Transforming Trajectories of Vulnerability

TRANSFORMING TRAJECTORIES OF VULNERABILITY

TRANSFORMING TRAJECTORIES OF VULNERABILITY

M ar ia L uc ia T e i x e i r a G a r c i a e A r i no l a A d e f i la O rgan iza d o ras

Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) Bibliotecária responsável: Bruna Heller – CRB 10/2348 T772 Transforming trajectories of vulnerability / Organizadoras: Maria Lucia Teixeira Garcia, Arinola Adefila. – São Paulo: Annablume, 2022.

204 p. 16 x 23 cm ISBN 978-65-5684-059-8 1. Ciências sociais. 2. Educação. 3. Serviço social. I. Garcia, Maria Lucia Teixeira.

II. Adefila, Arinola. III. Título. Índice para catálogo sistemático: 1. Serviço social, práticas sociais 364

TRANSFORMING TRAJECTORIES OF VULNERABILITY Diagramação Fernandes Augusto Castro Projeto e Produção Coletivo Gráfico Annablume Annablume Editora Conselho Editorial Eugênio Trivinho Gabriele Cornelli Gustavo Bernardo Krause Iram Jácome Rodrigues Pedro Paulo Funari Pedro Roberto Jacobi 1ª edição: março de 2022 © M a r ia L u c ia T e i x e i r a G a r c i a e A r i no l a A d e f i l a (O r ga n iz a d o ras ) Annablume Editora www.annablume.com.br

CDU 364

SUMMARY

PRESENTATION

Vera Maria Ribeiro Nogueira

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INTRODUCTION

Arinola Adefila

Maria Lúcia T. Garcia

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UNITY 1

EDUCATION, VULNERABILITIES AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES PUBLIC POLICIES IN BRAZIL: CHALLENGES THAT QUESTION SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITIES

Eliza Bartolozzi Ferreira SHARING EACH OTHER’S SHOES: WALKING AND TALKING INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Gary Spolander

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ONLINE PEDAGOGIES: BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Katherine Winpenny

USE OF TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION: A CRITICAL VIEW

Marize Lyra Silva Passos

CONCERNS FOR EDUCATION AND SOCIAL WORK

Fabiola Xavier Leal UNITY 2

EDUCATION, POVERTY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

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71

85

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RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND SOCIO-EDUCATION IN AN OPEN ENVIRONMENT

Luciana Gomes de Lima Jacques

Beatriz Gershenson EARLY CHILDHOOD ON THE WORLD AGENDA: IMPACTS ON THE REALITY OF CHILDHOOD

Aline Elisa Maretto Lang

STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES, PROFESSIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION, FINANCING AND POLITICAL CONSERVATISM

Talita Prada

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111

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ENCCEJA UNDER A PERSPECTIVES OF STUDENTS: OPPORTUNITY AND/OR NAUGHTS?

Talita Valadares

Edna Castro de Oliveira WORKING AT SOCIO-EDUCATION POLICY: AMONG TENSIONS, CONFLICTS AND POTENTIALITIES

Pollyanna Labeta Iack

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A CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW OF INSTITUTIONS AS BIPARTRATE IN PERPETUATING THE VULNERABILITY OF FEMALE DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURS

Efe Imiren

THE PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTES AND SOCIAL MOBILITY OF FEMALES IN SRI LANKA

Pavithra Wickramasuriya

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FINAL THOUGHTS OR GOING BACKING TO THE BEGINNING

Arinola Adefila

Maria Lúcia T. Garcia

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ABOUT AUTHORS

197

PRESENTATION

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ntroducing a book is not always an easy task, as one rarely finds a production that contains an innovative approach at the academic level and, at the same time, the possibility of strong social influence from the facts and phenomena discussed. That is the case of this work, which I have the honor, and especially the pleasure, to announce. And I will certainly not be able to bring all the aspects that make this book a useful and mandatory reading for professionals, researchers, students and those interested in building fair, egalitarian and democratic societies.

This publication presents the articles and debates carried out in a workshop organized by Arinola Adefila, professor at Coventry University, United Kingdom and Maria Lucia Garcia, professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, with the institutional support of the British Council and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e Inovação do Espírito Santo – Fapes (Foundation for Research and Innovation Support in Espírito Santo, Brazil). The main purpose of the event, which marks its importance, was, first of all, the debate on educational possibilities as a strategic resource to change the vulnerability situations existing in countless regions of the planet, including Brazil. It unfortunately is a country where communities and groups in rural and urban areas present vulnerabilities of different dimensions, related to age diversity – including babies with

a high degree of malnutrition, elderly people living in extremely precarious conditions, young people in conflict with the law and under constant threat of death; to cultural diversity – as a result of sexual, religious, ethnic and racial choice; and to economic diversity, expressed in inequalities in access to salary, employment and income, with a high current and future impact on families.

Secondly, I highlight the thematic approach proposed by the organizers, bringing to light a question that is rarely thought about, which is the possibilities of active and critical education – particularized in the different dimensions mentioned above – in order to impact the intersectionalities that accompany the vulnerabilities built in various areas of social life. It is known that for a long time the World Bank has warned of the importance of education as a way of overcoming inequalities; however, the results have not been as encouraging as expected. Perhaps the explanation lies in the type of procedure used, which successfully served other population segments and other global socioeconomic moments. The idea of an innovative, strategic education, which mobilizes young people to overcome the cycle of vulnerability in its multiple dimensions and faces, was the central issue that permeated the presentations and favored the achievement of the foreseen objective.

Another highlight of the event, comprised in this publication, was the rescue of innovative and creative educational experiences with population groups such as landless rural workers, indigenous people from Amazonas and social projects developed in urban areas.

Through this strategy, it was possible to recognize approaches not investigated and with the possibility of being known, reflected and replicated in other places with similar characteristics.

In addition to the social impact of the results now released to the public interested in changing vulnerable trajectories, an objective that will have future consequences at the academic and scientific level was the concern to train young researchers. The goal is to train competent young people to produce knowledge and to master the other aspects inherent to this practice, linked to ethical issues, that is, sharing the knowledge produced, management with

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national and international funding agencies, collective production of knowledge and involvement in transdisciplinary research. Likewise, the exchange between experienced researchers, young researchers, professionals and representatives of social movements favors a complex and multifaceted view necessary for the construction of knowledge about the social.

A last, and no less important, highlight is in relation to the State as the only possibility to guarantee the enjoyment of social and economic rights, as emphasized in chapters of the book.

The above observations and indications can be seen in the publication, organized into two large units, in addition to the introduction: 1 – Education, vulnerabilities and international perspectives; 2 – Education, poverty and social justice. The first one, of a broader nature, with articles composing the perspective adopted by the organizers of the book. The second, with reflections and debates on challenging experiences that express the conception guiding the entire workshop, apprehending vulnerability as a collective issue, capable of being transformed by an emancipatory educational perspective and as a practice of freedom, as Paulo Freire teaches us.

Certainly, as any good book, its reading will bring questions, discoveries and new contributions to professional action.

Vera Maria Ribeiro Nogueira Florianópolis, February 2022.

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INTRODUCTION Arinola Adefila Maria Lúcia Teixeira Garcia

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he Transforming Trajectories of Vulnerability workshop focussed on academic debate about the future of education in Brazil and the United Kingdom, with a specific focus on access and quality for people living in vulnerable communities.

The workshop included robust discussion around Education and Social policy, administration of educational systems, social work, and social development. The workshop was hosted by Arinola Adefila (Coventry University, United Kingdom) and Maria Lucia Garcia (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo/ Federal University of Espiritu Santo [UFES]) Education and social policy in Brazil have mirrored robust political action aimed at tackling social challenges relating to systemic vulnerabilities. From 2000 – 2010, socioeconomic development in Brazil was momentous, halving poverty levels (World Bank, 2015).

However, studies show (World Bank, 2018) that poverty is rising again; the trend tracks educational opportunities, proving that access to quality education has a direct influence on socioeconomic conditions. 1.3 million Brazilians aged 15–17 are out of school; 19% (2 million) are classified as “late” i.e., not in their appropriate study series (IBGE, 2018). Gonçalves (2012) reveals that poverty is associated with key ecological factors that enable structural inequity to persist; particularly, systemic conditions leading to multiple cycles

of vulnerability (Adefila, 2010). Researchers need to understand how cycles of vulnerability trap poor young Brazilians in intractable spaces of social exclusion, deprivation, and illiteracy. Tackling these challenges is pivotal to social transformation. Strategic educational activities are needed to support youth in vulnerable communities and disrupt the cycle of vulnerability.

2T workshop used transdisciplinary expertise to investigate key dimensions of vulnerability and explore educational approaches and policies that support youth empowerment within the Brazilian context. We recognise that empowerment is not considered an individual but collective endeavour (Mészáros, 2005). There was also useful debate about the terminology of vulnerability as the social and political implications of identifying and blaming individuals for their circumstances complicated the lens through which we examine disadvantage. The papers in this book discuss inequalities and social disadvantage extensively, referencing multiple and sometimes complex disadvantages the debate acknowledges how communities and individuals that live in poor and deprived neighbourhoods, experience poor physical and mental health, have limited access to services and amenities and responsible adults often experience difficulties.

This is an important challenge at a time when Brazil is considering its approach to growth and development amidst a marked stagnation in economic metrics as measured by the World Bank (2017). The indices have been exacerbated during the covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has widened existing substantial inequality, resulting in around 13,9% of the population being unemployed in 2020 (the rate in 2019 was 12,7%) (IBGE, 2021), while the fortunes of Brazilian billionaires in the midst of the same pandemic has grown by 39% between April and July 2020 (UBS and PwC, 2020).

Pandemic responses by the Brazilian government, along with others across the world, have deepened existing inequality and highlighted once again the reliance on capitalism and exacerbated the social reproduction that keep many households living in precarity.

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There have been 616 thousand deaths (Brazil, 2021) (around 8.8% of Scotland’s population).

Brazil has deep social and economic inequalities, the pandemic has aggravated these gaps, especially affecting children. The pandemic has impacted on the wages of families, especially those already poor (UNICEF, 2021). The pandemic has affected food and nutritional security, 49% of the population has reported changes in eating habits since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, this increased to 58% for families living with children and adolescents (UNICEF, 2021).

Organizing a workshop during pandemic times was a huge challenge for all involved. We had planned to have a physical workshop in Brazil with opportunities for extended conversation over various formats and in different venues. The plans were adapted as the pandemic began, we built in contingencies for face-toface workshop over several months. This involved several days of planning and reorganisation with vendors and support services as the pandemic deepened. Our plan involved wide engagement with UFES students from various disciplines, local civic organisations, and communities of practice in Vitoria. The uncertainty and constant, complicated conversations to adapt was quite This book presents 2 sections of the papers that were written by researchers, ECRs and PhD. The workshop included in-depth discussions with Civic Society Organisations working with communities experiencing cycles of vulnerability. Examining the structural, contextual and policy barriers which limit diverse forms of educational achievement in Brazil. Luciana Jacques’ paper Restorative Justice and in the Open Environment: Challenges and Contributions to Punishment in Brazil focuses on the social justice system, interrogating the restorative justice approach and avenues for young people in the criminal justice system to access better opportunities.

The workshop encouraged ECRs to collaborate with key stakeholders – Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) – who currently provide creative educational resources in the Brazilian educational ecosystem. The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) of

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the municipality of Jaguaré (north of the state of Espírito Santo), the Social Projects of Morro do Quadro and Piedade (districts of the municipality of Vitória-ES) and the indigenous organisation of the Kambeba do Alto Solimões (Amazônia) discuss how they draw on Paolo Freire’s emancipatory practices to support alternative education models.

The aim was to deepen understanding of the multiple dimensions of vulnerability and provide spaces to investigate innovative solutions (e.g., web-based learning technologies or open educational resources) to complement existing CSO provision.

2TV was purposefully transdisciplinary, providing opportunities for researchers, practitioners and ECRs to seek new knowledges supporting transformative practice in education/public policy which directly benefit vulnerable communities.

Eight Post graduate researchers contributed to the discussion on how context-designed educational pedagogies and resources can disrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally. The PGRs came from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in education, health, social policy, political economics, and global development. The book includes chapters from 11 presenters.

The objectives of the workshop were to first and foremost provide a transdisciplinary networking space for 2TV participants to engage in international research focused on transformative practice in education and public policy that enable researchers understand cycles of vulnerability. Secondly, we sought to use the networking space to enable ECRs to develop research skills: understand the funding landscape, knowledge exchange, collaborative international practice, career development, etc. Thirdly, the interactions and dynamics of the workshop enabled us to establish effective research partnerships between 2TV participants to conduct research around conceptualising innovative pathways to disrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally to develop resilience & structural, economic and policy disruptors which support and empower vulnerable young people. Specifically, the 2TV participants now aim to work collaboratively exploring a

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wide range of topics such as support for people with a disability in educational institutions.

Key themes of deconstructing systemic cycles of vulnerability and conceptualising factors that maintain cycles of vulnerable e.g., education attainment and inequality within the UK, Brazil and internationally. In the sessions we mapped factors that impact on education attainment and inequality, enabling an exploration of structural, social, and individual dimensions of vulnerability. We also had experienced practitioners and academics providing mentoring to ECRs and discussing transdisciplinary working, ethical research practice, CSO partnerships and best practice of CSOs. Local CSOs funded by Ufes with good working knowledge of the Brazilian context, creative approaches to developing educational resources, insights into existing best practice and capacity to engage in the robust discourse of research & operationalization.

Representatives from each of these CSOs provided presentations and led robust debate CSOs: Brazilian stakeholders chosen for their valuable, creative work developing educational resources with vulnerable communities: • • • •

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST): a social movement fighting against injustice and inequality http:// www.mst.org.br/educacao/ Social Projects of Morro do Quadro and Piedade (districts of the municipality of Vitória/ES) Indigenous organisation of the Kambeba do Alto Solimões (Amazônia) Professor Edna Castro de Oliveira specialist in Paulo Freire.

The collaboration enables us to broaden opportunities for future research with a pipeline of ECRs, utilising artefacts developed by 2TV outcomes to apply for further grant funding exploring factors (macro, meso & micro levels) that instigate and maintain cycles of vulnerability in the Brazilian context leading to social exclusion, deprivation, and illiteracy; and explore the development of new

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educational models to improve vulnerable youths’ well-being/welfare and economic development.

The role of the State and the moral its responsibility to secure rights and support development was a key theme of the workshop. The provision of an effective and functional higher education underpinned

by Emancipatory Education and Libertarian Pedagogy has been debated in Brazil by Freire and others. The duty of the state is strongly contested especially with respect to ensuring access and permanence.

Freire vigorously discussed the purpose of education from a political stance, advocating for critical pedagogy which empowered learners to be activists. Equipped with the capability to critique power structures and examine patterns of inequality – social, ethnic, sexual, territorial diversity etc., learners have more opportunities to disable punitive measures and dismantle processes of colonisation, exploitation and production which keep reproducing inequalities.

Professor Eliza Bartolozzi Ferreira explained the significance of solidarity pathways in Brazil to support and strengthen a collective struggle and resistance to fight for education. This resistance takes place in all spaces and is a form of education, producing knowledge and emancipatory reproduction of social relationships. The civic organisations form their own spaces, taking up non-educational structures to have constructive and transformative learning. The central aim is to raise awareness and create new self-organisational cultures of the working class. Emancipatory education provides life skills and facilitates holistic scholarship. The education is much broader and comprehensive and relevant to learners. It is about education for relationships. Various contributors give credence to this argument and analyse in the papers various education and social policies, exploring means for improving access for those that are disadvantaged.

Prof. Katherine Wimpenny discusses Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) as a pedagogical approach and how collaboration in online spaces, transnational interactions can enhance opportunities for transformative learning. The digital divide and access to infrastructure and competencies for learning in virtual

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spaces are discussed as well as the negotiations inherent in developing intercultural and communication skills which are essential life skills.

Prof. Gary Spolander delivered a passionate critique of the pathways of socialisation examining youth in vulnerable contests.

Gary’s paper explains in rich detail in the South African context and how vulnerability is perpetuated through poor access to education and support mechanisms. Over again, the papers focus on the intersectional factors which make tackling inequalities challenging and thus reiterate the need to fight for emancipatory education policies and critical pedagogic practice at all levels. The discussion also discusses policy and ethical collaboration with respect to working with CSOs. Fabíola Xavier Leal discusses the contradictions inherent in social policy and education frameworks that do not consider the disadvantage and living conditions of the poor communities and the vulnerable environments that call for combined social and educational partnerships. She emphasised the need to utilise evidence-based research to illustrate the contradictions in practice.

Drawing upon the work of critical pedagogies led by Freire she centralises the necessity of reflective practice.

Marize Lyra Silva Passos highlighted that 21st century learning requires the ability to use technology. In her chapter, she emphasis will be given to the use of technology in education and, in particular, technology associated with the use of digital resources and digital competences, which are fundamental components for the promotion of full education.

2TV celebrated the centenary of Paulo Freire (1986, 1996) argued that critical factors linked to structural oppression and hegemony contribute to social inequality, disempowering and isolating certain groups, for example young people, who can become trapped in cycles of powerlessness (Adefila, 2010). The workshop creatively interrogated the narratives and practices of targeted groups of young people, drawing upon their lived experiences, especially those utilising the power of education to disrupt the exploitative structures diminishing the well-being of the poorest youth groups in Espírito Santo, Brazil.

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The workshop inspired transdisciplinary and transitional partnerships, the debate was very passionate and robust as we sought to gain insights into the different contexts and began to develop shared terminologies. The participants focussed on examining lived experiences and drawing thematic comparisons which emphasised how cycles of disadvantage are perpetuated through the precarious living conditions which ultimately lead many to the same pathways of socialisation. A lot of discussion focussed on the intersectionality between race, gender, poverty, and weak socio-educational policies By mapping educational contexts in Brazil and the UK the discussion highlighted socialization processes. Several speakers outlined the alternative educational models for disrupting vulnerability which have been used in different context to empower communities. There was also a critique of Educational Technology whilst acknowledging its strengths.

