decisions and actions to the values and beliefs of practitioners.

Two examples stand out regarding the analysis of the effects of practices in the theoretical-social and ethical and moral perspectives in the implementation of the ACN: (a) the way in which the ACN coordinator used to centralize activities (decisions and actions) in himself, because he believed that no one would help him (belief), sometimes complaining that the ACN “doesn't make sense” and “doesn't have a defined role at the school,” and explaining that “I've loads of things to do,” “I don't have time” and “nobody helps with the ACN”; and (b) the way in which the creator of the ACN externalized the maintenance of an anti-democratic status quo (doing), because he was concerned with the delegation of attributions being a prerequisite for activities to happen (belief), when what he wanted was the democratization of the school, as he defended with the implementation of the ACN (value).

Still on the effects of practices, it is worth mentioning our role as researchers. We used the ideals of Gherardi (2009a) and Davel and Oliveira (2018) to reflect on the fact that our position as researchers also guided the way practices were organized. With this, we saw that the meaning built throughout the implementation of the ACN had contributions from what we believed the nucleus should be and it was created based on what we were developing in the research.

Other ethical and moral effects of the practice observed in our participation in the field, what Gherardi (2009a) calls ethical and moral effects, concern the way new members were introduced to the ACN. The new members did not know, did not assume and were not introduced to the difficulties that the ACN was facing; there was always a great need to reinforce the positive aspects of the nucleus. Based on this behavior, we can observe at least two lines of events involving the new members. The first concerns the way in which the former members of the ACN guided the new members around the meaning given to the freshly organized nucleus. The second perspective refers to the way in which the new members, who started from different understandings of the ACN, could contribute to the nucleus obtaining its own form.

Gherardi (2009a) argues that the knowledge that involves a certain activity unites and maintains a configuration of people. The development of this knowledge takes place while actions are carried out, and, to take part in the knowledge shared by an activity the people who arrive need to learn how to do things. The author argues that the group does not pre-exist the practice. What involves people in an activity is, above all, the ability to learn the ongoing knowledge that guides such an activity. As we discussed earlier, the activity makes sense in itself, and as the new members take part in the ACN the thread of knowledge that surrounds the old members begins to involve those who arrive and is modified in this process.

Note that we describe how people become practitioners, but what happens when people stop being practitioners? To understand this process, it is worth mentioning that the ACN went through several member substitutions, which happened mainly because the school studied has difficulty with the lack of personnel. In this context, finding and keeping people willing to participate in the organization of artistic and cultural activities was always challenging, because dealing with art and culture in a school means extra work. Thus, many members were delighted with the ACN's proposal, but then stopped attending meetings and contributing to the organization of activities. With the approval of the ACN Statute, we created rules for the entry and exit of members, and everyone who was not participating was excluded from the group. This process, according to Gherardi (2009a), can be analyzed based on its deliberate and non-deliberate effects.

The deliberate effects were the members' removal itself. As for the non-deliberate effects, this shows the way in which the departure of members contributed to defocusing on the plans that immobilized the nucleus around the production of indexes, since excluding absent members meant clearing the ACN of past ideologies; mainly the ideas around dependence on the Extension Department, since the excluded members were people who arrived at the ACN through that department. It is interesting to point out that, according to Gherardi (2009a), every practice creates a context; in the observed case, the context created by the events studied in this research was the ACN implemented.

The ACN and beyond

We observed that school management is still influenced by the contribution of business administration ( Almeida & González, 2018 ; Almeida & Junquilho, 2013 ; Poubel & Junquilho, 2015, 2019) , 2019 ). We note that the emphasis on bureaucratic procedures makes management tools, such as internal regulations, become mismatched to everyday needs, something already argued by Abdian et al. (2016) when criticizing the emphasis of school administration on the production of indexes. In sequence, research on school management, which historically focuses on studying such indexes and their improvements, contributes to the distancing from school management that is happening in everyday life.

When we talk about artistic activities at school, the distance becomes even more critical, because, on the one hand, artistic and cultural development is understood as secondary and, on the other, traditional management tools collide with the untimeliness of artistic organizing. In the studied school, since before its construction, there was a project that provided for the installation of areas dedicated exclusively to the promotion of artistic and cultural activities, but although this was part of the legal obligation of the Federal Institute, infrastructural and bureaucratic difficulties are still used as a justification for the non-suitability of the school.

