Interferences in the class: teachers’ dynamic and perceptions 1 2

Instances of school institutions directly intervene on the public schools (state and municipal) in the city of São Paulo. There is a “dynamic of interferences”: a set of frequent and direct interventions in the class, normally connected to the enactment of educational policies. This accumulation of projects in the schools lead to constant interruptions in teachers’ work. We have researched its consequences on teachers and school education, based on the analysis of official texts and teachers’ statements. We have found that, though such policies are supported by a discourse of quality in education, according to the teachers the dynamic of interferences hinders teachers’ work and, possibly, school education.


Introduction
In Brazil, many educational policies are created and put into action following a top-down 5 model, with little regard to the voices of school subjects, such as teachers, students, and community. In São Paulo, the state and municipal systems are no different. Though officially promoting a democratic administration in schools and reaffirming, on official documents, the need to promote teachers' work towards an education of quality, the secretaries of education promote policies without previously discussing them with their subjects-the consequences of that, at least for the teachers, are worrying. To apply these policies, the several instances of the school institutions directly intervene in the classes, interrupting the work teachers were doing with the students.
These interventions and their consequences to teachers' work were the focus of this research, developed in the scope of a master's degree in Human Geography. We started the 5 We are referring to the model of analysis developed in the scope of Political Science, according to which there is a clear distinction between the phase of creating a public policy and the phase of its implementation. During the elaboration phase the objectives are defined, the criteria of policies enforcement are established, concessions are made, etc. In the implementation phase, the policy, established during the previous phase, would simply be enacted. The top-down model has been heavily criticized as it does not consider that the legislative process does not encompass the whole phase of creation and approval of policies, as the actors responsible for their implementation alter aspects of the original public policy proposal (Hill, 2013). We use the term here to indicate that most educational public policies in Brazil is created under this perspective, that is, they expect that the actors who take part of it should not alter the original proposal, or actively participate in its creation. The choice of the conditions to do the research considered the possibility of theoretical and methodological marks to be developed by the group of teachers involved and the possibility of a research in real time, that is, applied in the daily teaching conditions and school practices. The scope involved refers to the didactic and pedagogical practice, the teacher in the classroom with no direct interference on the dynamic foreseen by the Pedagogical-Political Plans of the schools, nor the initial teaching plan prepared to be developed in the curricular work, predicted for the subject the teacher will teach during the school year (Miranda, 2014, p. 8).
Besides this, we tried to guarantee, in the research and study group meetings, an open environment for the teachers, allowing reflection moments not marked by institutional control 12 .
Thus, the teachers could talk about many aspects related to the school and teachers' work.
It is in this context that the issue of interferences in the class emerged, and the contours of our investigations started to be outlined. From an empirical perspective, we mainly used audio video recordings to the meetings 13 , during the three research phases developed by the group, as well as characterization questionnaires, and interference registries filled by the teachers. For the analysis, we also considered official documents and texts published in the websites of the state 14 and municipal 15 secretaries, as well as texts created by regional directories, published in their own websites, blogs, and Facebook official pages 16 . All this material is systematized in the following table: 12 We are referring to the meetings that take place in previously established spaces and moments in the schools, as the ATPC (aula de trabalho pedagógico coletivo-class of collective pedagogical work), in the state schools, and the pedagogical meetings during the so-called hour-activity in the municipal schools. 13 All teachers signed a term of informed consent to participate and were aware of the audiovisual recordings of the meetings, as well as that the material obtain from the enactment of the didactic sequences could be used on studies related to the research. 14

Methodology
We based our research mainly in the analysis of the statements from oral (meetings with teachers) and written (institutional texts, work plans, etc.) texts. To follow this investigative pathway, we were supported by Bakhtinian works 17 , considering its contributions to the methodology in human sciences.