References ADEFILA, A. A. (2010). The Role of Voluntary Organisations in Developing the Capabilities of Vulnerable Young People. PhD thesis, University of Warwick. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3893/ IBGE, 2021. (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) Educação. Panorama por cidade. Available at: <https://cidades.ibge. gov.br/Brazil/mg/ouro-preto/panorama> IBGE, 2018. (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

Educação. PNAD Contínua (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua). Available at: <https://biblioteca.ibge.gov. br/visualizacao/livros/liv101736_informativo.pdf > MÉSZÁROS, I. A educação para além do capital. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2005.

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UNICEF. Global Nutrition Report The state of global nutrition, 2021. Available at: file:///Users/marialuciagarcia/Downloads/2021_ Global_Nutrition_Report.pdf WORLD BANK. Sustaining Employment and Wage Gains in Brazil: A Skills and Jobs Agenda, 2015. Avaiable at: https:// openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22545 WORLD BANK. Brazil – Country partnership framework for the period FY18 - FY23 (English). 2017. Avaiable at: https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documentsreports/documentdetail/148141498229092629/brazil-countrypartnership-framework-for-the-period-fy18-fy23

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UNITY 1 EDUCATION, VULNERABILITIES

AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

PUBLIC POLICIES IN BRAZIL: CHALLENGES THAT QUESTION SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITIES Eliza Bartolozzi Ferreira

T

his text presents a reflection on Brazilian education and the challenges to overcome the social, racial and gender inequalities that profoundly affect the educational process of the population enrolled at public schools. The argument revolves around the need for policies that are planned and implemented in an integrated way between the social areas (health, social welfare, psychological assistance, urban development etc.) as a mechanism to deal with the diverse problems experienced by the teaching staff and students within the country’s public institutions. It is important to stress that this is a preliminary reflection, based on part of the production developed in the field of educational policy, especially on studies discussing social and educational equity.

It is widely known that the fight against inequalities in Latin America and, particularly, in Brazil, features in our historical agenda.

We fight on a daily basis to eradicate poverty, seeking to establish a fairer and more inclusive society. The existing plethora of inequalities in our society is demonstrably a structural problem associated to the dominant model of development in Brazil that has never been tackled properly even during periods of economic and democratic growth. In turn, the expansion of schooling observed since the 1990s in Brazil has not ensured a change in the panorama of educational inequality. Part of the literature in the field of education policy

denounces the massive scale in which the right to education was introduced in Brazil, reducing the education process to the interplay of market forces. This model clearly reinforces unequal treatment at school, portraying mechanisms that operate student discrimination under a rationale based on the equality of results.

School education is currently evoked by narratives of economic nature more aimed at concealing than revealing the complexity of the historical context and meaning of school. These narratives aggrandise the accelerated changes observed in technology and in the world of work, but, as noted by Biesta (2018), they are merely half-truths, as these changes cannot be understood as affecting all aspects of life of all persons on the planet. To the contrary, the issue of democracy, for example, should remain an issue in the future.

In the Brazilian context, we can state that the world of industry 4.0 has brought in enormous challenges for people and for education, where extreme poverty and vulnerability continue to be serious social issues, followed by education and its role in human qualification.

Accordingly, the discourse of equality of results as a goal to be pursued by the education system is an excluding policy intention and, likewise, the ever present discourse of equality of chances now masked in other power technologies that seek to weaken the autonomy of the teaching staff and simplify the training process of students transformed into targets of learning and/or essential skills.

The current Brazilian curricular policy embodies this approach through the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC).

Therefore, market forces infiltrate deeply into schools, explicitly illustrated in the New Public Management (NGP) that incorporates private sector techniques in teaching work, introducing diverse forms of remuneration according to employee performance while at the same time attempting to standardise (and control) teaching activities by means of external assessments. Added to this economic narrative, with the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro (2019) as president of the country, the Brazilian education system plunged into an ultraconservative wave that seeks to privatise values accentuating patriarchalism, racism, homophobia and all types of prejudice that

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affect gender issues. These narratives leave the schools unprepared because they are directed towards an individualising and competitive project under the New Public Management.

What is currently happening is that the crisis brought about by the covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the social and educational inequalities, with the vulnerability cycle being fuelled by a diversity of devices while governments do nothing to dilute the wealth in the hands of a financially and politically powerful minority. The increasingly accentuated precariousness of teaching work and inequalities is a serious risk to democracy, implying that the fight for equal rights is essential for the exercise of citizenship. To this end, it is increasingly more necessary to implement policies that interweave educational issues with all the other social situations experienced by the students and their teachers.

The progressively more encompassing evidence of educational inequalities, combined with the conservative attacks on education work, require the endorsement of intersectoral policies orchestrated by public agents committed to overcoming the different problems that hinder the access, freedom and permanence, with quality, of students from low-income backgrounds in Brazilian schools. For such, the State’s role as coordinator of public policies is crucial.

This text seeks to contribute to this debate. In the first session, we will present a brief summary of the education issue and various initiatives of implementation of intersectoral policies; in the second, we will address the severity of the problems that affect the education system during the pandemic scenario added to the historical social and educational inequalities.

Education and policies to address inequality It is well known that in Brazil equality was never a guiding principle of its social rights when established in the 20th century.

Out historical pathway has always been difficult and sinuous, as we emerged in the world as a colony and grew as a country under the grips of a strong social, racial and gender hierarchy. Our scant experience

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of democratic governments are marked by what Florestan Fernandes (1979) coined as a restricted democracy. Social inequalities embody material, physical and symbolic violence of all kinds (gender, racial, class) are firmly imprinted in our country’s history.

Since the Federal Constitution of 1988 that pointed to the democratisation of schooling, we have not managed to significantly reduce inequalities either within or outside school. Nonetheless, important progress has certainly been made, such as the reorganisation of budgetary resources, the enlargement of schools and vacancies, the introduction of standard teaching staff remuneration, among others.

However, the democratisation trajectory has proved to be much more a quantitative expansion of enrolment in unequal and impoverished school, with undervalued staff as a professional category. A structure to exercise the right to education in an equal manner has not been created (POCHMANN; FERREIRA, 2016).

We know that it is not sufficient to have/create schools in order to achieve more fairness. Everything depends on how the school is organised, what it does, which society the school serves, its underlying civilisational project, and, in turn, the role played by the teaching work and its social value in ensuring the teacher as an agent of social reproduction for an agent aware of contestation and critical thinking. As Mauricio Tragtemberg (1985) wrote about the ambiguity of the teacher’s duty, “the school is a contradictory space: therein, the teacher is a reproducer and exerts pressure as a questioner of the system when claiming”. Since then, these ambiguities present in teaching work have been further sharpened as a result of the centrality of the New Public Management that seeks to depoliticise the educational process, transforming political issues into technical and management issues following the global market perspective, aimed at fostering competitive values among the professionals and between the students. However, this extreme individualisation developed in the education process clearly leaves its mark on the problems experienced by those involved in view of the increased poverty and other iniquities present in the school environment.

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The type of conservative modernisation project subordinate to neoliberal globalisation installed in the 1990s imprinted various forms of precarious conditions in teaching work in order to drive the professionals away from public ethics and towards market ethics.

Various legal measures were endorsed by the educational systems that seek to move teachers away from their professional collective (such as, for example, the weakening of the position and salary plan, the institution of bonus schemes etc.) based on an education project centred on skills, with an hyper-individual accountability measured by external assessments. Teachers are increasingly held accountable for the students’ low level of performance, naturalising the conditions of inequality and ignoring other factors that interfere in education processes.

In Brazil, 4 out of every 10 teachers do not have a permanent employment contract with rights. What is commonplace throughout all the country’s education networks, to a larger or lesser extent, is the temporary nature of the work, part-time work, work not protected with rights and a series of other forms of work suggesting vulnerable contracts leading to insecure living conditions of those workers.

These working conditions hinder their work among students from low-income backgrounds who very often can only count on the public school for access to food, care, physical and emotional security. Moreover, teacher training aims to develop teaching skills, but it is the social problems that are determinant and restrict the development of learning.

It is known that in order to ensure a higher quality of life and offer of basic public services, sector policies must be articulated. However, what is most observes is fragmented and/or isolated political action and, even worse, a lack of policy continuity when governments change. Generally, the disputes of power and knowledge give rise to the creation of impediments for the resolution and/or mitigation of inequalities. Therefore, a striking feature of social policies in Brazil is the absence of coordinated and integrated actions.

These factors are evident since the 1990s, with Brazil having public intervention instruments marked by the concentration of

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resources intended for the more vulnerable population, by the transfer of part of public funds to the private sector and by the decentralisation of actions by means of a network of numerous programmes addressing social problems. Nevertheless, education policies have been especially significant, despite being contradictory and financially limited.

Considering the importance of the State in the supply of the right to education, it is important to highlight the experiences undergone during the democratic-popular governments that institutionalised various spaces of participation and exercise of rights for some of the Brazilian population. Among these institutional experiences, we can quote various policies that were implemented with a view to responding to society’s complaints.

Firstly, it is important to highlight the National Conference on Basic Education (2008) and the National Conference on Education (2010 and 2014), held during the democratic-popular governments (2003-2016), entailing the countrywide participation of education staff and the financial support to create that democratic space for discussion of education policies. These experiences confirmed the importance of the democratic State in the organisation of public spaces and the participation of the workers.

Constitutional Amendment 59/2009 embodied a significant education policy that instituted the right to education as mandatory for the population aged four to seventeen years old, and also enlarged the supplementary programmes for all stages of primary education.

Not only was the legal aspect of the right to education enhanced during the Lula da Silva government (2003-2010), but also public expenditure, which practically tripled in real terms from 2005 to 2010, with 79% growth in just this five-year period. This was in contrast to what happened during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government (1995-2002), where it is estimated that federal expenditure on primary education was cut by about 10 billion reais because the honour its promise of supplementary funding (FERREIRA, 2020).

In addition to the increased funding of education from 2003, the discussions on education policies and their practical application

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involved the participation of broader segments of society, different from period experienced in the 1990s, when that participation was restricted to a number of consultants generally linked to market interests, in addition to international bodies.

The Lula da Silva government created other instances illustrating the drive towards strengthening a series of specific policies for historically deprived social groups: the Secretariat for Continued Education, Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion (Secadi) was created in 2004; the Secretariat for Primary Education and the Department of Secondary School Policies were created in 2004, representing progress towards organising compulsory education as a whole; the National Secretariat of Policies for Women (SNPM) was created in 2003; the Secretariat of Policies for Promotion of Gender Equality was created in 2003. Furthermore, public education institutions played a crucial role in this context, as they cared for a significant population that gained access to education and other social benefits for the first time.

An exemplary experience that followed was the Quotas Law, an instrument created by the Federal Government to cover public school students from low-income backgrounds, black, mixed and indigenous (PPI) and disabled persons (PcD), assisting their enrolment in higher education. Published on 29 August 2012, the Quotas Law (Law 12.711) decreed that all federal higher education institutions should reserve at least 50% of the vacancies of each technical and graduation course to public school students. In the case of technical courses, it is required that the student’s entire primary schooling has been accomplished in the public network. For higher education courses, secondary education must be accomplished in public schools.

The access to higher education policies have managed to increase the participation of youth from low-income backgrounds in higher education. These democratisation policies are associated with affirmative actions, including the quotas and University for All Programme (ProUni), which have become part of the mandatory pathway to offset the poverty installed in the social framework of historically constituted profound inequalities. However, nothing indicates that we have implanted policies for equality of education,

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as we observe that the inclusion of young people in basic and higher education is the result of policies constructed on the principle of legitimate inequality rather than on the principle of equal exercise of rights. This practice essentially consists of attempting to include a group of young people with social limitations in educational institutions that are structured in an unequal and excluding manner (POCHMANN; FERREIRA, 2016).

This idea can be identified in the inclusion policies that, in the case of Brazilian education, are implemented with low investment of public funds. This involves a concern centred on the inhibition of further social exclusion or on the recognition of a legitimate inequality, but bereft of policies that are organically planned between the different institutional spheres to ensure equality in the exercise of social rights. This practice is enormously harmful to the population enrolled at schools, as their structure and management has historically developed in an unequal and precarious form. Very often, in the same city, we find public schools operating in good buildings with facilities able to boost learning, but also others lacking the minimum conditions required to maintain and conduct teaching work (POCHMANN; FERREIRA, 2016, p. 1250).

Intersectoral policies were developed during the Lula (2003-2010) and Dilma Roussef (2011-2016) governments that sought to address the population at social risk, such as: “Family Grant”, created by the Lula government in 2004 – Law 10.836/04, is a direct income transfer programme that benefits families in situations of poverty and extreme poverty countrywide; the “More Doctors Programme”, created in 2013 by the Dilma government, aimed at remedying the lack of doctors in municipalities of the interior and outskirts of major cities of Brazil. Other programmes especially directed at education, such as: Programme to Support Federal University Restructuring and Expansion Plans (Reuni) and the quota system mentioned above.

Thus, it can be stated that during the period 2003-2014, Brazil had democratic-popular governments that sought to reduce poverty

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and extreme poverty, as well as some social inequality indicators. This process was associated not only to a more favourable economic context, but also to a political atmosphere that was more committed to inclusion and the extension of social rights. Notwithstanding this social progress, an economic and political crisis evolved from 2015, weakening our fragile democracy and triggering regressive measures that were further exacerbated with the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic.

Inequalities in data Brazilian society faced a major setback with the parliamentarymedia coup that ousted president Dilma Roussef, bringing vicepresident Michel Temer to power. After the coup in 2016, the policy scenario is one of regression; an attempt to privatise social values and the loss of the few rights that had been conquered. Education is subject to various types of attacks targeting teachers, coming from the extreme right that wished to impose the values of the white, heterosexual and patriarchal family, in addition to the slashing of financial resources that threatens the survival of Brazilian science. Many educational systems have progressively adopted programmed inspired by the “Non-partisan school” movement and militarisation of schools.

In this context of extreme inequality, the year of 2020 started with the health crisis due to the appearance of the novel virus causing covid-19, whose origin and impact on world health were as yet unknown. The pandemic continued in 2021, interfering in the social, economic and cultural routines of all populations worldwide, as social isolation was the strategy used to attempt to contain the spreading of the virus. Education was also required to reinvent itself in view of the social isolation. The pandemic imposed the urgency to establish reconfigurations of educational activities in the world.

In the case of education systems, both at the basic and higher level and in the various modalities, social isolation was indispensable.

Each administrative sphere – federal, state and municipal – faced challenging times in the organisation of learning. In order to ensure the right to education and learning, teachers reinvented themselves

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on a daily basis while constantly experiencing certainties and uncertainties in the teaching process.

The fact is that Brazil was the country that kept preschool and primary education without face-to-face classes for the longest time during the pandemic in 2020 among the nations analysed in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report published in September 2021. Schools were closed for 178 days in the country last year. And those schools were closed because the vast majority do not have structural/physical conditions to ensure the health safety of the workers and students. And the data indicate that little effort was made by the education systems to face this new reality that requires classrooms with a lower number of students and basic sanitation structures, toilets, showers etc. in suitable condition.

According to the “Education at a Glance” (OECD, 2021) report, about two thirds of the member countries and partners of the OECD reported increased funding allocated to schools to help them deal with the crisis in 2020. However, compared to the previous year, Brazil did not report any change in the education budget for basic education in 2020 and 2021. To the contrary, many education systems spent less than the mandatory minimum at schools in 2020.

The “Education at a Glance” (OECD, 2021) report also highlighted the serious problem of gender inequality. Although women show a higher probability of having completed higher education than men in the country, they have less chance of being employed. In Brazil, 77% of women aged 25 to 34 years old with higher education were employed in 2018, compared to 85% of men.

This difference was also observed for the OECD countries, with the average rates of employment being 80% for young women with higher education and 87% for men.

However, among people with lower schooling levels, the gender disparity in employment is higher. Only 35% of women aged 25 to 34 years old with schooling below secondary school were employed in 2018 in Brazil, compared to 69% of men. Apart from gender, race is another significant factor of division in the higher education sector in Brazil, where the percentage of white women completing

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higher education is 2.3 times higher than among black or mixed race women, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics report on “Gender Statistics” (IBGE, 2020).

The OECD also highlights that the pandemic raised concerns about job prospects of young adults, especially at lower levels of education. In Brazil, the unemployment rate among youth aged 25 to 34 years old with schooling below secondary school was 17.8% in 2020, three percentage points higher than in the previous year. The increase was greater than for the OECD on average, in which youth unemployment was 15.1% in 2020, corresponding to an increase of two percentage points in relation to 2019.

Brazil currently has 212 million inhabitants of which about 150 million are adults, where only 33 million people are formally employed in the private sector. Added to the 11 million people employed in the public sector, this means we have 44 million people effectively placed within the system. The informal sector has about 40 million people who “get by”, plus 15 million currently unemployed due to the pandemic, implying that half of the country’s population is marginalised. The underuse of the labour force represents a major problem of Brazil’s development (OECD, 2021).

Among youngsters aged 15 to 19 years old, when many make the transition from school into the labour market, the percentage enrolled at school falls by more than 30% compared to youth aged 6 to 14 years old in Brazil. The percentage of youth aged 15 to 19 years old attending school in the Brazilian population is 69%, while the OECD average is 84%.

Regarding teaching staff working conditions in Brazil, when comparing the Brazilian minimum wage with the instituted initial remuneration for teachers of the final years of basic education of the OECD member and partner countries, we find that Brazil has the lowest legal initial remuneration for teaching careers among these countries. The average of the OECD member countries is 2.5 higher than the national minimum wage in Brazil.