Attempts to institutionalize culture as a necessary element for education are sidelined in favor of current technicism in the institute; nevertheless it does not prevent activities related to art and culture from taking place. In the more than ten years of the studied school, we noticed an effort, in a way “clandestine,” concerned with offering a cultural education. Even the ACN was shelved for a long time until there were people with the stamina to get it off the ground. And that impetus involved, mainly, overcoming the situation initiated by the context of Brazilian school management through the practice approach.

A contribution of this study is to offer, based on organizing ( Duarte & Alcadipani, 2016 ; Silva et al., 2021 ; Souza et al., 2015) and theories of practice ( Geiger, 2009 ; Gherardi, 2009a, 2009b; Schatzki, 2018) , a way to articulate the management of artistic activities in the federal public school. We argue that re-signifying school management in an open-ended way involves considering school management tools in a contextual-procedural way. It also involves thinking that such processes are organized based on the multiple actions that crystallize and institutionalize interconnectedly, while the practices take place.

By changing the perspective on the study of school management, we were able to question the search for prescribed ideals, pointed out by Abdian et al. (2016) , replacing it with the re-signification of prescriptive tools in their own contexts. Specifically, the redefinition of management around its own procedural context allows greater adherence to the fluid dynamics of artistic activities and offers a way to articulate the management of artistic and cultural activities at a school ( Table 3 ).

Table 3
: Perspective change of school management based on organizing and practice

Features of the management model			Main references
Traditional management vs Democratic management	Attachment to bureaucracy, management based on the production of indexes. Management fails to achieve a prescribed ideal.	Lack of flair for everyday life. Development of plans upon plans (i.e. Plan 2018-2022). Difficulty in articulating artistic and cultural activities.	Russo (2004) Maia (2010) Abdian et al. (2012) Abdian et al. (2016) Nascimento et al. (2020)
Organizing	Emerging, open-ended and contextual management, based on multiple processes.	Re-signification of management tools and the technology in doing management. Reorganization of plans according to the context and the subjects involved in the activities. Implementation of the ACN.	Orlikowski (2000) Bjørkeng et al. (2009) Gherardi (2009a, 2009b) Corradi et al. (2010) Souza et al. (2015) Duarte & Alcadipani (2016) Silva et al. (2021)
Practice	Processes constituted of institutionalized activities in the doing.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Three observations synthesize the contributions of “writing the regulations” beyond the ACN: (a) finding the point of crystallization, or building meaning to do so based on the activity itself, helps in the development of articulated management tools; (b) for this, it is worth knowing that, when an activity is established, the meanings attached to this action are also established, which can change the signification of a material element (i.e. the meaning of the internal statute no longer involved the formalization of the ACN and became a kind of manifesto of the members); and (c) the subjects involved in an activity are not inert, they are predisposed towards each other and accumulate skills that can be combined to build meaning for the activities, improving the interaction between practitioners and the activity based on their affinities and skills.

For school management in general, re-signifying normative instruments, removing their staticity to build meaning for activities based on everyday life can be interesting to bring school management closer to its objects of interest in everyday school life. This is an interesting way to reflect on school management and deal with the gap between the planned school and the practiced school.

A second contribution of the study to school management specifically concerns the role of organizing artistic and cultural activities in the federal network. We note that one of the difficulties faced in this process is the lack of personnel, which is sometimes characterized by a shortage of personnel at the school itself and sometimes is related to the low adherence to the subject matter among the academic community. The lack of personnel caused such a turnover of members of the nucleus that, of the initial seven members from 2017, only the researcher, the coordinator and the creator of the ACN remained. This generated a limitation in the research, which ended up centered on the performance of these three subjects, but, at the same time, considering the low adherence to art and culture activities in the school, the centrality of these subjects is something we could have expected.

As we also argued in the introduction, interest in the organizing of artistic and cultural activities within the scope of public school management is low. Despite this, the flipside of the process is interesting: the implementation of the ACN allowed the creation of activities aimed precisely at working with pressure due to work overload. One of the ACN's ventures, a partnership with the Teaching Department, offered maculelê, capoeira and theater to help the academic community with anxiety, depression and burnout. Despite the project having gone through troubled phases in its elaboration, as narrated in the results section, for the general public, the result was positive. The dynamics of artistic activities brought together the academic community over six months and, in the final evaluation, the conclusion of the contribution to the improvement of the school environment was unanimous. This reinforces the role of art and culture for education and the need to rethink its role as a way of opposing the technicism that characterizes the federal network.