On the contributions of the Bakhtinian thought to the methodology adopted, we highlight that in the human sciences the lenses of the researcher are focused on the cognizant subject. The subjects speak, express themselves, and cannot be model by the researcher. In the case of our research, this other is the teacher. The care on dealing with the statements of these subjects involved trying to understand the verbal and non-verbal aspects to identify how the teacher thinks and deals with the interferences in the class. The statement analysis did not start from a rigid structure. After all, according to the Bakhtinian authors: "there are no a priori categories, mechanically applied to texts and discourses, aiming to understand ways to produce meaning in a given discourse, in a given work, in a given text" (Brait 2012(Brait [2006, p. 14). 17 We used the concept of Bakhtinian works to refer to a collection of works produced between 1920s and 1970s in the Soviet Union. They were elaborated in the context of a group of intellectuals from different areas that gathered to discuss on various themes (Brait & Campos, 2009). Therefore, our investigation on the statements was part of a dynamic process, in which we identified categories of analysis from our approximation with the texts.
The procedures adopted can be divided in three phases: i) establish the near and far contexts of the statements -that is, identify the characteristics of most immediate social situation and the broader social environment involved in teachers' statements; ii) select and transcribe excerpts of the meetings; iii) analyze the transcribed statements.
In the first phase, we initially analyzed the context close to the statements, that is, the conditions of the meetings in which they were produced. Considering this aspect was key, as the meetings constitute texts with immediate interaction, that is, the face-to-face dialogue.
Statements created in these conditions are strongly determined by the conditions of immediate discursive communication, in which the axiological position takes in response what was said and quickly gains an enunciative expression. This allows an important type of voice intersection, in which heterodiscourse and polysemy are even more evident.
In this moment, we perceived that most research group participants were teachers in on their time of experience in the classroom -those who have been teaching for more than 11 years point out the same problems as those with two years or less of experience.
Finished these phases, we transcribed excerpts of the meetings. To select them, we considered Bakhtinian idea on the concept of statement theme. The statements are composed by linguistic variables (words, sounds, intonation, etc.) and non-verbal expressions. When taken in its full complexity they have a theme that is "the total meaning of the statement" (Volóchinov, 2017(Volóchinov, [1929, p. 227). As the theme can only be grasped when considering the statement as a whole-its verbal and non-verbal elements, its closer and farther contexts-we used the already systematized data in the situation of immediate social communication and the broader social environment of teachers to make our selection. With this data in hand, we watched six meetings and identified all excerpts with statements regarding interference in the class.
When the transcription 18 of the pre-selected excepts finished, we made a preliminary analysis of the material do identify certain aspects of the research problem that were recurrent in the statements. Then it was possible to have a global perspective of the issues to be deepened, and, from this, we created categories to analyze teachers' testimonies.
After this initial analysis of the material, we searched for official texts that could present a counter-position to teachers' statements. To do so, we researched the official site of the  Paulo). With the texts in hands, we could establish a dialogue between them and the teachers' statements, identifying agreement and disagreement points among the different subjects on the dynamic of interferences. 18 Regarding the technical elements of transcription (symbols and codes used to register non-verbal aspects of the statements), we chose to adopt, an adapted version, of the transcription signs proposed by Marcuschi (1986), in his book Análise da conversação. We opted to use signs that indicate orality aspects that we consider necessary to the statement interpretation, such as pauses ((+)), truncations (/), among others. To guarantee the anonymity of the participants in the group, we substituted their names for codes.

Results
We initially started with the notion that, given the current management model of the system, the interferences in the class were a systemic phenomenon, that is, took place in basically all municipal and state public schools in the city of São Paulo. Thus, work interruptions would be a condition faced by almost all teachers on São Paulo public system. The results we found corroborate this initial idea. The current organizational model, with a net structure, seems to guarantee that in every school there are actions, programs, and projects that interfere in the classes.
We could see that from the systematization of teachers' statements. Out of the public 18 schoolteachers who talked about their works in the meetings, 15 verbally pointed out that the interferences harmed the work developed with the students. If we consider the regional directories of education (DRE -municipal system) and the teaching directories (DE -state system) in which the schools of these teachers are located, we have the following spatial distribution of the problem: Directories of the schools in which teachers pointed out interferences.
During the research we did not have participant teachers from schools in other directories 19 , threfore we cannot categorically affirm that there are cases of class interferences in all of them. However, the data point to a scenario of relatively homogenous distribution of the dynamic. Out of the participant teachers' 12 regional directories , all had at least one report of interference. We can then deduce that it is highly probable that public school teachers from the city of São Paulo have to deal with intereferences in their classes 20 .