The majority of Brazilian society acknowledges the existence of gender and racial inequalities. For example, research conducted by

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Oxfam, between December 2020 and January 2021, reveals that 67% of the respondents agree that the fact of being a woman negatively affects income gained, and 76% believe that skin colour influences company hiring in Brazil.

The policies addressing current education problems in Brazil are often developed by organised social movements and other committed instances/association, but without the organising action of the State, these policies tend to exacerbate the fragmentation and their universalising potential.

Therefore, there is a pressing need for the interaction of social policies as a mechanism to respond to the plethora of inequalities interwoven in all aspects of our society, where school is a fundamental institution to help consolidate a common asset as its work could drive people to participate in the management of community affairs. However, considering the increasing insecurity of working conditions for teachers and the imprinted control based on competition between students, schools need an emancipatory political-teaching approach engaging professionals from other areas, such as health, welfare assistance, urban development, etc. to meet the needs of and care for the most vulnerable population.

Closing comments In our current days, with the ultraconservative backlash of neoliberal nature (or the new neoliberalism) combined with the pandemic scenario, Brazilian education faces the age-old challenges posed by social and educational inequalities intermeshed with new problems arising from the closing of schools and virtualisation of education on platforms that are generally private, with many teachers and schools without access to equipment or to the internet. Thus, the digital exclusion of thousands of children and youngsters is added to the historical social inequality.

These scenarios are being experienced in the midst of onslaughts across schools and their professionals by a portion of civil and political society that aims to impose new more disciplinarian and

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controlling conduct on the minds and bodies of the population.

Projects are underway inspired by the non-partisan school movement, militarised schools and a curriculum bereft of the necessary knowledge to educate and train students, as they focus on narrow skills that downplay science and the teaching profession.

In this context of profound inequalities, we are experiencing the industry 4.0 transformations that could affect the most diverse sectors of our society in different ways, where the education debate is deeply implicated in this process. If is necessary to continuously debate this topic in the academic and teaching context, in order to prevent the inexorable progress of technologies from serving an argument to “uberise” and jeopardise education, submitting our teachers, students and workers of education to an order that tends to exacerbate inequalities.

There is a pressing need to strengthen public policies towards the articulation of education communities, based on locally produced knowledge and know-how and, in each area of knowledge, as devices coordinating more integrating goals that seek to assist persons living in the midst of complex web of material and symbolic violence.

Last, but not least, it is always good to voice a message of hope.

Hence, nothing better than the champion of Brazilian education, Paulo Freire, who fought for the education of people. In 1979, Freire wrote: “As long as I fight, I am moved by hope; and if I fight with hope, then I can wait. Education does not transform the world. Education changes people. People transform the world” (FREIRE, 1979, p. 84).

References BIESTA, G. O dever de resistir: sobre escolas, professores e sociedade. Educação. v. 41, n. 1. Porto Alegre, 2018. p. 21-29.

FERNANDES, F. A revolução burguesa no Brasil. 2. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores, 1976.

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FERREIRA, E. B. A consolidação do direito à educação como desafio para um Estado de Bem-Estar no Brasil. In: ABRAHÃO, J.; POCHMANN, M. (Orgs.). Brasil: estado de bem-estar social?

Limites, possibilidades e desafios. Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2020, p. 501-522. Disponível: https://fpabramo.org.br/publicacoes/wpcontent/uploads/sites/5/2020/07/Brasil-Estado-Social-contra-aBarb%C3%A1rie-Capa.pdf FERREIRA, E. B.; LIEVORE, S. E. Atual política neoliberal de militarização da escola pública no Brasil. Revista Temas em Educação, v. 29, n. 3, 2020.

FREIRE, P. Conscientização. São Paulo: Cortez e Moraes, 1979.

IBGE. Gender data. Study and research. n. 38, 2020.

OECD. Education at a Glance. 2021. Available at: https://www. oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/b35a14e5en.pdf ?expires=1638801500 &id=id&accname=guest&checksum=BFBD5DBFDE0C53AB70 AD474DF8080D8B OXFAM. The inequality virus, 2021 Available at: https://www. oxfam.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/bp-the-inequality-virus POCHMANN, M.; FERREIRA, E. B. Educação & Sociedade. v. 37, n. 137, 2016. p. 1241-1267.

REZENDE, L. F. O que se planta se colhe: os entrelaces da Atlas Network com o movimento Escola sem Partido [What is sown is reaped: the interweaving of the Atlas Network with the NonPartisan School movement]. Dissertation (Master in Education) – Postgraduate Programme in Education, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, 2021.

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SHARING EACH OTHER’S SHOES: WALKING AND TALKING INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES Gary Spolander

Introduction

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his paper is based on a reflexive autoethnographic approach of exploring my experience of working as a member of a collaborative research team. Within this chapter I have sought to use reflexivity to create descriptions, which are theoretically relevant (see for instance Karra & Phillips, 2008, p. 547), for a research group which has been actively engaged in the delivery of the Transforming Trajectories of Vulnerability Workshop (2TV) project. It is hoped that this reflection and the learning from the experience, as part of the international research project, would support the aims of objectives of 2TV, in which we sought to examine the challenges to transform practice in education and public policy for vulnerable communities in Brazil and the UK. The process of reflexivity in collaborative research is a reasonably well-trodden path (see for instance Alvesson et al., 2008; Thomas et al., 2009). The use of an autoethnographic approach has enabled me to utilise my personal experience and to engage systematic analysis of this experience to critically examine the patterns and rhythm of the research process (see for example Ellis et al., 2011; Hernandez et al., 2017). The combination of my own personal writing (Bruner, 1993; Rothman, 2007) along with my reflections were supportive

of my efforts to understand the values and meaning of cultures (in society and research teams). My focus on this occasion was on international research culture and the values and meaning that arose from the efforts of the team to achieve the promises made in the research bid (Kelly et al., 2020). This reflective experience is therefore informed by autobiography ethnography and autoethnography to enable a theoretically informed introspection. The global pandemic, with all the implications of social distancing, periodic lockdowns, precarious funding (which includes long-term uncertainty due to BREXIT) has challenged efforts to remain self-motivated, engaged with online research along with the struggle to continue being selfreflexive. Despite all of these challenges, this time also represented an important opportunity to continue be research active. While the restrictive research context and environment made collecting outside data enormously difficult, it also expanded opportunities for self-reflection. Consequently, we need to recognise “... the researcher is as much a part of the social world as anyone else. In an important sense, therefore, the social world is as much “in here” as it is “out there”. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to us that the beginning of social inquiry can be the researcher’s own experiences and activities, and self-reflection upon these. After all, the first and most accessible thing for observation is yourself…” (Francis & Hester, 2012, p. 35).

This chapter has afforded me the opportunity and privilege to write about my self-reflection in order to understand my relationship with my colleagues on and in a research collaborative (Chang et al., 2013), but also required me to collaboratively and methodically gather and analyse systematically collective data on lived experiences. Rather than this reflective process only being linear, it relied on conversations, reflections and negotiations with my colleagues (Chang et al., 2013). Within the context of this work, this reflective process has been over a period of 2 years in duration, in part as we had an extension to the completion deadline due to the

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pandemic. Especially as at the start, no one could have foreseen the global pandemic or its duration or toll on humanity.

This chapter therefore emerged from an online presentation made as part of the 2TV presentations at the Federal University of Espirito Santo in Vitoria, Brazil on 9 November 2021. Through the group of researcher presentations, we sought to share our experiences of working together with and for early-stage UK and Brazilian researchers, as part of a broader conversation of supporting their careers in developing future international research and collaborations. It was also clear that both countries participating in this project were also experiencing the impact of austerity, Brexit (the UK) and the COVID-19 pandemic. As a research team, we have collectively had both positive and negative experiences of research collaboration, an experience that we have found to be all too common from anecdotal conversations with colleagues, although rarely discussed in the peer reviewed literature. It is important to acknowledge that the international collaboration was undertaken, at least for the last proportion of its delivery, through the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has had an inevitable disruption to research globally, given its global nature and that the severity of the public action taken to address the health concerns. These state and policy decisions also impacted on individual’s researchers personal and professional lives, their health, due to social distance requirements, travel restrictions and the institutional pressures to continue to meet student and staff needs, within an increasingly marketised system of higher education. Consequently, despite the enormous challenges, authors such as Cornwall (2020) have proffered that the pandemic also offered a unique opportunity to record people’s experiences and use qualitative frameworks, along with the use of methodologies to collect qualitative data from distance (Taster, 2020).

The collective research process was undertaken as part of the Transforming Trajectories of Vulnerability Workshop (2TV) project, supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) under Capes Print Grant (number 88881.311890/2018-01). Other funding included the

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National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) (project number 408288/2018-3) and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e inovação do Espírito Santo [Fapes] (307/2020). This successful bid was the culmination of a long process of research collaboration partnership and working together by the core members of the working group. As a result, this chapter explores the experience of the research process through reflection, recognising that most collaborative research literature when exploring project dynamics often address the relationships with funding organisations (Katz & Martin, 1997), rather than being inwardly focussed. Research teams are mostly often externally focussed on their efforts to understand relationships and interactions of what is being studied, rather than being inwardly focussed on their own collaborative dynamics. The team’s processes and the relationship between the researchers are often therefore deprioritised or completely absent in discussion of research process. So too we should recognise that the inward focus on process and relationships are crucial as it influences how research is framed, shaped along with the results of its production (WrayBliss, 2003). It is therefore surprising that less attention has been given to these aspects of the research process, especially given the tendency for published work to reflect on the indicators of research success rather than process.

International research and context The context of international research is that it is often linked to the process of educational globalisation and increasingly marketisation, an area that the research team had considerable critical interest (Savaya & Gardner, 2012). For many researchers their employment context and reality is that their higher educational institution may symbolise the spirit of the neoliberal university, with for instance UK practices of workforce casualisation, privatisation, competition and challenging financial environments (Amsler & Canaan, 2008; Ball, 2015a, 2015b; Canaan & Shumar, 2008). Educational marketisation has been a key policy driver for many high income countries, with the

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pressure for internationalisation activity being a result of neoliberal policy and market-bordered research rivalry (Kim, 2009). Besides the marketisation drivers, policy makers and academic funders have supported international collaboration, with the belief that the impact of research will improve, advance skills and result in better publications ( Jeong et al., 2011). Consequently we need to recognise that neoliberalism is “in here” as well as “out there” (Peck, 2003). So too, many scholars have felt encouraged and cajoled to participate in international collaborative research (Brew et al., 2013), although in our case the core researchers had worked together for some time prior to this project and have been careful to ensure that any early career researcher participants don’t feel pressurised to participate.

Participation is therefore voluntary.

There has also been a dramatic increase in academic partnership (Ellis & Zhan, 2011) in recent years. Consequently, most original research published is undertaken by multiple authors (Whitfield, 2008). However, despite this encouragement to undertake international research, there has been little published about what constitutes successful research collaboration. Ball (2015a) highlights that these structural factors also influence how scholars seek to manage personal, professional and employment conflict, recognising that universities constraints are also a result of capitalism, along with inconsistency between regulation, policy and academic remit (Ball, 2012).

Spolander et al., (2016) identify that international research is expensive, time consuming and consequently involves considerable anxiety for both individuals and their employing institutions regarding delivery and reputations. These factors while not always verbalised, often link to the structures and constraints identified through marketisation and the resulting managerialism implemented within higher educational institutions. It was clear within this consortium, that the challenge was of delivering substantial tangible benefits for early-stage career researchers in the UK and in Brazil, but of doing this on a reduced budget, while seeking to ensure principles of equity of access for participants. However, it was clear that international research collaboration was often complex, involved structures which

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surround us as researchers, thus creating both opportunities and constraints. So too, as we were exploring of ideas of mutual interest, a common commitment resonated. It goes without saying that the most obvious challenges are often language and cultural differences, which require researchers to continually work on understanding underpinning theory, ideology, culture (national and organisational), research processes and world views. These often required several to long with protracted discussions, questioning common and technical language codes and meanings (Spolander et al., 2016).

Our team needed to return to these discussions, time after time, to clarify, debate and challenge models and ideas. This should not be seen as problematic, but rather the process of international collaborative research. Within our team, while we only had only two key languages, Brazilian Portuguese and English, the team also comprised researchers whose birth origins also went beyond the Brazil and the UK to include several countries in Africa, and Europe.

As a team, we recognised the constant challenge and temptation to revert to comparative models of analysis to address complexity, rather than exploring and managing the complexity of different theoretical models.

International collaboration: institutional vs professional interest At the institutional level, scholars often face pressure to engage in academic partnerships, to meet promotion and tenure requirements of their employers (Petry & Kerr, 1982). International research is also seen, by some, as a method to develop innovative solutions at a high standard through academic partnerships (Mohrman & Lawler, 2011; Peterson, 2001) as well as to attract established and high calibre researchers (Rynes, 2011). The importance of research collaboration for academics and higher education institutions has been underlined by institutional strategic plans, as well as professional initiatives to expand international collaboration (Nadkarni, 2013; Yunong & Xiong, 2012). Rambur (2009, p. 82) highlights that literature on research collaboration identifies three categories namely: conceptual

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work, use of case studies to develop models and thematic partnerships.

Additionally, five types of collaboration were identified by Rambur (2009) along a scale of increasing academic risk, growing human factors and the corresponding costs of collaboration along with time required to generate research outputs. All of types in turn aids in mapping the ‘asymmetrical’ factors which contribute to increased complexity and time to research outputs. This framework is mapped on a graph of two axis’s, which highlights that as the complexity of the interface increases, so the time to produce academic outputs increases, with the five collaboration types requiring increased levels of negotiation between institutions and researchers (Rambur, 2009).

Within Rambur’s model as complexity increased, so did the potential for human psychological and physiological challenges and strains (Angela Brew et al., 2013). Thus, Brew et al., (2013) proposed that use of Rambur’s (2009) model enabled their research collaborative group to map their development and structure. They then also used the work of Archer (2007) on reflexivity, to identify and map the opportunities for personal growth, noting that individual researchers also sought to mediate the structures of the project process. Our inter-disciplinary team comprised the disciplines of social work, education, economics and business, requiring inter-disciplinary dialogue, with the process of supportive challenge enabling a useful and safe space for discussions, the sharing of ideas, along with the challenging of those ideas and ontological perspectives.

Facing both ways: towards teaching and research Teaching loads and administrative pressure increases have both stimulated and constrained research collaborations (Belanger & Bockman, 1994), while others have also identified this type of collaboration to be more intellectually stimulating (Thomas et al., 2009). So too all members of our collaborative also undertook teaching in addition to work on this and other projects. Others, (see for instance Lee & Bozeman, 2005), have argued that when author numbers on papers are considered, collaboration doesn’t

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always equate to high levels of productivity and therefore suggest it is important to conceptualise individual and environmental factors which support the achievements of this collaboration. However, as already outlined the complexity of the ideas being discussed are also an important and often poorly recognised factor. For our collaboration we have to date produced 13 papers which have either been published or are under review, six of which include early career researchers. The aspiration is that all papers would be submitted to high-ranking journals. We have one paper that we have spent two years writing and rewriting following reviews and once again is now nearing a revised completion submission, but it deals with sociopolitical sensitivities, mirroring Rambur’s model.

English language journals often predominate in rankings or international universities strategic consideration of high-profile dissemination opportunities (Lillis & Curry, 2010). It has been estimated that the prevalence of English in academic journals was between 75-90%, depending on discipline (Deng, 2015; van Weijen, 2012) which mirrors the global migration of students and scholars.

For colleagues whose first language is not English, or even if their first language is English, the competitive nature of these journals and the different international requirements make this process difficult.

This often requires new skills in writing for this audience, along with needing to write shorter papers than are the norm for instance in Latin America. So too, the tradition of limited word length in English language journals of 4-6,000 words may sit at odds with the tradition in some Latin American journals where papers may be 10-20,000 words in length. Writing shorter pieces in a language which is not your mother tongue provides a substantial challenge, along with confidence. Not publishing in English, may also for some scholars, come at the cost of those publications not being recognised for promotion or being unable to receive research funding (Queiroz de Barros, 2014). So too English provides an important role in the creation of bibliometrics, which is used to evaluate knowledge production of scholars (Bardi & Muresan, 2014).

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Reality bites Once project funding is awarded and the initial euphoria has ended, the need to establish the partnership commences, with our project being no different. The excitement of the creative bid process is almost immediately replaced with the anxiety of project organisation, operationalisation, and delivery. The successful bid has normally already resulted in the institutional agreement to undertake the project as a consortium, but crucial is the human element and the importance of a shared vision. It is important to recognise that this partnership was initially imagined as a collaboration, which was seeking to achieve something that we are as partners either could not do alone or that we believed would be strengthened by a collective approach (see for instance Long & Arnold, 1995). Initiation, despite the core members having worked together previously, was undertaken through the start of multiple shared conversations which started this new collaboration in which it helped to set initial expectations, an opportunity to share values and goals, and seek group and individual commitments. However, this crucial element of the process of walking together needs constant reaffirmation. Engelbrecht et al., (2014) noted that project groups often transition through five stages (forming, norming, storing, performing, and adjourning) and while these do not always work in sequence, they often comprised necessary stages of collaboration, even though we as a team did not always acknowledge them at the time.

Team Processes Once the project commenced, the hard work of sustaining the progress of the project, along with skills sharing sought to encourage one another and sustain the partnership. This sustaining process (storming and performing) extended beyond ensuring that the project tasks are being delivered, but also reaffirming commitment to the collective, the aims of the project and our personal commitment to the overall aims of the project, each other and our initial aims.