In regards to this technicism, it is worth noting that the creation of the Federal Institutes was a milestone for Brazilian education ( Otranto, 2010 , 2012 ). The network that was condensed in the Federal Institutes has an attachment to technical knowledge to the detriment of education in a broad way. At first, technical education was important to establish an educational standard in Brazil ( Nascimento et al., 2020 ); in any case, similarly to what happened in the ACN, the ultimate implementation of the Federal Institute should not be limited to normative approval, nor restricted to technical education. It is necessary to position the institute itself around the need to build its own set of significance, and the promotion of artistic and cultural activities can be significant for this process.

Finally, another contribution of this study to school management is related to the lack of infrastructure, which is a problem that goes beyond the studied campus ( Nascimento et al., 2020 ), and the exacerbated bureaucracy of the institute's management model. What is interesting is that the infrastructural gap highlights the contributions of organizing as an interesting way to consider the progress of management activities. Articulated by a set of processes ( Duarte & Alcadipani, 2016 ; Silva et al., 2021 ; Souza et al., 2015) , the organizing of artistic and cultural activities was developed without a fixed room, without a fixed department, without fixed personnel, without a defined organizational chart, but based on articulations on different fronts, in a continuous and fluid manner. We do not want to propose here an anarchy in relation to the organizational structure of the institute, but to draw attention to the way in which activities are developed by articulating tasks, especially when meaning is constructed for these tasks, breaking with the need for a rigid bureaucratic structure that distances management from the everyday.

Final considerations

In this study, we aimed to analyze the organizing of art and culture management practices in a federal education institute. We started from two epistemological approaches, the contributions of organizing ( Duarte & Alcadipani, 2016 ; Silva et al., 2021 ; Souza et al., 2015) and the practice lens ( Corradi et al., 2010 ; Gherardi, 2009a). We developed qualitative research with two main steps, an exploratory and a field immersion one, accounting for approximately two years of research, with thirteen months in the field participating in the implementation of the ACN in the studied institute. We note that political and historical factors around since the establishment of the campus impact the way art and culture are treated at the school and, consequently, the implementation of the ACN.

In terms of theory, we conclude that the organizing approach combined with the management practices of artistic and cultural activities makes it possible to understand school management in a less orthodox way in relation to the binarism common to the field. This binarism involves a constant dispute between elements and ideologies of democratic management and traditional management approaches ( Abdian et al., 2016 ; Andrade & Abdian, 2019 ). By presenting management based on practice, we move towards a third pathway, which does not discard or replace previous propositions, but recognizes, emphasizes and articulates everyday life and its emerging characteristic that permeates management as the constant resignification of materiality.

As for management practices, we observed a deepening of the elements that involve the becoming of the practice first presented by Bjørkeng et al. (2009) , drawing attention to a process that combines competences according to the impressions shared between practitioners and the context. This deepening may indicate a way of articulating affect (see Gherardi, 2017a, 2017b; Reckwitz, 2016 ) as an element of the becoming of practice.

Before finishing, we argue that opening the field diary to the research participants contributed to the reflexivity that guides the approach to practice and enables the participation of those surveyed in the development of the research, not as its subjects, but as its co-creators (Gherardi, 2009a, 2009b; Davel & Oliveira, 2018 ).

Finally, it is worth noting that the approach to school management based on the organizational process of a nucleus dedicated to the development of art and culture activities presents a relevant axis for the discussion about the school in general. The implementation of the ACN, with its discourse on the relevance of art and culture for education and its objective of operationalizing the Federal Institute's cultural policy in a scenario where art and culture have not always been well received, proved to be a challenge that was partially overcome. Despite the difficulties with people and groups at the school that limited the ACN’s activities, the lack of resources and the turnover of members, the nucleus was implemented, grew and, in 2022, announced to the community the second edition of an Art and Culture Festival.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the support and guidance of Professor Alfredo Rodrigues Leite da Silva, an important encourager without whom this study would not have been possible.