The analysis of official texts also showed that there are incentives for the administrative personnel to promote projects that intervene in the school-contributing to this homogeneous We see that there are different types of interventions that caused interruptions in the class, resulting in proposals headed by the secretaries of education 22 and the school administration teams 23 . They answer different objectives, and it was not possible to analyze each one. However, it is important to highlight that they should not be considered indistinctively. 19 In the case of the municipal system, we did not have participants from the schools of the DREs of Pirituba, Freguesia/Brasilândia, Jaçanã/Tremembé, Guaianases, São Mateus, Santo Amaro, and Capela do Socorro. In the state system, we had no participants from DEs Norte 2, Leste 1, Leste 2, Leste 3, Leste 4, Sul, and Sul 3. 20 There are testimonies of teachers about interferences in state schools outside the city of São Paulo, in the metropolitan region (DREs Guarulhos Sul and Suzano) -suggesting that the interference dynamics is not restricted to the city of São Paulo but articulated to the state system administration. 21 According to the official document, the principals of state schools must be able to "lead the elaboration, implementation, evaluation, and guide the plans and actions in synch with the principles, guidelines, and educational rules of SEE-SP, of the Curriculum, and the pedagogical proposal of different levels, phases, modalities, areas, and subjects" ( Some actions are key for school working-such as teachers' councils and parent-teacher meetings-, furthermore we cannot ignore the relevance of projects that involve teachers' participation in collaborative cultures. Thus, in our research we were not interested in rating the relevance of those interventions but seeing how they create frequent interferences in the class and what are their impact on teachers' work.
The way the administration team defines the project calendar headed by them is one of the factors that hinders teacher work, according to teachers' statements. One of the reasons for this is that, often, teachers are not previously warned about these interferences, so it is hard to deal with the consequences. Apart from this, the administration can promote a series of projects that makes unfeasible the work already under way. As shown by excerpt 01:

Excerpt 01
(pE2): the school has an absurd amount of projects' talent shows' ethnic-racial questions' three things are going on right now ' I'm also involved in three project things at school ' [...] so many things/ this week ' on the second is the day of/ the talent show' on the fourth is parents' meeting ' on the other week, on the tenth is circus day / circus the whole day ((other participant teachers laugh)) ' and I also have the radio project the newspaper project ((laughs)) ' and I am in the middle of all this' (28 set. 2013) pE2 considers an "absurd" the number of projects headed by the school. The teacher is involved in the activities, but the adjective used suggests that the number of proposals are, in her opinion, exaggerated.
Another problem pointed out by teachers are activities that take place on Thursdays. As a result, students often do not go to school the next day, creating a long weekend. According to the teachers, the actions guided by the administration personnel (as parent-teacher meeting) when happening on a Thursday interrupt for two days the work in the classroom.
Beyond those cases, according to the teachers, non-planned actions, decided and enacted in the same day, are also quite common in the school, such as the dismissal of students. There is, for example, a non-official dismissal of students in the last weeks of class before vacations.