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This included supportive challenge throughout the life of the team to members of the collective regarding their commitment and obligations to the group, and at the extreme perhaps consideration of whether the partnership should be widened or changed to engage new skills and address challenges. As part of my reflection, I recognised that for some colleagues the institutional prestige of participating in an international collaboration may be personally challenged by their own institutional pressures. This was especially once individuals leave the immediacy of the collaborative team space or the collective place of project meetings to the return to the reality of their day jobs, along with its pressures for delivery and institutional life. This proved to be a testing time for both individuals and for the international research collective, amplifying the challenges and importance of communication, culture, language, and personal experience. Furthermore, should the challenge of nonperformance or poor performance of colleagues arise, the teams trusting relationship and openness of communication could be severely challenged, requiring a reaffirmation of collective values through personal responsibility, open communication and shared decision making. The challenge being that successful collegiate working, requires considerable personal commitment, along with at times testing levels of trust within and between the team and employers, and managing anxiety related to potential reputational loss through individual, team or institutional failure. It was equally important to recognise that partnerships also change over time, with partnership evaluation offering a mechanism to re-evaluate the opportunities for team sustainability beyond the project.

Conflict resolution is never a simple process, but the challenge of culture, language, distance and communication often make this more difficult, with challenges regarding the binary positions of individual accord and group conformity, which might involve difficult challenges about personal interests. Given our geographical spread and lack of opportunity for sustained meeting before the pandemic, as a team we were already extensively working online before the full impact of social distancing and enforced travel restrictions made an impact.

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Consequently, we are unaware of any performance change between the pre-pandemic and pandemic reality of research collaboration as identified in some other teams (see for instance Klonek et al., 2021).

Important was also a collective approach to self and team management, which was negotiated on an equal basis between team members based on workloads, skills required often through a combination of formal and informal discussion, with team members volunteering and being supported by colleagues. Therefore, our approach was based on mutual trust and commitment meant that as a collective the group addressed opportunities and challenges collectively, with little interpersonal conflict. Academic collaboration traditionally often differs from the experience of corporate teamwork in that sector, due to the tendency in academic teams for researchers to be independent self-governing thinkers (Busse & Mansfield, 1984), although they may also be problematic to manage (Stephan & Levin, 1992) unless team styles recognise and ensure that attention is given to both interpersonal and team dynamics, as well as the tasks at hand.

Qualitative vs quantitative research As a team we have been able to undertake both qualitative and quantitative research throughout our collaboration. Work was undertaken with local partners commissioned to collect primary data, the analysis of secondary data as part of our challenge to address the aims of the project.

The use of qualitative methodology was also important given the emphasis, importance and range of research processes which vary globally. In this regard, quantitative techniques are often more highly valued in some lower- and middle-income countries, while as a team we also used qualitative research. The importance of qualitative being that it offers the opportunity to enable those without voice i.e. those in precarious living conditions, to amplify their voice (Bogdan and Biklen, 2007, p. 10; Rothman, 2007, p. 12).

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Walking with colleagues An important consideration in working together was the level of professional and personal trust with was developed and maintained between researchers. In this regard a trusting relationship has described as “one into which actor enter in order to realize benefits which would otherwise not be available to them. They do so in the knowledge that this increases their vulnerability to other actors whose behavior they do not control, with potentially negative consequences to themselves” (Ruzicka & Wheeler, 2010, p. 70).

In retrospect, while we as a team frequently shared and talked about the experience and impact of working as academics throughout the pandemic on ourselves, colleagues, families and institutions, the team largely appeared to manage the demands and additional pressure placed on individuals remarkably well. Indeed authors such as Roy & Uekusa (2020) have highlighted the challenge within extreme contexts, for instance the current global pandemic has resulted in many mental health concerns including that of anxiety, stress, depression, loneliness and disconnection. It should be noted that this was widespread in the population, including academia.

It was therefore important for us as researchers to be aware of which of our colleagues require help and what additional coping supports might be used to support them. However, the collective and shared network arrangement of leadership and trust within the team, seemed to offer a form of protection, along with a safe space for individual team members to reflect collectively on our experiences and challenges. This provided space for us to challenge, explore and recognise the differences in socio-economic, political and historical context and resulting difficulties between Brazil and the UK and how this might help us to support one another.

This underlined the importance of personal relationships as being an essential part of any partnership (Breslin et al., 2011), although insufficient acknowledgement is often given to this important

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factor. As outlined earlier, communication and the exploration of ideas, ontology, language, culture and perspectives was an important factor in collaboration, with miscommunication being a persistent potential challenge for partnership failure (Ross, 2012).

Dissemination Our experience as core researchers has been that any international collaborative research project requires the selection of the “right” collaborators. However, what is “right” depends on achievement of project requirements and which included support and creating opportunities for early career researchers. Consequently, there are several aspects of what might result in failure or success in any collaboration, some of which may relate to members perceptions of other members contributions in areas such as time.

The sharing of knowledge and understanding is often best undertaken through the development of artefacts which support the sharing of knowledge (Engelbrecht et al., 2014). These comprise co-created individual & team understanding, knowledge and perspectives which find form in some form of repository artefact.

This can be shared through writing, presentations or creative tools which can then be shared and disseminated both within and with a wider audience and this highlights importance of successful writing team as part of a dissemination strategy.

The future We will continue to work together both as a core group of researchers, seeking opportunities to work alongside early-stage career researchers to develop capacity, capability, and legacy. However, as discussed earlier the involvement of new members is a challenging process requiring the consideration of team dynamics, skill mix, career development opportunities, and mentoring capacity. For the core members, we have developed a community of practice which transcends our individual professional disciplines, and which provides us with an opportunity

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to reflect of social challenges and seek to undertake novel research to enable change and debate with policy makers and society.

Almost inevitably this also requires the continued application for and receipt of research funds to enable travel and time to meet, explore and evaluate. Within these opportunities we can create opportunities to strengthen and maintain commitment to each other and undertake further work to develop critical models of international research.

We are committed to the on-going challenge of seeking funding, most often to include countries which are sometimes not the focus on mainstream funding sources i.e., Cuba. We have sought less formally to include Cuban colleagues but have found for political & economic reasons their formal inclusion has more challenging, despite the uniqueness and importance of its voice in international research collaboration regarding human and social development.

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Ball, S. J. (2015a). Living the Neo-liberal University. European Journal of Education, 50(3), 258–261. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12132 Ball, S. J. (2015b). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: refusing neoliberalism?

British Journal of Sociology of Education, 5692( July), 1–18. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01425692.2015.1044072 Bardi, M., & Muresan, L. (2014). Changing research writing practices in Romania: Perceptions and attitudes . In K. Bennett (Ed.), The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing: Discourse, Communities and Practices (pp. 121–147). Palgrave Macmillan.

Belanger, K., & Bockman, E. B. (1994). Writing our way into a discourse community. Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication, 57(1), 55–57.

Breslin, E., Stefl, M., Yarbrough, S., Frazor, D., Bullard, K., Light, K. & Lowe, A. (2011). Creating and sustaining academic-practice partnerships: Lessons learned. Journal of Professional Nursing, 27(6), 33–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2011.08.008 Brew, A., Boud, D., Lucas, L., & Crawford, K. (2013). Reflexive deliberation in international research collaboration: Minimising risk and maximising opportunity. Higher Education, 66(1), 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9592-6 Bruner, J. (1993). No Title. In R. Folkenflik (Ed.), The culture of autobiography: Constructions of self- representation (pp. 38–56).

Stanford University Press.

Busse, T. V. & Mansfield, R. S. (1984). Selected personality traits and achievement in male scientists. Journal of Psychology, 116, 117–131.

Canaan, J. E. & Shumar, W. (Eds.). (2008). Structure and agency in the neoliberal university. Routledge.

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Chang, H., Ngunjiri, F. & Hernandez, K. C. (2013). Collaborative Autoethnography. Left Coast Press.

Deng, B. (2015). English is the language of science. http://www.slate. com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/01/english_is_the_ language_of_ science_u_s_dominance_means_other_scientists.html Ellis, C., Adams, T. E. & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: an overview. Forum: Qualitative Collaborative Social Research, 12(1), 10.

Ellis, P. D. & Zhan, G. (2011). How international are the international business journals? International Business Review, 20, 100–112.

Engelbrecht, L., Spolander, G., Martin, L., Strydom, M., Adaikalam, F., Marjanen, P., Pervova, I., Sicora, a. & Tani, P. (2014). Reflections on a process model for international research collaboration in social work. International Social Work, 1–14. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0020872814531305 Francis, D., & Hester, S. (2012). An Invitation to Ethnomethodology: Language, Society and Social Interaction. Sage Publications.

Hernandez, K. C., Chang, H., & Ngunjiri, F. W. (2017). Collaborative autoethnography as multivocal, relational, and democratic research: opportunities, challenges, and aspirations. A/b Auto/ Biography Studies, 32(2), 251–254.

Jeong, S., Choi, J. Y., & Kim, J.-Y. (2011). The determinants of research collaboration modes: Exploring the effects of research and researcher characteristics on co-authorship. Scientometrics, 89, 967– 983.

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Karra, N. & Phillips, N. (2008). Researching “Back Home”: International management research as autoethnography. Organizational Research Methods, 11, 541–561.

Katz, J. S., & Martin, B. R. (1997). What is research collaboration?

Research Policy, 26(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/S00487333%2896%2900917-1 Kelly, N., Doyle, J., & Parker, M. (2020). Methods for assessing higher education research team collaboration: comparing research outputs and participant perceptions across four collaborative research teams. Higher Education Research and Development, 39(2), 215–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1676199 Kim, T. (2009). Transnational academic mobility, internationalization and interculturality in higher education. Intercultural Education, 20(5), 395–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675980903371241 Klonek, F. E., Kanse, L., Wee, S., Runneboom, C., & Parker, S. K. (2021). Did the COVID-19 Lock-Down Make Us Better at Working in Virtual Teams? Small Group Research, 1–22. https://doi. org/10.1177/10464964211008991 Lee, S., & Bozeman, B. (2005). The impact ofresearch collaboration on scientific productivity. Social Studies of Science, 35(5), 673–702. https://doi.org/10.2307/25046667 Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. Routledge.

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Mohrman, S. A. & Lawler, E. E. (2011). No Title. In S. A. Mohrman & E. E. Lawler (Eds.), Useful Research (pp. 407–418). Berett-Koehler Publishers.

Nadkarni, V. V. (2013). International Social Work achievement. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0020872812473061 Peck, J. (2003). Geography and public policy: Mapping the penal state. Progress in Human Geography, 27(2), 222–32.

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Savaya, R. & Gardner, F. (2012). Critical reflection to identify gaps between espoused theory and theory-in-use. Social Work (United States), 57(2), 145–154. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/sws037 Spolander, G., Garcia Teixeira, M. L. & Penalva, C. (2016).

Reflections and challenges of international social work research.

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Taster, M. (2020).NoTitle.Editorial:Social Science in aTime of Social Distancing. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/03/ 23/editorial-social-science-in-a-time-of-social-distancing/ Thomas, R., Tienari, J., Davies, A. & Meriläinen, S. (2009). Let’s talk about ‘us’. A reflexive account of a cross-cultural research collaboration. Journal of Management Inquiry, 18, 313–324. van Weijen, D. (2012). The language of (future) scientific communication.

Research Trends 31. https://www.researchtrends.com/issue-31november-2012/thelanguage-of-future-scientific-communication/ Whitfield, J. (2008). Collaboration: Group theory. Nature, 455, 720– 723.

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Wray-Bliss, E. (2003). Research subjects/research subjections: Exploring the ethics and politics of critical research. Organization, 10(2), 307–325. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508403010002007 Yunong,H. & Xiong, Z. (2012). Further discussion of indigenization in social work: A response to Gray and Coates. International Social Work, 55(1), 40–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872811406893

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ONLINE PEDAGOGIES BEYOND THE CLASSROOM Katherine Wimpenny

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irstly, I would like to thank Dr Arinola Adefila here at Coventry University (CU) in the UK, and Professor Lucia Garcia at the Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES), Brazil, for the opportunity to speak today as part of our 2TV project funded by the British Council.

2TV, led by Arinola, is, as you may be aware, examining structural, contextual and policy barriers, which limit all forms of educational achievement across our geographies. 2TV has brought together a consortium of transdisciplinary researchers and together we are focused on examining transformative practices in education that can aim to directly benefit vulnerable communities. Importantly, we are exploring how context-designed educational pedagogies and resources can help disrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally.

I am Katherine Wimpenny, Professor of Research in Global Education and Theme lead of Education without Boundaries, one of the four areas of research in the Centre for Global Learning (more details about our Centre themes can be found here.) Our team is made up of 10 researchers; five based in the Centre, and five as Faculty Research Associates (academics researching with us on fractional hours as part of their substantive teaching role in schools/ faculty across campus). Together, we represent a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds including health, computer sciences, peace

studies, engineering, and geography etc. but with a united focus on education, with our Centre mission being to: “[B]ring an educational lens to societal challenges to provide a better understanding of how to create and sustain a fairer and inclusive society” (GLEA Centre Business Plan, 2021)

Our research within Education without Boundaries focuses, with our local, national, and international partners, on contextualised and comprehensive internationalisation. Drawing on Hudzik’s (2011) definition, this brings into play not only international and comparative perspectives about the teaching, research, and service missions of higher education, as embraced by institutional leadership, governance, faculty, students, support units etc., but importantly, the urgency for universities’ connected engagement with society, not least to address the interconnected local/global challenges we are facing (UNESCO, 2021).

We have identified three subthemes which guide our research practices; Third Space cross-border learning; Challenge-led education for sustainable development; and Hybridity and new imaginaries in transnational education. Additionally, across each subtheme, we seek to address the intersections of decolonisation, digitalisation, co-creation, and creativity, to influence policy and practical implications for educational reform.

With this backdrop in mind, I turn to the main focus of this thought piece, and our research and practice examining online pedagogies beyond the classroom to disrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally, and with particular focus on Collaborative Online International Learning, which I will hereafter refer to as COIL. As a pedagogical approach, COIL encompasses collaboration in online spaces, transnational interactions, and transformative learning. By the online space this might be synchronously or asynchronously via Microsoft Teams, or an Open Moodle site accessed via a computer, laptop, or mobile phone. The transnational interaction involves how the COIL exchange is underpinned by a

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number of learning activities as part of a course or module, jointly negotiated by two or more academics from different universities in different countries. The transformative learning potential involves students, from different parts of the world, learning together on a common area of focus.

The learning together aspect is key, including how that is facilitated (which is not to be underestimated) as the collaboration and togetherness aspects are to enable students multiple opportunities to learn how to form and maintain relationships. This includes willingness and regard considering the perspectives of others, and to work co-operatively with peers from across different cultural backgrounds to address and reflect upon the challenges of living and working in contemporary societies as global citizens and professionals (Beelen et al., 2021).

The area of focus during a COIL exchange can typically engage learners within and across disciplinary borders. For example, undergraduate nursing students in Coventry might examine Covid front-line care approaches and after-care procedures with nursing students in the Philippines, to discuss and examine respective practices. Or, as COIL can engage learners across disciplinary borders, there is rich opportunity for the focus of learning to be on addressing a significant challenge / or wicked problem (Rittel & Webber, 1973), that would be potentially restrictive for one discipline alone to problem-solve. For example, geography students from the UK could come together with architect and civil engineering students in Canada, and in transdisciplinary ways examine new housing and planning approaches for reducing disaster risk. And, as in this example, we can see how opportunities open up to productively engage with community and industry partners, living and working in disaster risk areas, for example, as part of community engaged scholarship (more on this later).

Whilst COIL initiatives between geographically distant classrooms are not new, particularly in the field of language learning (more typically referred to as teletandem, telecollaboration and/or online intercultural exchange) (see the debate on terminology use in

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O’Dowd 2021), COIL represents an emerging pedagogy for many universities, not least universities in the Global South. Furthermore, as a consequence of the global pandemic, there has been an urgency to rethink internationalisation and in ways that all students can participate.

Importantly, COIL is a pedagogical approach as part of internationalisation-at-home (IaH), which stresses purposeful international and intercultural dimensions in both the formal and the informal curriculum for all students (Beelen & Jones, 2015). IaH, as part of curriculum internationalisation, therefore, looks beyond the exclusionary nature of physical mobility, which has tended to be viewed as the most dynamic aspect of internationalisation, to the increasing focus on the digitalisation of the home curriculum to include more students and geographical locations (Wimpenny & Orsini-Jones, 2021). Indeed, the pandemic has prompted reexamination of the mobility of a minority of students, emphasising instead the resources to be utilised at a local level in the delivery of an internationally focused curriculum, resonating with IaH approaches (Watkins, 2018; Beelen et al., 2021).

Coventry University has been engaging in COIL with international partners since 2011 and whilst practices have grown significantly from small-scale pilots, and with global engagement a core component of strategic orientation, COIL is now viewed as an integral component of the university’s IaH initiatives, and has become an institutional requirement for all courses, not only as part of the university’s Internationalisation Strategy, but also as a core component of the university Education Strategy 20211. For example, in the last academic alone (2020-2021) over 7,000 students engaged across 170 COIL exchanges, led by 141 CU staff delivered in conjunction with 134 institutions from 52 countries2.

1. https://www.coventry.ac.uk/globalassets/media/global/09-about-us/who-we-are/ corporate-strategy-2021.pdf.

2. https://www.coventry.ac.uk/news/2021/coil/

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Whilst there is much to share about what we have learnt at Coventry, and international research has documented good practices, protocols, as well as resources required, it is clear COIL pedagogies for extending online learning beyond the classroom requires significant regard in appreciating the complexity of the inclusive and equitable considerations required for networked learning ( Jacobs et al. 2021). And, including how COIL can engage with community partners beyond the institutions involved.