References

• Abdian, G. Z. (2018). Revezamento teoria e prática na análise da escola pública democrática. Educar em Revista, 34(68), 107-122. doi:10.1590/0104-4060.57481
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-4060.57481
• Abdian, G. Z., Hojas, V. F., Oliveira, M. E. N. (2012). Formação, função e formas de provimento do cargo do gestor escolar: as diretrizes da política educacional e o desenvolvimento teórico da administração escolar. ETD-Educação Temática Digital, 14(1), 399-419. doi:10.20396/etd.v14i1.1260
• Abdian, G. Z., Nascimento, P. H. C., Silva, N. D. B. D. (2016). Desafios teórico-metodológicos para as pesquisas em administração/gestão educacional/escolar. Educação & Sociedade, 37(135), 465-480. doi:10.1590/ES0101-73302016154123
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/ES0101-73302016154123
• Almeida, R. A., Junquilho, G. S. (2013). Funções administrativas ou práticas? As “artes do fazer” gestão na escola mirante. Revista de Ciências da Administração, 15(35), 180-195. doi:10.5007/2175-8077.2013v15n35p180
• Almeida, W. D. F. T., González, D. G. (2018). Concepção e práticas de gestão escolar democrática da Escola Padre Antônio Barbosa–Lajedo, Pernambuco–Brasil. Revista Científica de Iniciación a la Investigación, 3(1). Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3H7dpSW
  » https://bit.ly/3H7dpSW
• Andrade, É., Abdian, G. Z. (2019). A construção de objetos de estudo em currículo e gestão escolar: desafios aos pesquisadores em educação. Notandum, 50(22), 143-161. doi:10.4025/0.4025/notandum.v0i50.47643
• Batista, E. C., Matos, L. A. L. de, & Nascimento, A. B. (2017). A entrevista como técnica de investigação na pesquisa qualitativa. Revista Interdisciplinar Científica Aplicada, 11(3), 23-38. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3FgUQuy
  » https://bit.ly/3FgUQuy
• Bispo, M. de S. (2021). Refletindo sobre administração contemporânea. Revista de Administração Contemporânea, 26(1), 1-5. doi:10.1590/1982-7849rac2022210203
• Bjørkeng, K., Clegg, S., Pitsis, T. (2009). Becoming (a) Practice. Management Learning, 40(2), 145-159. doi:10.1177/1350507608101226
• Brasil. (2008, 30 de dezembro). Lei nº 11.892, de 29 de dezembro de 2008. Institui a Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e Tecnológica, cria os Institutos Federais de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia e dá outras providências. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, DF.
• Cassell, C., Cunliffe, A., Grandy, G. (2018). Introduction: qualitative research in business and management. In C. Cassell, A. Cunliffe, & G. Grandy (Orgs.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Business and Management Research Methods (pp. 1-13). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
• Cavedon, N. R. (1999). O método etnográfico em estudos sobre a cultura organizacional: implicações positivas e negativas. Artigo apresentado no 23º Encontro Nacional dos Programas de Pós-Graduação em Administração, Foz do Iguaçu, PR.
• Corradi, G., Gherardi, S., Verzelloni, L. (2010). Through the Practice Lens: Where is the Bandwagon of Practice-Based Studies Heading? Management Learning, 41(3), 265-283. doi:10.1177/1350507609356938
• Crepalde, N. J. B. F. (2015). Produção musical, consumo cultural e extensão universitária. Revista Tecer, 8(15). Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3Xjwfpe
  » https://bit.ly/3Xjwfpe
• Creswell, J. W. (2010). Projeto de pesquisa: métodos qualitativo, quantitativo e misto (3ª ed). Porto Alegre, RS: Artmed.
• Davel, E. P. B., Oliveira, C. A. D. (2018). Intensifying Reflexivity in Organizational Learning: A Autoethnography of Practices in an Educational Organization. Organizações & Sociedade, 25(85), 211-228. doi:10.1590/1984-9250852
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-9250852
• Duarte, M. D. F., Alcadipani, R. (2016). Contributions of Organizing for Organizational Studies. Organizações & Sociedade, 23(76), 57-72. doi:10.1590/1984-9230763
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-9230763
• Francelino, V. C. S., Bregalda, M. M. (2020). Poesia, arte e sensibilidade: contribuições de um projeto de extensão para a formação de estudantes de terapia ocupacional. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 28(1), 50-73. doi:10.4322/2526-8910.ctoAO1820
• Gagliardi, M. (1998). O teatro, a escola e o jovem espectador. Comunicação & Educação, (13), 67-72. doi: https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9125.v0i13p67-72
  » https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9125.v0i13p67-72
• Geiger, D. (2009). Revisiting the Concept of Practice: Toward an Argumentative Understanding of Practicing. Management Learning, 40(2), 129-144. doi:10.1177/1350507608101228
  » https://doi.org/10.1177/135050760810122
• Gherardi, S. (2009a). Introduction: The Critical Power of the ‘Practice Lens’. Management Learning, 40(2), 115-128. doi:10.1177/1350507608101225
  » https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507608101225
• Gherardi, S. (2009b). Practice? It’s a Matter of Taste!. Management Learning, 40(5), 535-550. doi:10.1177/1350507609340812
  » https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507609340812
• Gherardi, S. (2017a). One turn… and Now Another One: Do the Turn to Practice and the Turn to Affect Have Something in Common?. Management Learning, 48(3), 345-358. doi:10.1177/1350507616688591
  » https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507616688591
• Gherardi, S. (2017b). Unplugged – “Carte blanche”. M@n@gement, 20(3), 208-220. doi:10.3917/mana.202.0208
  » https://doi.org/10.3917/mana.202.0208
• Gibbs, G. (2009). Análise de dados qualitativos: coleção pesquisa qualitativa. Porto Alegre, RS: Bookman.
• Gobbi, B. C., Carvalho, N., Dumer, M. C. R. (2017). Falo desse chão, da nossa casa, vem que tá na hora de arrumar: os sentidos da direção escolar. Pensamento & Realidade, 32(4), 43-60. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3B3BjLz
  » https://bit.ly/3B3BjLz
• Godoy, A. S. (1995). Pesquisa qualitativa: tipos fundamentais. Revista de Administração de Empresas, 35(3), 20-29. doi:10.1590/S0034-75901995000300004