After the external evaluation, it is common not to demand the attendance of students, and teachers are sometimes told not to register absences. As shown by the excerpt bellow: Excerpt 02 (pM3): my::: (+) my coordinator threatened me ((laughs)) if I gave the/ I approached her and said "on the fifth we have classes, right? It is school year" ' because the tests were over, the saresp 24 was over right ' no student will come anymore' and she said " you won't teach on the fifth" ' and I said "why?" ' "no' because if you teach on the fifth someone will denounce you and they won't like you" I said "but where does it say that I can't??" ' "no, in December you can't register students' absence" (+) and I said "how come?" ' "no, you can't. Don't you do that "(December 17 th, 2011) Though considering the particularities of the case, this is one of the most common interferences appointed by teachers: after a certain date (that often coincides with the end of external evaluations), the teachers are incentivized not to teach, and the students are incited to miss school. This happens even during evaluation week, though they last a maximum of two days, the result is that schools are empty: Excerpt 03 The fact that the "school days" are officially guaranteed, but not the classes, is also a recurrent issue in teachers' testimonies. The school days are registered in the 'class journal', even if there are no classes. This is a key conceptual difference: "school day" (or "effective schoolwork day") is not a synonym of "day with classes", despite de official definition of 2010:  25 In the case of the municipal system, we can read on "Art. 7 th -School Activity Calendar has to be approved by the CEI Council/School Council/CIEJA and followed to the Regional Directory of Education…The same procedure must be used during the school year, when there is a need for alterations and/or adequacy of the Activity Calendar, due to the suspension of classes and other ways that mischaracterize the day/hour of effective schoolwork …." (São Paulo [Município] -Portaria 5969, 2012). Regarding the implementation of these interventions, the statements we analyzed indicate that the school management personnel have an important role. This can be understood when we consider the strongly prescriptive character of educational policies done by the secretaries. Though officially recognizing the importance of teachers' work, the educational policy adopted is permeated by interventions that try to pre-determine aspects of school education. Therefore, aiming to guarantee the enactment of different programs and projects, the secretaries use intermediary instances 26 and try to control the implementation process with a combination of prescriptions. When such prescriptions reach the school, they accumulate, and the administration personnel is the first to deal with the demands of its enactment 27 . To fulfill them, they do direct interventions in the class, interrupting the work developed by the teachers … if missions develop loyalty among the faithful and confidence among the committed, they also create heresy among those who question, differ and doubt. … The social construction of heresy is, in this sense, a powerful ideological force. It suppresses proper discussion of choices and alternatives by patronizingly disregarding their seriousness or by undermining the personal credibility of those who advance them. Heretics, then, are not merely dissenting or disagreeable. They are personally flawed. Weakness, madness, or badness are the hallmarks of the heretic, the qualities that mark him or her out from the rest" (Hargreaves, 2000, p. 163).
Regardless on how the teacher deals with the management, it is inevitable that the enactment of interventions harms the work done with the students. Therefore, teachers create strategies to deal with the interferences, searching for ways to minimize their negative impacts.
We classified the strategies pointed out by the teachers into three groups.
The first are tactics used mainly to bypass actions and projects headed by the management team. The advantage of these strategies is that they do not alter aspects of the work plan 28 . The disadvantage is that they commonly lead to a conflict between the teacher and the management team-and therefore are not much used.
One of these strategies is when teachers position themselves directly against an administration attitude, preventing interferences in their classes. This strategy is not always successful and can fray the relationship between teachers and administrators. Another strategy is to guarantee student presence in the school days that would be empty due to other programs.
According to teachers' statements, this maneuver is mainly used in the end of the school year.
The teachers convoke students to school, despite the already established pressure and/or culture in the school of dismissing students in the end of the year:

Excerpt 06
(pL2): I had to convoke ' it was a suggestion of pK1 so that they could come the day after the cultural fair because they normally don't go anymore ' [...] they came and I cried happy tears ' "ah' you don't know how important you are" ' and it was nice' it was the last day/ they did a metacognition of module four and a final dissertation and/ and the metacognition of the didactic sequence after ' puff' the whole day (December, 17 th , 2011) However, the result, according to the teachers, is far from ideal and, though using maneuvers to bypass this type of interference, it still leads to consequences to the class. The work conditions at school, for example, change considerably and it is not uncommon for the administration team to pressure teachers to finish their works as soon as possible. Besides this, 28 We call teachers' work plan the plan that organizes the work to be done by the teachers with their classes during a certain period (e.g., a bimester). This definition meets the one used by the state and municipal systems of São Paulo. not all the students go to class, and it is hard to guarantee their attendance for even just a day after the dismissal.
The second group of strategies involve altering teachers' work plans. This type of strategy is used when teachers think they will not be able to finish the work developed with the students. With this, they avoid conflicts with the administrators (which were common in the previous strategy). However, there are other consequences. Dynamics that, according to the teachers, would be important for students' learning are suppressed or are greatly altered 29 , hindering their work under way.
The third group of strategies used to bypass the consequences of the interferences involve guaranteeing the enactment of the work plan with no major alterations, despite the school interventions that interrupt the work developed with the students. The analysis of teachers' statements point that this is the most used type of strategy-maybe because with it, it is possible to avoid conflicts with administrators and, at the same time, avoid changes in the work plan. Teachers mainly do that in three ways.