It is to the ‘inclusive and equitable’ I now turn, and with that a focus on social justice framings and what educational equality is in COIL. Social justice in education demands equity for all students not least in recognising and embracing student diversity. Further, as a mindset, social justice encourages openness, collaboration, and information sharing. For example, COIL as mentioned previously emphasises collaboration, which can be enacted in myriad ways depending on context, confidence, resourcing, etc. Designing COIL therefore includes consideration of access, time for engagement, length of sessions, cultural nuances that capture the voice and representation of everyone, and ample opportunities for feedback and reflexivity. This can be challenging and time consuming requiring considerate development with local educators and learners. (See for example a recent report detailing our collaborative efforts on JOVITAL, a comprehensive capacity building programme designed to facilitate knowledge transfer for using COIL/virtual exchange to offer learning opportunities for academic staff, university students and disadvantaged learners in Jordan). In another example, iKudu is engaging 10 universities (five from Europe and five from South Africa) in which we are focused on setting up a Global South-North community of practice on COIL for curriculum internationalisation and transformation.

I must thank Catherine Cronin (2020) for her chapter “Open Education: Walking a critical path” and for introducing me to Ursula Franklin’s work, quoted by Whitaker (2016) - Meredith Whitaker being an internet researcher and poet who spoke with Franklin having been moved by her public Massey Lecture Series

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in 1989 – which I also have been listening to. Franklin, a GermanCanadian research physicist, author, educator, pacifist, feminist, and Quaker, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, and who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years, has shared profound insights about technology, including her focus on how, “there is no technology for justice - there is only justice,” “While justice can be understood, can be felt, there is no template to follow, or checklist to work through for ensuring a just outcome. The requirements are humility, a respect for context, and a willingness to listen to the most marginalized voices. Let these define the basic requirements of whatever you do… You must put yourself in the position of the most vulnerable, in a way that achieves a visceral gut feeling of empathy and perspective—that is the only way to see what justice is.” https://archive.org/details/the-real-world-oftechnology/part-1.mp3

What Franklin so eloquently spoke about has inspired me to think again about her framing of technology as a practice, and, to look at our use of technology, when considering COIL exchanges, not merely as a platform or tool, but in terms of its complexity as a multifaceted entity – a system which contains much more than the sum of its components, and which brings into play notions of power, control, and responsibility (linking very clearly with Paulo Freire’s work on critical pedagogy3). Franklin challenges us to view technology as a practice in order to consider the consequences of what happens when we reproduce educational practices in unthinking ways – for example, in the consequences of assuming class-based pedagogies for students shift seamlessly into the online space. And/or that learning online through COIL exchanges must be a more equitable 3. Paulo Freire (1921–1997) was a champion of what today we term critical pedagogy: the belief that teaching should challenge learners to examine power structures and patterns of inequality within the status quo. Freire emphasised how important it is to remember what it is to be human and to view education as a way to transform oppressive structures. His perspectives stemmed from the values of love, care, and solidarity.

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means for learners to experience their ‘internationalised’ curriculum.

Herein we need to examine COIL, not as an online pedagogy that is trimmed to fit convenient models and common practices which claim to represent inclusivity, but as a holistic practice for learners across the Global South and North, with a number of dimensions that cannot be assumed nor overlooked.

Building on Stallivieri’s (2020) contention (from a Brazilian perspective) that international online education needs greater support to ensure pedagogies, such as COIL, do not follow a design benefiting some while excluding many more, I have, with respected colleagues Kyria Finardi also in Brazil, Lynette Jacobs in South Africa, and Marina Orsini-Jones - one of the first academics practising COIL at Coventry, been discussing and writing about a number of interconnected student, staff and institutional dimensions, within a particular set of values, which give rise to how ways of knowing, being, relating and expressing might be questioned, contested and transformed in COIL exchange (Wimpenny et al., 2021).

Drawing on Stallivieri, these are • The digitalisation gap - Although approaches to e-learning have been developing since the late 1990s, and whilst we may live in a world that is increasingly interconnected, the pandemic has laid bare the stark variation between pupils’ home-learning environments. Poorer pupils are likely to have more limited device and internet access and are less likely to have home environments conducive to learning.

As such, focus on digitalisation includes not only students’ tangible assets regarding connectivity and hard/software, but also students’ behaviours and digital learning ecologies (Gomes & Chang, 2021), appreciating access to computers and the internet does not guarantee access to digital capital (Ragnedda & Ruiu, 2020).

• The linguistic gap - Here we are most mindful of considering verbal and written language proficiency in online learning and differences in particular between learners in rural areas,

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•

with homogenous indigenous language settings and urban areas creating diverse and very fluid “langscapes” [language/ landscapes] (Isikolo, 2013). There is need to be conscious of how language can serve to silence the voices and marginalise learners fundamentally, and negatively affecting the quality and potential of the cross-cultural learning opportunity.

The structural gap – This is with regards to the necessary regulatory infrastructure to build capacity for academics to pilot and implement COIL within HEIs with diverse histories, contexts, and business models. For example, institutional internationalisation plans which support COIL enterprise and partnership possibility, and in terms of the curricular flexibility to build in COIL, and the necessary time and staff development required for designing COIL, including the important cross cultural facilitation skills required, material dimensions, and inclusive institutional cultures.

Additionally, we have also focused on • Social influence (e.g., Warschauer, 2003), as in, how staff and students can benefit from relationships and memberships that particular COIL (social) networks might prompt.

• Psychological issues (e.g., Yang et al., 2021), in students and staff encouraged in the necessary effort to succeed and persist in challenging tasks (in setting up and taking active part in COIL exchanges), by using problem solving ways to redirect paths to goals, and beyond the attainment of success in assessments.

• Trust dimensions (e.g., Algan, 2018), we know COIL can be experienced as disquieting and uncomfortable, and it can take time for trust and confidence to emerge, amongst staffstaff, staff-students, and peers-peers, whereby awareness of global issues in relation to local contexts are disclosed, and in sharing knowledge with less territorial approaches.

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Furthermore, we contend values such as mutuality, inclusivity, equity (redress) and equality (equally valued) should guide all interactions in COIL exchanges for more open and authentic interactions, promoting hospitality (Potgieter, 2015) and appreciation ( Jacobs et al., 2021). Emphasis here, as with the above, is in how COILing can build /strengthen learning (and life skills) for navigating the world, in supporting social justice, and in consideration of work-readiness, etc.

To further maximise the potential of inclusive COIL exchanges as cross-border learning spaces, linking knowledge to action for positive change at a local level and beyond (following Freire, 1972), university-grassroots community engaged scholarship is called for, where students and faculty can collaborate with civic society organisations including NGOs, trade unions, social movements, grassroots organisations, online networks, and communities in mutually beneficial ways. Such learning creatively questions and embraces ways of knowing, being, expressing and relating in a nonhierarchical manner (Perold-Bull, 2020) for novel inclusive learning which transcends geo-political and perspectival boundaries. COIL offers a fertile space for such Freire-type education, with people bringing their own knowledge, curiosity, and experience into the learning process for knowledge co-creation, offering potential for collaborative and mutually beneficial action, yielding the co-creation of resources for the public good and curriculum transformation.

In bringing this thought piece to a conclusion, issues of power, privilege, and marginalisation in the context of social justice need to be at the fore in designing online pedagogies beyond the classroom to interrupt cycles of vulnerability internationally. Drawing on Oberhauser’s (2019, p.754) feminist scholarship focused on ‘transformation from within’, and Franklin’s refocus on technology as practice, there is a need for more nuanced analyses of power, place, strategy, and social identities in our internationalised learning practices. With this comes the need to turn to lens inwards, to reflect as academics/learners on our ontology and epistemology, our ethical and moral orientation, and the influence of self, our experiences, our

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values, and in our ability to be attuned towards one another in the online space, where participant identities are welcomed, unleashing plural ways of knowing, a culture of listening, building trust, and joint partnership, alongside recognition of context.

References Beelen, J., & Jones, E. (2015). Redefining internationalization at home. In A. Curai, L. Matei, R. Pricopie, J. Salmi, & P. Scott (Eds.), The European higher education area: Between critical reflections and future policies, (pp. 67-80).

Dordrecht: Springer.

Beelen, J., Wimpenny, K., & Rubin, J. (2021). Internationalisation in the classroom and questions of congruence: embedding COIL in an internationalised curriculum. In, P. G. Nixon, V. P. Dennen & R. Rawal (Eds.), Reshaping International Teaching and Learning: Universities in the Information Age. London Routledge Cronin, C. (2020). Open Education: Walking a critical path” in D. Conrad & P. Prinsloo (Eds). Opening Education: Theory and Practice, (pp 9 – 25) BRILL: Sense Franklin, U. (1989) Massey Lecture Series – public research lecture 1989 Ursula Franklin https://archive.org/details/the-real-world-oftechnology/part-1.mp3 Franklin, U (1990): The Real World of Technology (published in Toronto, 1999).

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth, Eng.; New York : Penguin Books.

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Gomes, C., & Chang. S. (2021). Introduction. In (Eds.), S. Chang & C. Gomes, Digital Experiences of International Students: Challenging Assumptions and Rethinking Engagement. (pp xx - xxix), London: Routledge Taylor and Frances.

Hudzik, J. K. (2011). Comprehensive Internationalization From Concept to Action. NAFSA Association of International Educators. http:// ecahe.eu/w/images/1/1f/Comprehensive_Internationalization_-_ NAFSA.pdf Isikolo, M. (2013). Thoughts on mother-tongue based education.

Mazansimaths.blogspot. http://mzansimaths.blogspot.com/2013/10/ thoughts-on-mother-tongue-based.html Jacobs, L., Wimpenny, K., Mitchell, L-M., Beelen, J., Hagenmeier, C., Hodges, M. et al. (2021). Adapting a capacity development in higher education project: Doing, being and becoming Virtual collaboration. Perspectives in Education, 39(1):353–371 https:// journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie/article/view/4792 Kirmayer, L. J. (2012). Rethinking cultural competence. Transcultural Psychiatry, 49 (2), 149– 164.

Meredith M. All Problems Can Be Illuminated; Not All Problems Can Be Solved http://bb9.berlinbiennale.de/all-problems-can-beilluminated-not-all-problems-can-be-solved/ Accessed 03.09.21 Oberhauser, A. M. (2019). Transformation from within: Practising Global Education through critical feminist pedagogy. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(3): 751-767.

O’Dowd, R. (2021). Virtual exchange: moving forward into the next decade. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 34(3), 209-224.

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OECD (2020). Digital Transformation in the Age of COVID-19: Building Resilience and Bridging Divides, Digital Economy Outlook 2020 Supplement, OECD, Paris, www.oecd.org/digital/digitaleconomy-outlook-covid.pdf.

Perold-Bull, K. (2020). Becoming designer/researcher/teacher: Working towards decolonization of/through design in South African Higher Education. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 19 (2), 131–148.

Ragnedda, M., & Ruiu, M.L. (2020). Digital Capital: A Bourdieusian Perspective on the Digital Divide. Emerald Publishing: Bingley.

Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.

Stallivieri, L. (2020). International virtual education needs greater support. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews. com/post.php?story=20200518150642841 Watkins, H., & Smith, R. (2018). Thinking Globally, Working Locally: Employability and Internationalization at Home. Journal of Studies in International Education, 22(3) 201 – 224.

Wimpenny, K. Finardi, K., Orsini-Jones, M. & Jacobs, L. (2021).

Knowing, Being, Relating and Expressing through Global SouthNorth Third Space COIL: Digital Inclusion and Equity in International Higher Education. Journal of Studies in International Education: Special Issue on Digitalisation (under review).

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USE OF TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION: A CRITICAL VIEW Marize Lyra Silva Passos

Introduction

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t is evident that technology is widely used in various sectors of society, especially professional life, but its use has not yet been widely applied to education (EU, 2013). When talking about the use of technology in education, what first comes to most people’s minds is the use of digital resources, especially digital resources that are supported by the Internet.

But the term technology is much broader than that. The term technology has its etymological origin from the Greek terms tekhno (art, craft, industry, science) and logía (language, proposition). And according to the Michaelis dictionary (2020, online) it means “A set of processes, methods, techniques and tools relating to art, industry, education, etc.” or it can also mean “Technical and scientific knowledge and its applications to a particular field”.

21st century learning requires the ability to use technology.

For this reason, in this chapter, emphasis will be given to the use of technology in education and, in particular, technology associated with the use of digital resources and digital competences, which are fundamental components for the promotion of full education. For, a student who is not connected and cannot deal with the digital

realm loses important chances of being informed, of accessing very rich materials available, of communicating, of becoming visible to others, of publishing their ideas and of increasing their future employability. And thus, leading to learning throughout life, which is a central challenge of the 21st century for educators, governments and educational public policies.

It is with this focus that we will try to answer two questions: are schools and teachers prepared to deal with the students of the new generations that are coming to schools? Or, more importantly, are we preparing our students for the world they will face when they leave school?

Teacher Training In order to answer the first question, we must begin to reflect on teacher education. Today, the teaching profession faces new demands that change rapidly. This requires a new set of skills, broader and more sophisticated than previous ones.

The ubiquity of digital devices and applications requires educators to develop new digital skills and knowledge necessary for their practice. These skills include the use of technology as a means to present and facilitate the transformation of content into knowledge (DIESEL et al., 2017). To make good use of available technologies, it is necessary for teachers to dialogue with the reality of students and provide opportunities for their insertion in the current technological logic for content learning.

The use of technologies, especially digital technologies, has allowed teachers to have a broad monitoring of the teachinglearning process, allowing them to obtain detailed data from their students, which will allow them to carry out assessments and propose improvements in the teaching-learning process.

Angotti, Bastos and Souza (2007) argue that the use of technology can

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[...] point out limits and difficulties together with solutions and improvement of school practice, value making-thinking and, with it, move towards a distance from the habits of repetition and memorization. This way we are forming the scientific spirit in the action-reflection-action and concrete-abstract-concrete movements.

Teaching mediated by concrete technological objects allows this movement, traveling between common sense and learning science and technology (ANGOTTI; BASTOS; SOUZA, 2007, p. 83).

So, to ensure that the teachers, in addition to using technology in their favor, are able to promote the digital literacy process of their students, it is necessary to train this new professional, since the use of resources and technologies is not enough to ensure that the student learns and uses technological resources consciously.<0} “On the other hand, it is necessary that teachers renew their pedagogical practices [...]” and have a “[...] look at this revolution, stimulating multiple learning networks, allowing a range of associations and meanings between the school and the surrounding community” (GAROFAL, 2018, online).

For the training of this new teacher, the European Union proposed the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu). This framework is built on solid science and describes what it means for educators to be digitally competent.

DigCompEdu, Figure 1, is aimed at educators working at all levels of education, from early childhood to higher and adult education, including general and vocational education and training, special needs education and non-formal learning contexts.

DigCompEdu details 22 competences organized into six Areas.

The focus of this framework is not on technical skills, rather, the framework aims to detail how digital technologies can be used to enhance and innovate education. This framework can serve as a basis for any country that wants to train its teachers in the use of technology in the classroom.

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Figure 1 – DigCompEdu Synthesis

Source: Based on Redecker and Punie (2017)

It is important to remember that most teachers who are in the classroom today are considered as digital immigrants, that is, those who are trying to engage in the large amount of technological innovations that are everywhere: phones, apps, ticket purchases and even banking. And, these teachers need to relate to digital natives. In addition, most teacher training courses in Brazil have not prepared or still do not prepare future teachers to deal with the use of technologies, especially digital ones, in their teaching practices.

So, continuous training is relevant in this case for the adoption of technologies integrated into teaching, as it complements the teachers’ knowledge and makes them able to adapt to students’ reality (SHULMAN, 2015).

In addition, the Brazilian National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) determines that the use of technologies is a teaching competence, and for that, teachers need to be trained to use them in favor of the teaching-learning process. For the “[...] inclusion of digital tools in classrooms, the government needs to understand teaching practice as a transforming activity, whose role is to mediate knowledge” (GAROFAL, 2018, online). To this end, teachers need to know how

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to use computers, interactive whiteboards, tablets, smartphones and other technological equipment, both in their daily lives and to integrate them into classroom daily life. Regarding the available technologies, it is necessary to make good use of them, dialoguing with the student’s reality and providing opportunities for their insertion in the current technological logic for the learning of contents.

Angotti, Bastos and Souza (2007) remind us that the use of technology is not just a component, but that it is necessary to take into account the cultural dimension of this action, as well as the perception of society, of the citizen and their place in it, this vision places secondary education back into citizens’ lives. That’s why the importance of digital literacy being inserted in schools and teachers being prepared to deal with this new reality. Digital literacy must take into account six aspects to guarantee the whole formation of students (Information, data and content; Teaching, learning and developing; Communication, collaboration and participation; Digital identity, well-being, safety and protection; Technical Proficiency and Creation, Innovation and Research).

Certainly, the use of digital technologies in the classroom alone does not change the students’ disinterest or the teacher’s routine attitude. Technology alone does not guarantee learning. However, there is an increasing need for teachers to seek new methodologies in order to create a favorable environment for learning.

The School and Technology Continuing the reflection provoked by the first basic question of this chapter, that is, “if the school and the teachers are prepared to deal with the students of the new generations that are arriving in the schools”, it is important to understand how schools should prepare for promoting the inclusion of digital technologies inside and outside the school walls.

One can begin to answer this question by a factor that has received little attention, which is the role of the physical layout of the classroom, in which the use of technology takes place. To better

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understand the potential impact of the physical learning environment, one must take into account how different physical classroom layouts have influenced the educational uses of technology in the school context, as it can leverage the potential of digital technologies so as to make them pedagogically more effective.

For this, the formulation of the physical space for a more contextualized and meaningful teaching based on technological resources needs to be flexible and adaptable to many forms of learning, besides the expository model. This is a recent issue in the Brazilian educational system, which, despite having already introduced innovative learning tools, it continues to produce educational spaces for traditional teaching.