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/S0034-75901995000300004
• Japiassu, R. O. V. (1998). Jogos teatrais na escola pública. Revista da Faculdade de Educação, 24(2), 81-97. doi:10.1590/S0102-25551998000200005
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-25551998000200005
• Kvale, S. (2007). Doing Interviews. Londres: SAGE Publications. doi:10.4135/9781849208963
• Lima, C. N., Fonseca, L. D. da, & Santos, P. S. M. B. dos. (2018). Diretores escolares do Rio de Janeiro e sua relação com a gestão democrática: a experiência da especialização em gestão escolar (Escola de Gestores) UFF/SEB/MEC. Research, Society and Development, 7(4), e1074166. doi:10.17648/rsd-v7i4.222
• Madureira, J. R. (2013). A dança e a formação da criança: algumas reflexões sobre a experiência na Vila Educacional de Meninas. Extramuros, 1(2), 77-84. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3XW1Y6S
  » https://bit.ly/3XW1Y6S
• Madureira, J. R., Moura, P. C. de. (2016). O ensino de música em debate: uma síntese dos 5 anos de atividades do projeto “Rítmica Dalcroze e a Formação de Crianças Musicistas”. Revista ELO – Diálogos em Extensão, 5(1), 19-28. doi:10.21284/elo.v5i1.109
• Maia, G. Z. A. (2010). As publicações da ANPAE e a trajetória do conhecimento em administração da educação no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Política e Administração da Educação, 24(1), 31-50. doi:10.21573/vol24n12008.19237
• Nascimento, M. M., Cavalcanti, C., Ostermann, F. (2020). Dez anos de instituição da Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e Tecnológica: o papel social dos institutos federais. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedagógicos, 101(257), 120-145. doi:10.24109/2176-6681.rbep.101i257.4420
• Oliveira, A. C. P. D., Carvalho, C. P. D. (2018). Gestão escolar, liderança do diretor e resultados educacionais no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Educação, 23. doi:10.1590/S1413-24782018230015
• Orlikowski, W. J. (2000). Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404-428. doi:10.1287/orsc.11.4.404.14600
  » https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.11.4.404.14600
• Otranto, C. R. (2010). Criação e implantação dos institutos federais de educação, ciência e tecnologia – IFETs. Retta, 1(1), 89-110. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3UekEeU
  » https://bit.ly/3UekEeU
• Otranto, C. R. (2012). Reforma da educação profissional no Brasil: marcos regulatórios e desafios. Revista Educação em Questão, 42(28), 199-226. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3AWxcRg
  » https://bit.ly/3AWxcRg
• Paro, V. H. (2010). A educação, a política e a administração: reflexões sobre a prática do diretor de escola. Educação e Pesquisa, 36(3), 763-778. doi:10.1590/S1517-97022010000300008
• Paro, V. H. (2018). Gestão escolar, democracia e qualidade do ensino. São Paulo, SP: Intermeios.
• Passone, E. F. K. (2019). Gestão escolar e democracia: o que nos ensinam os estudos de eficácia escolar. Laplage em Revista, 5(2), 142-156.
• Pimentel, R., Nogueira, E. E. D. S. (2018). Estudos baseados na prática: possibilidades metodológicas para pesquisas em estudos organizacionais. Organizações & Sociedade, 25(86), 350-370. doi:10.1590/1984-9250861
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-9250861
• Poubel, L., Junquilho, G. (2015). A organização das práticas na gestão das escolas públicas brasileiras: uma alternativa de estudo para o contexto escolar. Pensamento & Realidade, 30(3). Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3EOxlaM
  » https://bit.ly/3EOxlaM
• Poubel, L., Junquilho, G. S. (2019). Para além do management: o processo de managing em uma escola pública de ensino fundamental no Brasil. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 17(3), 539-551. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3VcXffb
  » https://bit.ly/3VcXffb
• Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243-263. doi:10.1177/13684310222225432
  » https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310222225432
• Reckwitz, A. (2016). Practices and Their Affects. In A. Hui, T. Schatzki, E. Shove, The Nexus of Practices (pp. 126-137). Abingdon: Routledge.
• Russo, M. H. (2004). Escola e paradigmas de gestão. EccoS–Revista Científica, 6(1), 25-42. doi:10.5585/eccos.v6i1.366
  » https://doi.org/10.5585/eccos.v6i1.366
• Schatzki, T. (2018). On Practice Theory, or What’s Practices Got to Do (got to do) with it?. In C. Edwards-Groves, P. Grootenboer, & J. Wilkinson (Eds.), Education in an Era of Schooling (pp. 151-165). Nova Iorque: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-981-13-2053-8_11
  » https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2053-8_11
• Serva, M., Jaime Júnior, P. (1995). Observação participante pesquisa em administração: uma postura antropológica. Revista de Administração de Empresas, 35(3), 64-79. doi:10.1590/S0034-75901995000300008
• Silva, Í. da, Dias, P. K., & Santos, E. C. dos. (2021). Organizing e gestão ordinária na economia criativa local. Administração Pública e Gestão Social, 13(3). doi:10.21118/apgs.v13i3.10159
• Silva, J. A. P., Neves, M. C. D. (2015). Arte e ciência: possibilidades de reaproximações na contemporaneidade. Interciencia, 40(6), 423-432. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3gLHz3D
  » https://bit.ly/3gLHz3D
• Silva, L. G. A. (2011). Os limites culturais para a consolidação da gestão escolar democrática em um contexto tradicional. Revista Inter Ação, 36(1), 225-244. doi:10.5216/ia.v36i1.15038
  » https://doi.org/10.5216/ia.v36i1.15038
• Sousa Carvalho, H., de Almeida, D. A., de Sousa Castro, M., Rodrigues, M. D. R. D., & dos Santos, F. K. D. S. (2015). Arte e educação: uma experiência extensionista do teatro na escola pública. Revista Conexão UEPG, 11(2), 158-167. Recuperado de https://bit.ly/3UlEx3Q
  » https://bit.ly/3UlEx3Q
• Souza, A. R. D. (2007). Perfil da gestão escolar no Brasil (Tese de doutorado). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP.
• Souza, E. M. D., Costa, A. S. M. da, & Pereira, S. J. N. (2015). A organização (in)corporada: ontologia organizacional, poder e corpo em evidência. Cadernos EBAPE.BR, 13(4), 727-742. doi:10.1590/1679-395118624