In the first way, the teacher asks another teacher to enact the activities created. This maneuver then interferes in the class of a colleague. It is a strategy in which a teacher voluntarily enacts the activity of another-it is not an action based on institutional pressure.
In this case, despite the collaboration between teachers, the maneuver described does not allow an ideal time-space to enact the planned activities. Though enacted by a teacher during a class, the relationship among teacher-students-knowledge is modified: the teacher that puts the plan into action is not its author and does not have the same mastery of the content or the dynamic. The students also establish different interactions with each teacher. Thus, despite the guarantees the realization of the activity, the interferences still have consequences in the process in class: Excerpt 07 (pK1): the 5 th grade b' I had a::: like' I wasn't going to have classes with them so I asked a teacher to take it and do it so it was a chaos / ((laughs)) the final product/ ask another one to do it is silly' better (+) ((shaking head negatively )) because then you skip such an important phase of the work and :::' then they just wrote anything to get rid of it ( December 16 th, 2010) In the second way, teachers exchange classes. This happens when a teacher does not teach one class to teach another, aiming to put their work plan into action. As the learning rhythm of students and classes are not the same, in some cases teachers decide to teach more classes to a class whose learning process demands more time. Besides this, it is common that the interferences in class harm more one group of students than another.
Of all the strategies described by the teachers, according to them, exchanging classes is the one which allows a more adequate scenario to enact their work plans. Out of the participant teachers who did this maneuver, none reported that the dynamic or predicted activities were hindered during the class exchange. The main problem of this strategy is that it is not doable when the teachers have to work with all the classes, so they have to teach of all them.
The third and last strategy of this type involves the teachers using the ATPC moments and activity-hours to give classes, or work outside their normal schedule to guarantee the enactment of their work plan, using free time of their groups. In the case of municipal teachers, many also used the period they have in the school, without classes, to teach:

Excerpt 08
(pK1): there were two 8 th grades that I/ that I worked' with four weekly classes' but as pL2 is:: in the first semester I:::: I only had two classes' so in every free class that I could enter I entered and worked with this ' (December 17 th, 2011) Within this third set of strategies, the statements analyzed indicated that the last two with the classes during their free time, the dynamic of activities planned happen with the presence of the teacher-author of the plan. Therefore, the strategies allow a closer scenario to that imagined by the teacher when creating his/her work plan.
However, adopting these maneuvers cause problems in other aspects of teacher work.
To do them, teachers often must work more at school and/or neglect other obligations outside the classroom, which are also important to teachers' work. As can be seen by pE2's statement: About these strategies, it is also important to highlight that despite approaching them separately, teachers' statement indicate that they are used together. That is, during the school year, the same teacher can use more than one strategy. Adopted in an articulated way, they help teachers guarantee the enactment of their plans, despite the school's programs and projects.
The result, however, is far from ideal. Due to the interferences in the class, there is less time to work with the classes on what was thought and planned. According to teachers' statements, because of the lack of time, they do not work with a great part of the content, students' learning rhythm is not respected, and they cannot explore potential issues that emerge in the interaction between teacher and students.
Nonetheless, we need to note that the participant teachers were involved in a research group and the concern to guarantee the sample they needed appeared in some statements as an important factor to adopt these strategies. It is possible that this context might have led to an even higher mobilization of the teachers, who wanted to guarantee that all the activities planned were put into action. Yet, it would not be correct to assume that, without the research, teachers would not do any maneuvers to bypass the consequences of interferences. The strategies are appointed by the teachers as something common and were not seen as unusual by the members of the group, or, according to the statements, by other school subjects -this suggests that they are part of teachers' repertoire and practice.

Final remarks
Out of the scenario we described, we understand that the dynamic of interferences harms a dialogical teaching that takes into consideration students' statement to review aspects of the work plan. Besides the lack of time due to (among other things) the use of the class time to other projects and programs from different instances, there is the problem of interruption in the enactment of the work plan what disarticulate activities that were originally though in articulation with one another.