But the physical change of learning spaces alone is not enough to bring about changes in the teaching-learning process supported by the use of digital technologies. Angotti, Bastos and Souza (2007, p.

79) emphasize that the school needs to take responsibility and work for a scientific-technological culture, since a school closed to the knowledge of our days, with regard to the production of science and technology, is “the very denial of what we call scientific-technological culture [...] of the structural components of our culture, science and technology have a prominent role”.

At the turn of the 20th to the 21st century, Gadotti (2000) already told us that there was an ongoing challenge for the current school and that it needed to change the logic of knowledge construction, since now learning will occupy our entire lives and the use of digital technologies in classrooms could no longer go back. About this role of the school, he goes further by stating that, “The school needs to set an example, dare to build the future. Innovating is more important than reproducing with quality what already exists. The school’s raw material is its vision of the future” (GADOTTI, 2000, p. 9).

Schools also need to change their educational culture regarding the use of media, leaving the conventional use of predominantly expository teaching models and moving to the use of media in a different way, aiming at pedagogical objectives that lead students to develop their knowledge.

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And all this must be associated with the change in the school curriculum by incorporating the use of digital technologies. But the integration of digital technologies in the curriculum cannot be limited to their insertion and/or availability in the school space. Technology needs be used at different times of the teaching process, whenever necessary and to contribute to the student’s learning process. They will not be integrated into the curriculum if teachers only use them for activities that could be explored using paper and pencil. In other words, these technologies need to be thought/used to enable students to create, fantasize, think, conjecture, have fun learning different concepts during classes in a meaningful, reflective and ethical way, integrating digital languages in activities that make up the curriculum in action.

Digital Literacy Finally, here is a reflection on the second question that guides this chapter, “are we preparing our students for the world they will face when they leave school?”. Based on this question and with the advent of Education 4.0, at the beginning of the 21st century, the concept of digital literacy treated here focuses on meeting the educational needs of the new generations and requires the constant development of new skills and knowledge to deal with digital technologies.

In the view of Passos (2019, online) “Education 4.0 is based on the technological revolution and the “hands-on culture” (maker culture), which brings in its core computer languages, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and more powerful data networks”. The use of varied technological resources allows current education to be based on creativity and inventiveness, supported by an environment of experimentation that has the student as the center of the teaching-learning process. The same author (2019, online) states that Although, from this perspective, digital equipment and technologies are important, they are no longer sustainable and they need to be accompanied by pedagogical practices that allow significant experiences, respecting teachers and students.

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In this new context, where changes occur quickly, collaborating, creating, researching and sharing are skills that have increasingly become part of the teaching-learning process. In this process, students, having the teacher as their advisor or coach, must develop new skills to meet the needs imposed by the 21st century, such as the ability to learn to learn throughout their lives, to work collaboratively and to know how to reflect and solve challenging problems (PASSOS, 2019, online).

These students, most of whom born in the 21st century or the late 20th century, are considered digital natives, a term coined by Marc Prensky (2001). For this author, this audience fits into the first generations that grew up living with digital technologies, such as computers, tablets, smartphones, etc. Therefore, they represent those students who effortlessly know how to use and interact with the technologies that are within their reach without hesitation or fear.

Familiarity with the use of technological resources of this new generation does not mean that they are able to use these resources to their fullest extent in the learning process. The digital world offers huge benefits and advantages for everyone. However, without the proper use and understanding of technology, the digital world can be overwhelming and even dangerous. Therefore, to ensure that children use technology effectively and safely, schools need to be concerned about the digital literacy of their students.

Digital literacy refers to the use of digital tools to create meaning and communicate effectively with others, including the ability to use visual representations, integrate different digital texts, navigate non-linear digital texts, and evaluate digital information (NEUMANN; FINGER; NEUMANN, 2017). Being digitally literate allows children and young people to become innovative, confident and responsible in the use of technologies and online safety (SCOTLAND, 2015). They need to be able to understand the technology they use so they can use it safely and effectively.

Digital literacy is not just knowing how to take a selfie, send WhatsApp messages, update Instagram or create videos on TikTok, it involves understanding technology and using it properly. This

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process involves training students to be able to browse a website, send an email or use social media safely. For Riel, Christian and Hinson (2012) digital literacy is the ability to use software and hardware technology and interpret information from digital devices effectively and efficiently in various contexts, such as the need to support academic performance, career and daily life. But, this concept can go beyond the ability to use multiple digital sources effectively, leading to a broader concept in which digital literacy is a way of thinking (hypothesis and multi-construction) the use of the digital world.

The actions described in the digital literacy process are essential for adult life, as almost all jobs involve communication through these processes. It is therefore the responsibility of the school to ensure that its students are equipped with the skills and confidence to live in this digital society. Adopting digital literacy is essential for the success of students’ academic lives and also for improving their lifelong learning.

Riel, Christian and Hinson (2012) stated that digital literacy is multidimensional and expressed in several groups of abilities, as described in Figure 2.

Figure 2 –. Concept of Digital Literacy

Source: Based on Yustika and Iswati (2020)

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As students get deeper into digital literacy, they begin to incorporate computing to solve problems. Increasingly, they apply the fundamental principles that underpin digital technologies to develop their own ideas. This allows them to update their skills based on technological advances gained from a variety of sources, including the experience of young people themselves.

Interaction in digital media does not only require technical skill to access technology, but also an understanding of the content, the active and interactive functions of message production. Moreover, interactions on digital media have consequences for personal safety, privacy, excessive consumption, differences in approach (YUSTIKA; ISWATI, 2020).

There are two caveats here, the first is that this entire process must have the student in its center and the second is that not all students born in this period have access and familiarity with the technological resources mentioned above, as is the case with students from low-income families, whether in rich, developing or poor countries. This situation became even more evident during the years 2020 and 2021 when there was a need to use such resources to support remote teaching around the world. But, despite this gap in access to technology among students from different social classes, we must not deprive these young people of the digital literacy process.

Conclusion After the reflections made above, it can be highlighted that teachers, most of whom digital immigrants, did not develop in their initial training the digital skills necessary to revolutionize the classroom by bringing the use of digital technologies with pedagogical purposes to its praxis. In order to resolve this gap in teacher training, investment in continuing education is necessary.

For this, many governments propose development need models for digital skills such as DigCompEdu. In addition, teachers also need to prepare to facilitate the digital literacy process of their students.

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But, in addition to having trained teachers, schools and governments need to support these actions. We should start by thinking about a new physical layout of classrooms that can act as a barrier or as a channel to leverage the potential of digital technologies in order to make them pedagogically more effective. The school curriculum must also reflect the importance of using digital resources to promote a meaningful education, in addition to its importance for the construction of critical, reflective and ethical citizens.

Finally, we have students who are considered digital natives, who, despite being born amid the newest technologies, are not necessarily prepared to use them for their learning to learn process and for lifelong learning. To help them, it is necessary that teachers and schools support them in their digital literacy process, in order to guarantee the formation of future critical, ethical, innovative citizens, collaborators who know how to use digital resources with proficiency and safety, not only for themselves, but also for society as a whole.

And, finally, it is important to highlight that digital technologies should not be used by students only in an aspect of “consumption”, for access to information, communication or for the propagation of information, which impoverishes the student’s experience with the technological world and puts them in a position of passivity in relation to technology, leaving aside the most revolutionary aspect of technology, which is to use it as a universal construction environment.

References ANGOTTI, J. A. P.; BASTOS, F. da P.; SOUZA, C. A. Cultura Científico-Tecnológica na Educação Básica. Revista Ensaio, 09(1), 76-88. 2007.

BOWER, Matt. Technology integration as an educational imperative. In: Design of Technology-Enhanced Learning.

Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017.

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DIESEL, A.; LEILA, A.; BALDEZ, S.; MARTINS, S. N. Os princípios das metodologias ativas de ensino: uma abordagem teórica. Thema, v. 14, 268-288. 2017.

EU. Survey of schools: ICT in education. Final study report.

Benchmarking access, use and attitudes to technology in Europe’s schools. European Commission, 2013.

GADOTTI, M. Perspectivas atuais da educação. São Paulo em perspectiva, v. 14, n. 2, p. 03-11, 2000.

GAROFALO, Débora. Que habilidades deve ter o professor da Educação 4.0. 2018. Nova Escola - Gestão Escolar. Disponível em: https://novaescola.org.br/conteudo/11677/que-habilidades-deveter-o-professor-da-educacao-40. Acesso em: 24 dez. 2021.

MICHAELIS, Dicionário. Dicionário brasileiro da língua portuguesa. Disponível em: https://michaelis.uol.com.br/modernoportugues/busca/portugues-brasileiro/tecnologia/. Acesso em: 05 jan. 2022.

NEUMANN, Michelle M.; FINGER, Glenn; NEUMANN, David L. A conceptual framework for emergent digital literacy.

Early Childhood Education Journal, v. 45, n. 4, p. 471-479, 2017.

PASSOS, M. L. S. Da Educação 1.0 a Educação 4.0: os caminhos da educação e as novas possibilidades. Página Marize Passos, 30 ago. 2019. Disponível em: https://www.marizepassos.com/post/ educação-1-0-a-educação-4-0-os-caminhos-da-educação-e-asnovas-possibilidades-para-a-educação Acessado em: 30 ago. 2019.

PRENSKY, M. Nativos digitais, imigrantes digitais. Tradução de Roberta de Moraes Jesus de Souza, 2001.

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REDECKER, C.; PUNIE, Y. European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. EUR 28775 EM. 2017.

RIEL, Jeremy; CHRISTIAN, Sonya; HINSON, Brad. Charting digital literacy: A framework for information technology and digital skills education in the community college, 2012.

SCOTLAND. Education Scotland. How Good Is Our School?

Scotland: Livingston. Eric Editora. 4a Ed. 2015. Disponível em: https://eric.ed.gov/?q=source%3A%22Education+Scotland%22&id =ED574051. Acesso em: 08 jan. 2022.

SHULMAN, Lee S. Conhecimento e ensino: fundamentos para a nova reforma. Cadernos Cenpec - Nova Série, v. 4, n. 2, 2015.

YUSTIKA, G. P.; ISWATI, S. Digital Literacy in Formal Online Education: A Short Review. Dinamika Pendidikan, 15 (1), 66-76.

2020.

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CONCERNS FOR EDUCATION AND SOCIAL WORK Fabiola Xavier Leal

Introduction

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his text presents a brief summary of various reflections generated at the Transforming vulnerability trajectories workshop and the possibilities of articulation with the Brazilian Social Work and its daily needs. First, some indispensable concepts for the debates on education are addressed, followed by the articulation established between the Social Work profession and issues arising from the education field.

It should be recalled that this event was proposed by the a network of researchers of Brazil and the United Kingdom, concerned with the social, economic and political context of deepening social and educational inequalities and its consequences, especially for children and young people. The reflections accumulated by this group of researchers are driven in a critical perspective, seeking not only to know and analyse the education experiences in the two countries, but, above all, to deepen the conceptions and methodologies aimed at mitigating or eliminating some of the risks affecting this population, primarily in the Brazilian context. The proposal is to train generations of master and doctoral holders who do not disconnect their theoretical productions from practical actions. The workshop was programmed to discuss varied situations that expose

low income young people to exclusion, deprivation and illiteracy as the debate of these circumstances and knowledge of experiences considered innovative are crucial to confront structural issues. The 3 days of work enabled the participants to point to essential elements for those studying, researching and acting in the educational field.

That field is defined beyond the formal and traditional spaces of education policy at all its levels.

Accordingly, the Brazilian Social Work is ethically responsible for contributing to the intensification of the conception of education, as we have the theoretical, operational, ethical, political and legal competence to contribute with the materialisation of education as a fundamental social right in the construction of an emancipated society.

The characteristics of Brazilian social training, of profound structural inequalities, poverty, unemployment, lack of social protection, housing problems, racism, land ownership concentration, genocide of indigenous populations, among others, are expressed in the education dilemmas experienced in the daily life of the population.

In this context, the struggle for state education remains at stake and requires us to understand the historical process of Brazilian education from a counter-hegemonic perspective of the social reality. Where any attempts to resolve these all these problems, for Florestan Fernandes (1989, p. 129), “are inevitably hindered by the low education level of the masses and awareness level of the working class”.

Back in the 1980s, Fernandes stated that [...] education is the most serious Brazilian social dilemma. Lack of education is just as harmful as hunger and poverty, or even more so, as it deprives the hungry and poor of the means enabling their awareness of their condition, of the means to learn to fight against this situation. Therefore, it could represent a factor of diffusion of ignorance and cultural backwardness. These mechanisms and an unfair and meaningless school system lead to the reproduction of the system of inequality, to the concentration of wealth, power and domination [...] (FERNANDES, 1989, p. 126-127).

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In the pandemic context, 5.5 million Brazilian students aged 6 to 17 years old left school in 2020, according to data of the document Scenario of School Exclusion in Brazil – a Warning on the Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Education. In 2019, 1.1 million children and adolescents aged 4 to 17 years old had no access to education (2.7% of this population), a figure that had been falling since 2016.

The scenario has become even more chaotic due to the suspension of face-to-face classes and difficulty in accessing the internet and technology. Added to this number are 3.7 million children and adolescents of the same age cohort who were enrolled, but did not have access to any school activity, whether printed or digital, and were unable to uphold learning at home. The document also stresses that this school exclusion has class and colour. The situation of low income, black, mixed and indigenous children and adolescents, in Brazil, is not a coincidence (UNICEF, 2021), but the result of a historical process of class inequality.

The living conditions in 2020 show that the rate of extreme poverty stood at 12.5% and the poverty rate covered 33.7% of the population. The total number of poor people reached 209 million, being 22 million more than in the previous year. Of this total, 78 million people were in a situation of extreme poverty, 8 million more than in 2019. Approximately 59 million people, who in 2019 belonged to the middle strata, entered into a process of downward economic mobility. These data also confirm the gaps between population groups, with poverty being higher in the rural areas, among children and adolescents, indigenous people and Afro-descendants, and in the population with lower education levels (CEPAL, 2020). In contrast, the small number of billionaires increased during the pandemic from 33 to 238, demonstrating that the State governs for the wealthy, that science and education are not priorities, being systematically disregarded (FRIGOTTO, 2020).

In addition to these circumstances, is the presence of social forces of the far right underpinned by fundamentalism, that consider the elimination of opponents, and a religious conception that subordinates science to belief. Counter-reform measures are being

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strengthened and progressively implemented, undermining social welfare and other conquered rights. These forces exalt the arming of the population and the control of freedom to teach and educate, by the proposed Non-Partisan School Project.

The context, therefore, is challenging and requires a critical analytical perspective based on class struggle. Intellectuals or political militants who do not think and act along the lines of the class struggle will not be successful in the education and organisation of the working class, or consequent pointing to ways out through transforming education.

Education and some of its dilemmas and challenges “Education as a means towards collective self-emancipation of the oppressed and conquest of power by the workers”.

Florestan Fernandes, 1989, p.10.

In Brazil, state education reveals the echoes of societal disputes.

As argued by Mészáros (2005), when addressing its meaning in the metabolic system of capital, education under capital is converted into force in benefit of our actual dehumanisation. The historical pathway of Brazilian education imprints an education policy in terms of a social and human right that has not yet been universalised, and its subordination to the general form of goods, extended widely through social life. In state education institutional spheres, we find antagonistic perspectives and structures, both in the form of thinking and conducting pedagogical practices, and in the form of recognising social subjects and envisaging he place and meaning of education in the production of our humanisation (ALMEIDA; PEREIRA, 2020).

In the current stage of capitalism characterised by an intense application of capital to work, the education offer is based on three needs of capital: a) the subordination of science to market laws, accelerating the production of new knowledge to ensure competition between companies, imposing technological innovation, encouraging

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competitiveness, pragmatic entrepreneurship and productivity; and b) the opening of new fields of profit-making, where education is not a profitable business for the international and local segments of the new bourgeoisie of education services; c) the construction of strategies envisaging consensus around the bourgeois project of sociability (LIMA, 2020). Thus, all processes involving education, whether in the institutional field of conduct and implementation, in legal rulings or in funding, should not be disconnected from the more general dynamics of the hegemony of financial capital and State counter-reform (ALMEIDA; RODRIGUES, 2020). In his analysis, Seki (2020) argues that capital requires human qualification based on the needs of capitalist production and reproduction of our present time. Capital seeks capillarity of intervention in the formation of culture in all aspects, whether in private or public education institutions, in school management, in books and educational and teaching materials, in forms of assessment, in the training of teachers, in computer systems, in learning platforms etc. These topics are all interlinked and interwoven in what is embodied as the phenomenon of the financialization of education. “Capital itself takes up the role of being the educator, forging the hearts and minds of a future that does not fit beyond the very strict limits of capitalist societies” (SEKI, 2020, p. 41).

And in this field of reflections, the workshop took on, and has obviously not exhausted, the task of elucidating these aspects as the backdrop against which to discuss educational practices to counter hegemony in the different realities. The researchers discussed the European and Latin American perspectives, and based on the presented experiences, understood that thinking about education along the lines of Paulo Freire, for example, means sustaining articulation with the struggle of the oppressed, of those coming from beneath, of the different working class segments, who are excluded on a daily basis from the appropriation of socially produced wealth and the conquered rights. It should be highlighted that the event took place during the centenary year of Paulo Freire – patron of Brazilian education – keeping him present through his works and legacy in all reflections, as well as various Marxist critical authors.

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The experiences presented by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) of the municipality of Jaguaré (north of the state of Espírito Santo), by the Social Projects of Morro do Quadro and Piedade (districts of the municipality of Vitória-ES), by the indigenous organisation of the Kambeba do Alto Solimões (Amazônia), by the practices involving the racial ethnic issue in education spheres, among many others reported, indicated that hope is necessary in barbaric times, following Paulo Freire. The reports and discussions inspired and moved us to carry on.