Notes

• 1
  . The authors use inclusive language that recognizes diversity, demonstrates respect for all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities.
• Plagiarism check
  O&S submit all documents approved for publication to a plagiarism check, using specific tools.
• Data availability
  O&S encourages data sharing. However, in compliance with ethical principles, it does not demand the disclosure of any means of identifying the research participants, fully preserving their privacy. The open data practice seeks to ensure the transparency of the research results, without requiring the identity of the research participants.

• Funding: he authors acknowledge the financial support of Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Espírito Santo (FAPES).

Associate Editor: Letícia Dias Fantinel

Authorship

Bruno Ricardo Peixoto de Rezende

Master in Business Administration from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES). Postgraduate student in the Doctorate in Business Administration at Ufes. Volunteer teacher in the Specialization course of Education and Dissemination of Science at the Federal Institute of Espírito Santo. Member of the Study Group on Symbolisms and Practices in Organizing (dgp.cnpq.br/dgp/espelhogrupo/0164392716484982).E-mail: [e-mail]

Dério José Faustino Junior

Master in Business Administration from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES). Attending Lato Sensu Post-Graduation in Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations at the Federal Institute of Minas Gerais, Bambuí Campus. Education technicist at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Espírito Santo (Ifes). Member of Raízes: Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Studies and Research Group of Cariacica. E-mail: [e-mail]

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  10 Feb 2023
• Date of issue
  Jan-Mar 2023

History

• Received
  21 Jan 2022
• Accepted
  10 Aug 2022