Officially, the state and municipal system believe that education, and learning, is a process 30 . The Secretary of Education of the state of São Paulo justifies learning situations 31 and proposes: This reflection in a system that organizes its curriculum by classes is particularly important. First, because each class must have its maximum potential of learning. Second, because the control of classroom improvisation is a vital condition to organize the teaching-learning process. And, finally, because the systematization and the sequence of classes should be carefully planned to respect students' learning time and answer the objectives planned (São Paulo [Estado] -Caderno do Gestor, 2010, p. 11 -italics by the author).
Despite this official concept, the constant interferences in the classes interrupt this process, culminating in the opposite scenario of that described in the excerpt above. The classes' potential is not always guaranteed, teachers constantly see themselves obliged to improvise faced by the interferences, and the sequence of classes planned to guarantee students' learning looses its continuity. These aspects contribute to a fragmented teaching process.
The teachers participating in the research group also approached the issue of interruption of the teaching-learning processes in school. According to the statements analyzed, when the process under development has long interruptions, the teachers need to remember previously taught content with the students. This happens because when the students miss days (or weeks) of classes, which would continue the work developed by the teacher, they do not resume the work from where it stopped but need to see some lessons again. This takes time and Our data indicates that this often frustrates teachers who, in many times, need to place themselves against the pressures of many instances. As seen in the excepts bellow, teachers show a lack of motivation when describing to the group how they put into action the didactic sequences amid interferences. There are many challenges and having to act against the dynamic established by the system is tiring:

Excerpts 10 and 11
(pC1): there were a series of (+) external problems that hindered the enactment and the 8 th grades were even more troubled This context of frequent suspension and compression of the class time-space has negative consequences to teachers' work and probably, also hinders students' learning. It is thus perfectly possible to affirm that the dynamic of interference is harmful to the quality of school educationeven though a quest for quality guides many of these actions, programs, and projects applied in the schools.
Nevertheless, the interventions held in school are hardly seen as a problem by the other subjects (except the teacher). In our research we found evidence that this is due to two main reasons: the pluri-meaning of the concept of school day and the prescriptive character of educational policy. The dynamic of interferences, despite frequently suspending classes in school, does not mischaracterize the concept of school day for the administration, regional directories, and secretaries. Consequently, the days without classes are not apparent and, thus, it is harder to identify a pattern of interferences for those outside the school. Besides this, as the 32 The teacher refers to an established practice in the school in which the students decide to collectively miss class (the whole group) in school days in last bimester, when the number of direct actions in the school increases. It is also important to highlight that this scenario persists despite the discourse that guarantees an autonomous and democratic administration in schools. These issues are present in the legislation an even in the LDB that, in 1996, called for schools' pedagogic and administrative autonomy, as well as the participation of education professionals in their administration 33 .
However, the realities described by the teachers indicate that these conditions were not reached.
The education model organized in network can be efficient to enact large-scale public policies (answering to diverse objectives and interests) but do not guarantee the necessary conditions to autonomy and democratic administration. Even within each school community, the hierarchical structure of the subjects collaborates to the intensification of this scenario, allowing a disorderly accumulation of actions during class time-space, which can harm learning (understood here as a process).
Therefore, we consider the need to review the current educational policy used by the state and municipal systems of São Paulo. The prescriptive model makes it hard for the secretaries to notice the impacts caused in classes by their programs. Then the subjects responsible for the interferences might not know that the volume of actions proposed hinders teachers' work-and, maybe, school education. In fact, there are projects acknowledged by teachers as important because they deal with aspects that directly impact the school community 34 , often helping the complete formation of students. Thus, according to the teachers, the programs themselves are not the problem but the way they are enacted, frequently interrupt the work developed with the students.
We think that educational policies could be more effective if the subjects in charge of its elaboration considered the contribution of school subjects. In the case of the interruptions, listening to the teachers is key, as they are the ones who could best indicate what actions impact the class-the central instance of teachers' work. These types of information could be useful when creating programs and projects that do not especially harm the work with the students.
After all, the dynamic of interferences harms not only teachers' work but also goes against the official conception of teaching and learning as a process. It seems to us that, if the objective is to improve the quality of school education, it makes sense to review the way these interventions are enacted, so that the class time-space is kept and teachers can plan and organize the elements of the class, mainly aiming students' school learning.