Social Work and Education The reflections presented point to the importance of addressing the Brazilian Social Work in the field of Education. Almeida e Pereira (2020) suggest that this is a necessary and required political and academic tasks due to involving a field of State intervention and a socio-occupational sphere for social workers.

At the Social Work and Education axis is another crucial aspect which is articulation between vocational training and professional exercise based on an inseparable link between the scientific interpretation of reality and militant action. The Brazilian Social Work is tasked with reaffirming on a daily basis that Education is not merely relegated to formal education spheres, but rather that professional intervention spaces should be powerful and revolutionary as they are organically tied to the needs and struggles of the working class (FRIGOTTO, 2020).

The professional project of Brazilian social workers is directed at the collective defence of an emancipatory education. And, accordingly, the workshop aimed to dialogue with the social workers of the United Kingdom, presenting the need to unveil the political and economic processes of the capitalist State, of companies and the different institutions comprising civil society. It is important to stress that theoretical mediations with the field of education have taken root over the history of the profession. In 2013, the Federal Council and the Regional Councils of Social Work published the

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document Subsidies for the Action of Social Workers in Education Policy, aimed at contributing to the professional action in this policy being coherent while at the same time strengthening the professional ethical-political project. This project defends education as a right that is public, secular, free of charge, face-to-face, of quality and socially benchmarked, thus boosting humanising forms of sociability (CFESS, 2013). The document begins by presenting a conception of education, and in that perspective, the workshop participants mentioned herein directed their reflections in a dialogical way with other perspectives that were presented.

Education is a complex component of social life, with an important social function in the dynamics of social reproduction, i.e., in the forms of reproduction of the social being, in a society organised around a basic contradiction between those who produce social wealth and those who exploit its producers and expropriate their production. This complex predominantly takes the nature of ensuring the reproduction of social contexts, ways of apprehending reality, sets of technical skills, forms of production and socialisation of scientific knowledge that continuously and extensively restore the inequalities between classes and the necessary conditions for relentless accumulation.

Together with other aspects of social life, this includes the set of social practices required for perpetuating ways of being, forms of sociability that characterise a particular society. Its social function, therefore, is marked by contradictions, projects and societal struggles, which are not restricted to educational institutions, but these clearly represent a privileged space for objectification (CFESS, 2013, p. 16).

Thus, understanding the educational reality in Brazil and in the worldwide context based on this notion of education enables grasping the reach of education strategies applied under the hegemony of financial capital. In other words, it enables grasping the limits of those strategies, especially those considered formal, and

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thus redirecting policy on professional action. That, as stated in the document, is a challenge which the profession has the theoretical and policy underpinnings to overcome. And thus, understand that Education Policy is a social right that should be universalised as one of the moments of the processes of social mobilisation and struggle.

However, it is but a means and not an end in itself to achieve a new social order (CFESS, 2013).

The conception of emancipation substantiating the conception of education indicated and advocated in the debates of the event mentioned herein, depends above all on the guaranteed respect for human diversity, the unconditional affirmation of human rights, the respect for free sexual orientation and expression, free gender identity, without which it is impossible to envisage a non-sexist, non-racist, non-homophobic/lesbophobic/transphobic education (CFESS, 2013).

Social workers must recreate their work, considering their contribution to the reproduction of the material life of the subjects, by providing quality social services, to the educational aspect tied to the culture of the working classes. Whether via ways of perceiving, living or feeling life, the collective aspect of social struggles must be strengthened (IAMAMOTO, 2019). The tasks ahead are challenging, calling us to stimulate reflection and dialogue with those with whom we act on a daily basis. And thus, understand education and the processes derived thereof as a political act. And a political act is also educational (SANTOS, 2020). In that regard, we revisit Gramsci (1987) who said that, By our actual conception of the world, we will always belong to a specific group, precisely that of all the social beings who share the same way of thinking and acting. We conform to some conformism, as we are always mass-humans or collective humans. The problem is as follows: what historical category of conformism and mass-human are we part of ? (GRAMSCI, 1987, p. 12).

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And with that question, we continue to challenge, to ask new questions and propose alternatives for our interventions. Thus we reiterate that the critical conception of education and different spheres of action among social segments is embodied as a scenario able to foster a revolutionary practice.

Closing comments This event, held at the end of the second year of the covid-19 pandemic, first and foremost brought us the challenge of holding it in those circumstances. New reflexive elements were incorporated as we progressed in an attempt to understand the economic and health crises in which we are plunged. However, before the event was held in November 2021, it is important to note that this was only possible due to the existence of a group of powerful and qualified researchers in the two countries involved, who idealised an exchange of their reflections and experiences. Addressing a topic such as Education was and continues to be challenge heavy with possibilities.

At the end of this brief reflexive summary, it is important to reaffirm the principles that move us, that make us believe in practices able to transform reality, even if initially they are one-off and focused.

And acknowledge that the action of different professionals acting in Education Policy and in spheres of other education interventions is taking place in a battlefield of social classes that requires increased types of interventions and strategies. It is clearly required that we look at the educational dimension of our professions as consisting of wider social processes.

We finalised the workshop without finalising the discussions. We left quite exhausted with reflections and with the task of proposing new spaces for exchange of ideas. The question that moves us, still remains: How to theorise education in a broad sense as a human and universal right, able to construct a fair and egalitarian society?

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References ALMEIDA, N. L. T. de. Serviço Social na Educação: novas perspectivas sócio-ocupacionais. 2007. Available at: www.cress-mg. org.br/Textos/textos_simposio/2007.05.19_plenaria8_neyteixeira. doc. Accessed December 2021.

ALMEIDA, N. L. T. de; RODRIGUES, M. C. P. O campo da educação na formação profissional em serviço social. In: PEREIRA, L. D.; ALMEIDA, N. L. T. de (org.). Serviço Social e Educação.

Uberlândia: Navegando Publicações, 2020. p. 121-133.

CEPAL. Panorama Social de América Latina 2020. UN, 2020.

Available at: https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/46687panorama-social-america-latina-2020. Accessed: december 2021.

FERNANDES, F. O desafio educacional. São Paulo: Cortez & Editores Associados, 1989.

FREIRE, P. Pedagogia da autonomia: saberes necessários à prática educativa. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2002.

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UNITY 2 EDUCATION, POVERTY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND SOCIO-EDUCATION IN AN OPEN ENVIRONMENT Luciana Gomes de Lima Jacques Beatriz Gershenson

Introduction

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he objective of the doctoral research was to examine to what extent the incorporation of restorative practices in socio-education in an open environment have become an alternative to the punitiveness that has historically characterised the way that adolescents in conflict with the law are treated in Brazil. This required: analysing the relationships between the theoretical assumptions of Restorative Justice and socio-educational measures in relation to punitiveness; verifying, through the professionals implementing restorative socio-education practices in an open environment, how these practices are inserted in municipal programmes; identifying the challenges encountered by these professionals in the insertion and enforcement of restorative practices in this care; knowing the perceptions of these professionals about punishment in socio-education; and understanding the perceptions of these professionals about relationships between restorative practices, socio-education and punitiveness.

The research enabled grasping the particularities of the relationship between restorative practices and socio-education developed at the Specialised Social Support Reference Centres (CREAS), as part of the care ministered to adolescents serving socio-educa-

tional sentences in an open environment. This is a descriptive and exploratory study, of qualitative nature, underpinned by the dialectical method based on bibliographic and documental research that enabled theoretical deepening on the subject, and empirical research, whose participants were nine Facilitators of Restorative Practices aimed at adolescents serving socio-educational sentences in an open environment recruited using the non-probabilistic sampling technique referred to as “Snowball”. The nine research participants answered an online questionnaire or an interview guided by a script with semi-structured questions – conducted face-to-face and online.

The data collection instruments were designed based on the reality’s explanatory variables: offence, punitiveness, socio-educational measure in an open environment (MSE-MA), socio-education and restorative practices. The information was examined based on Discursive Textual Analysis, substantiated by Roque Moraes (1999; 2003) and Roque Moraes and Maria do Carmo Galiazzi (2011).

It should be highlighted that all the research and data collection of this study preceded the covid-19 pandemic, with its qualification occurring at its onset, and this thesis being completed in the midst of an extremely severe crisis as a result of the pandemic. Therefore, all the concerns related to punitiveness are further enhanced, as it is everywhere, in all forms of State action, not only through its ostensible social control mechanisms, but also in the directing of social protection towards authoritarianism. While it is obvious that the findings in this study tend to be exacerbated in this health crisis scenario, coordinated by representatives of authoritarian regimes – this is a hypothesis that cannot be verified in this study.

Development In court, following proper investigation and confirmation of the adolescent’s criminal behaviour, the sentencing will impose a socio-educational measure (MSE) that, according to the severity of the offence, varies from: a warning; an obligation to repair the damage; the provision of community service (PSC); supervised probation

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(LA); placement in a semi-confinement arrangement; serving time in an education facility and any other laid down in Article 101, I to VI of the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA) (BRAZIL, 1990). The Statute stresses that the imposition of a socio-educational measure should consider the adolescent’s ability to comply with it, the circumstances and severity of the offence; where forced labour is forbidden, guaranteeing that “[...] adolescents with mental illness or impairment shall receive individual and specialised treatment, at a place suited to their conditions.” (BRAZIL, 1990, Article 112 and sections).

The Socio-educational Measure in an Open Environment (MSE-MA) of community service is present in Article 112, section III, and in Article 117 of the Child and Adolescent Statute, stipulating that this measure “[...] consists of carrying out tasks free of charge of general interest, for a period not exceeding 6 (six) months, at welfare entities, hospitals, schools and other similar establishments, or in community or government programmes.” (BRAZIL, 1990). It is also determined that these tasks should be in keeping with the adolescent’s skills, carried out during maximum days of eight hours weekly, preferably on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, or on business days that do not jeopardise school attendance or normal working hours (BRAZIL, 1990). In the words of Saraiva (2010), Supervised Probation is the most complex MSE-MA and, therefore, requires an attendance structure able to meet the established targets. Notwithstanding its mandatory and retributive nature, Bandeira (2006, p. 151-152) states that the measure is: “[...] the key measure with an eminently pedagogical slant, as, by not making the adolescent in conflict with the law loose his/her freedom, it pushes the adolescent to build a real life project permeated with freedom, voluntary action, a sense of responsibility and control of public power”.

In 2006, through Resolution 119 of the National Council of the Rights of the Child and Adolescent (CONANDA) (BRAZIL, 2006b), that approved the National Socio-Educational System (SINASE), the MSE-MA were stressed in the official discourses, in detriment of measures restricting freedom. One of the principles of this document is the municipalisation of socio-educational care,

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where the State is responsible for the Closed Regime (serving time in a facility) and the Municipality for the Open Environment regime, with priority given to the latter, “[...] as it has been found that increasing the strictness of the measures has not substantially improved the social inclusion of former convicts of the socio-educational system.” (BRAZIL, 2006a, p. 14). However, despite that appraisal, studies demonstrate that the policy of mass incarceration endorsed in the country for adults is matched in the policy of incarceration of adolescents and young people. Over recent decades, it has been found that, paradoxically, while the country’s social indicators improved, there has been an increase in the imprisonment of adolescents and young people, of similar colour and social class.

The National Socio-Educational System (SINASE) was only instituted in 2012, means of by Law 12.594 (BRAZIL, 2012), that regulated the implementation of the socio-educational measures for adolescent offenders, concerning issues that had not been addressed in the Child and Adolescent Statute. For example, by entering a chapter exclusively about the implementation of socio-economic measures that established, among other aspects, its principles (BRAZIL, 1990, Article 35); the procedures related to the maintenance, replacement or suspension of socio-educational measures in an open or closed environment; the individual rights of adolescents serving these measures (Article 49) and full healthcare (BRAZIL, 1990, Article 60 to 65). The SINASE presents a series of actions that, in order to be implemented, require articulated and intersectoral public policies (ÁVILA, 2017).

The socio-educational aspect requires offering the adolescents the conditions for self-discovery and development of their potentialities (TEJADAS, 2005; LIMA, 2010). In addition to access to rights, the adolescents must be made accountable, through actions placing them in contact with the consequences of their offence on others. However, as noted above, in a context of penalising clamour, these goals do not neutralise the discourse (and practice) of those envisaging a criminal or punitive nature to the measure (FRASSETTO et al., 2012).

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In this scenario, as highlighted by Ávila (2017), socio-education is infused with conservative ideologies that corroborate the process of criminalising poverty and judicialisation of the social issue, giving rise to the infringement of human rights. These contradictions feature in the debates on the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility of minors and in the production of knowledge about socio-education, sometimes contributing to “[...] the transformation of social reality from the angle of human rights, sometimes leading to the conservation of the breach of fundamental rights.” (BEHM ROSAS, 2017, p. 13). Along these lines, Barbosa (2013, p. 98) notes that socio-education has different concepts and grounds according to the play of diverse “political and pedagogical” interests and ongoing disputes “[...] that produce discourses and sometimes stigmas about youth in conflict with the law and their circumstances”. This discursiveness is embodied in the theoretical debates in this sphere and in those pervading the perceptions and considerations of the professionals.

In the process of consolidation of the Single Social Welfare System (SUAS), Resolution 109 of 11 November 2009 (BRAZIL, 2009), approved the National Classification of Social Welfare Services, organising them by level of complexity of the SUAS: Basic Social Protection (PSB) and Special Social Protection (PSE), with the latter being divided into Medium and High Complexity. Medium Complexity Special Social Protection includes, among other aspects, the Social Protection Service for Adolescents Serving the Socio-Economic Measure (SPSACMSE) of Supervised Probation (LA), and Provision of Community Service (PSC). The SPSACMSE is carried out in the Specialised Social Support Reference Centres (CREAS), aimed at “providing social welfare support and supervision” to these adolescents and youngsters, contributing to their access to rights and the rebuilding of “values in their personal and social life” (BRAZIL, 2009, p. 24).

The challenge resides in breaking punitive and supervisory practices, characteristic of the period of the “Unlawful Situation”, proposing that “[...] instead of addressing the offences and guilty parties,

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the process should consider damage, those responsible and harmed by the offence.” (BRANCHER; AGUINSKY, 2006, p. 483). It should be directed at meeting the assumptions of Restorative Justice which, in the words of Mccold and Wachtel (2003, no page), focuses on repairing the damage caused to people and relationships, rather than punishing the offenders. [...] Restorative practices offer those who were harmed by an incident, the opportunity to meet and express their feelings, describe how they were affected and engender a plan to repair the damage or prevent its recurrence.

In order to explain their theory on Restorative Justice, the authors constructed the “Social Discipline Window”, where they discuss disciplinary approaches that could be punitive, negligent, permissive or restorative, depending on how the supervisory actions are conducted. In this construction, the authors argue for a balance between control and support, as a practice reasoned on punishment or retribution focuses on heavy control and low support, relegating the action to pedagogy of revenge and blaming of individuals. With negligence being the case when these two parameters – control and support – are low, featuring interventions characterised by indifference. Actions are permissive or rehabilitating when there is low control and strong support – justifying and protecting the offenders from the consequences of their acts. Action becomes restorative when there is strong control and strong support.

To this end, Law 12.594, in Article 35, sections II and III, discusses the “exceptional nature of judicial intervention and the imposition of measures, favouring means of self-mediation of conflicts”, and determines that socio-educational care should prioritise “[...] practices or measures that are restorative and, whenever possible, meet the needs of the victims.” (BRAZIL, 2012). United Nations Resolution 2002/12 of 24 July 2002 (UN, 2002) stands out in the international normative sphere, presenting the Basic Principles on the use of Restorative Justice Pro-

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grammes in Criminal Matters, which may be any programmes using restorative processes aimed at restorative outcomes.

In Brazil, Restorative Justice was institutionalised in 2016, by National Council of Justice Resolution 225 (CNJ, 2016), establishing the National Policy on Restorative Justice under the Judiciary. However, historical records point to the “Jundiaí Principle”, emerging in 1998, focused on conflict settlement in school environments as the hallmark of its introduction in the country. Reference is also made to the studies conducted by Prof. Pedro Scuro Neto, in 1999, in the context of the Judiciary in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. The first experience of applying restorative practice occurred shortly after, in the city of Porto Alegre, RS, in 2002, in the context of a conflict involving two adolescents, which became known as the “Zero Case”, conducted in the 3rd Section of the Children and Juvenile’s Court (ORSINI; LARA, 2013).

It was found that Restorative Justice showed broad and diverse interpretations and understandings about what it is and its purpose; where it can or cannot be applied; how it should or should not be implemented. In the midst of a scenario of dismantlement of rights — highlighting discourses that validate and accomplish violence levered on the ascension of political positions to the far right, disseminated and entrenched in common sense as truths and urgent needs —, it was stressed that it was necessary to consider the risk that, under these circumstances, Restorative Justice and its practices could be co-opted to enforce traditional punitive daily justice, becoming a mechanism of enlargement of social control of poverty.

The empirical data were examined using Discursive Textual Analysis, based on Roque Moraes (1999; 2003) and Roque Moraes and Maria do Carmo Galiazzi (2011). The deconstruction, reading and detailed analysis of the spoken transcripts and answers received via the online questionnaire, combined with the bibliographic and documental references used in the study framework, underpinned the content described and analysed throughout the theoretical chapters.

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In view of the conceptual and analytical diversity and inconsistencies found in the theoretical study, it was evident that this should be reflected in the collected empirical data, indicating weaknesses in the formation of foundations, both about Restorative Justice and concerning Socio-Economic Measures in an Open Environment (MSE-MA), and relationship between the two. In this context, contradictions emerged, manifest in conservative conceptions about the purposes of Restorative Justice that, in its relationship with the MSE-MA, is moving towards social control, through the social adjustment of adolescents. In the meantime, signs emerged simultaneously around the possibility of reducing the violence in socio-educational care and the achievement of co-accountability by all – not merely the accountability of the adolescents, but also of the State, Social Policies and network of these services and assurance of rights – in view of the causes and consequences of the offences.

