This article proposes to analyse some aspects of the appropriation of New School thinking in Brazil, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, in the 1950's and 1960's. The analysis is based on the assumption that the developmentalist ideology which punctuated the debate on the economic, political and social restructuring of the country during these two decades constituted a fertile ground for the return and expansion of pragmatist thinking amongst Brazilian educators, articulating itself, sometimes in contradictory ways, with this ideology. The focus of this analysis is on the writings of that group of educators which circulated around the figure of Anísio Teixeira, at the time director of the National Institute for Pedagogic Studies (INEP), an organ linked to the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC). In general, could be stated that the Deweyan pragmatism appropriation, in this context, happened according to tree perspectives: the pragmatism as cientific method, presupposing a certain conception of science, specially of social science, focusing on the applications of scientific knowledge on the solution of practical problems; as democratic style of life; and as synonym of experimentalism, in school environment.
Pragmatism; developmentalism; Brazilian educational thought; history of education; scientific policy