The narratives stressed the social dimensions of violence, not only physical but also symbolic, that pervade the daily work of socio-education and the interpersonal relations in the context of this work, perpetuating the punitive vision and positioning against adolescents that commit offences. Combined with the insufficiency of human resources, weakened employment contracts and other issues, these aspects interfere in the socio-educational services, affecting the possibilities of establishing and enforcing restorative practices in socio-education in an open environment.

Conclusion Combining all the legal progress concerning the rights of children and adolescents, the Statute and the SINASE towards the design of socio-education as an alternative system to that of criminal punishment, the actual result is a juvenile justice system. Where, in this scenario, restorative practices can be punitive, with social control and reduce the damage of violence historically portrayed by socio-education, marked by punitive and supervisory practices in the follow-up of children and adolescents.

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We found an ongoing presence of a contradictory movement in this mediation between Restorative Justice practices and Socio-Economic Measures in an Open Environment, with a clear presence of conservative purposes in the Restorative Justice, in its practices and in the Socio-Economic Measures in an Open Environment, directed at the social adjustment of the adolescent. At the same time, Restorative Justice, based on its principles and values, emerges as an alternative to punitiveness, an opportunity to reject prejudice and humanise the care provided to adolescents serving Socio-Economic Measures in an Open Environment.

References AVILA, Lisélen de Freitas. Assistencialização da socioeducação: novas roupagens para umvelho fenômeno [Welfare support in socioeducation: new clothing for an old phenomenon]. 2017. 108 f. Thesis (Doctorate in Social Service) – School of Humanities, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 2017.

BANDEIRA, Marcos. Atos infracionais e medidas socioeducativas: uma leitura dogmática, crítica e constitucional. Ilhéus: Editus, 2006. Available at: http://www.uesc.br/editora/livrosdigitais/atosinfracionais-medidas-socioeducativas.pdf. Accessed: 3 october 2014.

BARBOSA, Janilson Pinheiro. Pedagogia socioeducativa repensando a socioeducação: um encontro entre educação libertadora e justiça restaurativa [Socio-educational pedagogy rethinking socio-education: a meeting point between liberating education and restorative justice]. 2013. 241 f. Thesis (Doctorate) – Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Postgraduate Programme in Education, 2013.

BRANCHER, Leoberto; AGUINSKY, Beatriz G. Juventude, Crime & Justiça: uma promessa impagável? In: Justiça, Adolescente

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e Ato Infracional: socioeducação e responsabilização. V. 37, n. 2006, p. 469-493.

BRAZIL. Law 8.069 of 13 July 1990. Establishes the Child and Adolescent Statute and other provisions. 6 ed. Porto Alegre: Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, 2012.

BRAZIL. Special Secretariat for Human Rights. Sistema nacional de atendimento socioeducativo. Brasília, DF: CONANDA, 2006a.

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Brasília, DF: CONANDA, 2006b. Available at: http://www.crianca. mppr.mp.br/arquivos/File/download/resolucao_119_conanda_ sinase.pdf. Accessed: 13 October 2011.

BRAZIL. Resolution 109 of 11 November 2009. National Social Support Council. National Classification of Social Welfare Services.

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BRAZIL. Law 12.594 of 18 January 2012. Institutes the National Socio-Educational System (SINASE), regulates the implementation of socio-educational measures aimed at adolescents committing offences; and amends Law 8.069 of 13 July 1990 (Child and Adolescent Statute), Law 7.560 of 19 December 1986, Law 7.998 of 11 January 1990, Law 5.537 of 21 November 1968, Law 8.315 of 23 December 1991, Law 8.706 of 14 September 1993, DecreeLaw 4.048 of 22 January 1942, Decree-Law 8.621 of 10 January 1946, and the Consolidation of the Labour Laws (CLT), approved

by Decree-Law 5.452 of 1 May 1943. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, DF, 18 January 2012.

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LIMA, Miguel Moacyr A. Comentários aos Artigo 115 e 116 do ECA. In: CURY, Munir (coord.). Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente comentado. 11. ed. São Paulo: Malheiros, 2010.

MCCOLD, Paul; WACHTEL, Ted. Em busca de um Paradigma: uma teoria de justiça restaurativa. CONGRESSO MUNDIAL DE CRIMINOLOGIA, 13, 2003, Rio de Janeiro. Anais [...]. Rio de Janeiro: [s. n.], 2003. Available at: http://gajop.org.br/justicacidada/ wpcontent/uploads/Em-Busca-de-um-Paradigma-Uma-Teoriade-Justi%C3%A7aRestaurativa.pdf. Accessed: 2 september 2014.

MORAES, Roque; GALIAZZI, Maria do Carmo. Análise textual discursiva. 2. ed. Ijuí: Editora Unijuí, 2011.

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EARLY CHILDHOOD ON THE WORLD AGENDA: IMPACTS ON THE REALITY OF CHILDHOOD Aline Elisa Maretto Lang

Introduction

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he concern for childhood and adolescence rights gained prominence towards the end of the 20th century in the worldwide scenario, culminating in incorporation in the agendas of national governments. The acknowledgement of these rights was embodied in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child during the United Nations (UN) Convention held in 1989, becoming an important milestone in this process (FUJIMOTO, 2016). Although this is a relevant document, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child does not address early childhood in a direct manner (UN, 1989). Many events occurred from the 2000s that combined to boost the visibility of early childhood in the international scenario and its inclusion in the agendas of national governments. The growth of this debate led to various worldwide commitments being agreed upon, requiring specific action from governments, as these agreements incorporated goals, targets and deadlines to be met, as well as the need to draw up policies and programmes enabling their achievement (LANG, 2020).

Among the global agreements, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of 2000 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of 2015, still in force, endorsed the need for public policies

addressing early childhood, encouraging countries to invest in intersectoral programmes, directed at care and attention in childhood development, covering the areas of health, nutrition, responsive care, learning from the very first years of life, protection and security (VENANCIO, 2020). The spotlight placed on early childhood in these agreements was reflected in the number of countries with intersectoral policies for development in early childhood, triggering an increase from 7 in 2000, to 68 in 2014, among countries where 45% of them were low and middle income (BLACK et al., 2017).

What we find in actual practice is that there is a growing interest in the implementation of policies directed at this age cohort.

However, it should be noted that merely being included in the agendas of national governments does not necessarily mean improvement in the living conditions of early childhood. In that regard, it is necessary to check, in the specific situation, whether there were actually changes in the life of the children in that generational segment around the world. In this type of appraisal, the social indicators may reflect some important and specific aspects of reality through tangible figures, enabling the monitoring of the living conditions and well-being of the population both by the public power and civil society ( JANUZZI, 2005). The social indicators also enable deepening the academic research on social change and the determinants of distinct social phenomena ( JANUZZI, 2005).

Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that we are keenly aware that children experience a complex reality during early childhood, determined by many factors, and that the analysis of various social indicators merely offers us clues as to how their living conditions changed during a particular historical period.

Hence, this text analyses whether the inclusion of early childhood in the agendas of national governments was reflected in an improvement in the living conditions of children in that age cohort in the members countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and in Brazil, from 2000 onwards. We decided to use social indicators on child mortality and poverty, as they meet the quest to monitor the government’s agenda in relation to the

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priorities defined for early childhood, in recent decades, concerning health and social vulnerability ( JANNUZZI, 2005). Furthermore, the direct relationship of child mortality with social and economic factors has been recognised for a long time, being evinced in many Latin American studies (COSTA et al., 2001).

We worked with publicly available secondary data published in the OECD Family Database that provides transnational indicators on the family and policies for the family in OECD countries. The decision to conduct our analysis using OECD member countries was due to the fact that this organisation is composed of some of the most advanced economies of the world together with various emerging countries such as South Korea, Chile, Mexico and Turkey.

In defining these countries as the focus of our analysis, it was possible to access a series of secondary data of countries with different levels of economic development, plus Brazil, thus illustrating how the stance taken by each country within the capitalist mode of production is reflected in its population’s living conditions.

This text is structured into three sections, with the first being the introduction where we present the topic under discussion and the methodology used. In the second, we discuss the findings obtained from the research, indicating the progress and setbacks regarding the living conditions of children in early childhood. Finally, the last section presents our closing comments.

Reality of early childhood after its entrance into government agendas Since 1990, following the approval of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, enormous progress has been made in relation to child survival (Unicef, 2021). In general, the signatory countries of the convention have undertaken commitments to improve the living conditions of children, assuring the recently instituted rights.

Over the last decades, it was the turn of early childhood to have been placed on government agendas and thus experience a consistent trend of institutionalisation of early childhood development (ECD)

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programmes within government systems, paving the way for an increase at a sustainable scale (Unicef, 2021). In other words, the political commitment to the ECD agenda has flourished.

In being placed on national government agendas, early childhood has been subject to specific policies and actions reflected in better living conditions, if we consider the evident advances made in reducing child mortality during recent decades (Unicef, 2021). “The global neonatal mortality rate fell from 37 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 17 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2019 – a decline of 52 per cent.” (Unicef, 2021, p. 8 – our translation). The mortality of this age cohort helps to give an idea both of the health situation and of the living conditions of the population, as children under the age of one year old are vulnerable to changes occurred in the social and economic environment, and to the interventions received (or not) in the health area (BEHM ROSAS, 2017).

Following the worldwide trend, the OECD member countries also showed considerable progress in cutting child mortality over the last few decades. However, the average of that decline stabilised around the turn of the century – in 2018 there were 4.0 deaths per 1,000 live births, only 2.8 points below the figure for 2000 (6.7 deaths per 1,000 live births). Even so, this represents a 40% reduction over the eighteen intermediate years. In Brazil, the average child mortality is higher than the average of the OECD countries, although the historical series analysed shows a decline in the mortality rate from 30.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000, to 12.8 in 2018.

When analysing the child mortality rate of OECD member countries and Brazil, individually, we find a large variation. In 14 OECD countries, the child mortality rate was lower than 5 per thousand live births in 2000, while in 4 countries and in Brazil that rate was higher than 10. Following the inclusion of early childhood in government agendas, the discrepancy in that rate narrowed down a little, with more countries achieving considerable reductions in child mortality, and by 2018 there were 31 countries, out of the 37 OECD member countries, with a child mortality rate lower than 5 per thousand live births.

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Concerning the variation in child mortality rates between countries, we agree with the argument raised by Behm (2017) that this phenomenon has social roots and should be studied in the context of social theory. For the author, the origin of the problem lies in the way that humans appropriate and transform natural resources and construct relationships with other human beings to produce and appropriate the generated product, as this process is, above all, social and expressed in terms of a specific socioeconomic formation in the articulation of the many modes of production, in which one is dominant (BEHM ROSAS, 2017). In this context, the level of development of the productive forces is also important, as it determines, among other aspects, the efficiency with which humans transform nature for their own benefit. The level of development and sophistication of working instruments enable humans to eliminate the risk of hunger and epidemics in many countries (BEHM ROSAS, 2017). The combination of these elements – among others – leads to differences in the standards of living of different social sectors of a country, which also influences the occurrence of disease and death (BEHM ROSAS, 2017). This process is historical and dynamic, as in each society the social relations of production change and are generated successively over time.

The analysed data reveal that socioeconomic factors perform an important role in the origin of mortality in developing countries with prevailing high mortality, primarily in the first years of life, associated to avoidable causes. The inequalities persist, and the majority of child deaths continue occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and in poor families (Unicef, 2021). Worldwide, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria continue to be the main causes of death of children less than 5 years old, being responsible for 15%, 8% and 5% of deaths, respectively (Unicef, 2021).

The rate of child poverty is also grounded in the mode of capitalist production and in the development of productive forces, placing people and countries in situations of inequality. This indicator reveals the socioeconomic conditions in which families with children in early childhood currently live. We find that on average,

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in OECD countries, 12.8% of children live in a situation of relative poverty, with the rates varying considerably between countries. In five OECD countries (Chile, Costa Rica, Israel, Turkey and United States), more than 20% of children live in relative poverty; with the rates being particularly high, around 27%, in Costa Rica. On the other hand, in 11 other OECD countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden), 10% of children live in a situation of relative poverty. The cases of Denmark and Finland are especially noteworthy, where the relative poverty rate of children is merely around 4%. In the Brazilian case, the child poverty rate has fallen slightly, having shifted from 31.2 in 2006 to 30.1 in 2013. Despite the fall, this is still a high rate when compared to the OECD country average.

Although countries have invested in policies aimed at fighting against child poverty throughout the OECD, the child relative poverty rates have increased in various OECD countries, representing a step backwards in their living conditions. The rates of child poverty increased in 13 out of the 33 OECD countries with available data between 2008 and 2018. In the Netherlands, for example, that rate grew by about 3 percentage points. However, in another twenty OECD countries with available data, the child relative poverty rates fell during the same period, with the strongest reductions taking place in Canada, Ireland, Mexico and Turkey, where the rates fell by 3-4 percentage points, and in Latvia and Poland, where they fell by 6-7 percentage points.

The increased child poverty from 2008 is related to the financial crisis that erupted in that same year, triggering a contraction in the global economy. There was a negative relationship between the economic recession and the material living conditions of children, in other words, the absolute increases in child poverty were higher in countries that experienced larger declines of GDP per capita (CHZHEN, 2014). The effects of this crisis were stronger for child poverty, suggesting that household income is more sensitive to macroeconomic shocks (CHZHEN, 2014). However, it should be

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stressed that the consequences of the crisis were not experienced in the same way among families with children, in other words, in the countries most affected by the recession, Greece and Iceland, the child poverty rate and deprivation rates grew more rapidly among children of unemployed families, single-parent families and migrant families than among the population of children as a whole (CHZHEN, 2014). This means that the children living in countries where the impact of the crisis was stronger experienced a sharper downturn in their living conditions, specifically illustrating the extent to which the socioeconomic conditions of the countries and families affect the life of the children.

Closing comments Based on the accessed data, we sought to analysis the extent to which the inclusion of early childhood in national government agendas led to an improvement in their living conditions and health.

We observed that, in general, there has been a considerable decline in the child mortality rate and in the poverty rate. From the 2000s, both in the OECD member countries and in Brazil, the child mortality and poverty rates remained on a downward trend, although the pace decreased over this last decade. Nevertheless, in analysing the country data on an individual basis, we find an enormous inequality of childhood circumstances around the world, with differences the child mortality rate ranging from, for example, in Brazil and Turkey of 30.4 and 28.4 per thousand live births, respectively, compared to Iceland where it was 3 per thousand live births in 2000.

In general, it could be said that the inclusion of early childhood in the national government agenda has enabled numerous children worldwide to have access to basic social rights that, although already legally guaranteed, were not part of the reality of many of these children. However, even if the improved living conditions of many children is a fact, the analysed data reveals huge discrepancies between countries. It is important to highlight that the existence of such distinct living circumstances is related to the capitalist

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mode of production that transfers the responsibility of childhood care to families and “communities”, shifting what are supposedly public universal policies to the field of compensatory and focused policies (CAMPOS, CAMPOS, 2008). In this regard, attention is drawn to the fact that the emphasis on the formulation of public policies that ensure special protection and care to this age group has occurred precisely in a context of change of social policies and State Welfare models, in which there has been a metamorphosis of universalist nature, protective of social policies, towards a segmented, or contained, universalism, focused on some social groups defined as more vulnerable (PEREIRA, 2008).

Finally, it should be pointed out that the effects of the economic crisis combined with the ensuing austerity policies have negative impacts on poverty reduction and on the health of the more vulnerable population, clearly illustrated in the child poverty rates from 2008. The analysed data portray the enormous extent to which the actual reality of the health and living conditions of the population are grounded in the web of capital accumulation and concentration of wealth, reflecting the living conditions experienced and revealing the extent to which State is present (or not) (PITOMBEIRA, OLIVEIRA, 2020). We thus conclude that in order to improve the living conditions of children in early childhood, their inclusion in national government agendas, while important, has not been and is not currently sufficient. It is necessary to go beyond. It is necessary to address the root of the problem: the capitalist mode of production that engenders the socioeconomic conditions in which these children live (CAMPOS, 2012).

References BEHM ROSAS, Hugo. Determinantes económicos y sociales de la mortalidad en América Latina. Rev Cubana Salud Pública, Ciudad de La Habana, v. 43, n. 2, p. 287-312, June. 2017. Available at: <http://scielo.sld.cu/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S086434662017000200013&lng=es&nrm=iso>. Accessed 25 October 2021.

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BLACK, M. M.; WALKER, S. P. FERNALD, L. C. H.; ANDERSEN, C. T.; DIGIROLAMO, A. M.; LU, C. et al.

Early childhood development coming of age: science through the life course. The Lancet. 2017; 389: 77-90. doi: 10.1016/S01406736(16)31389-7 CAMPOS, Roselane Fátima. Política pequena para as crianças pequenas? Experiências e desafios no atendimento das crianças de 0 a 3 anos na América Latina. Revista Brasileira de Educação, Rio de Janeiro, v. 17, n. 49, p. 81-105, Jan./Apr. 2012.

CAMPOS, Rosânia; CAMPOS, Roselane Fátima. A educação das crianças pequenas como estratégia para o “alívio” da pobreza. Inter Ação: Revista Faculdade de Educação (UFG), Goiânia, 33 (2): 241263, Jul./Dec. 2008.

CHZHEN, Y. Child Poverty and Material Deprivation in the European Union During the Great Recession. Innocenti Working Papers, n. 2014/06, UN, New York, 2014. https://doi. org/10.18356/899c7c48-en.

COSTA, Maria da Conceição Nascimento et al. Mortalidade infantil e condições de vida: a reprodução das desigualdades sociais em saúde na década de 90. Cadernos de Saúde Pública [online].

2001, v. 17, n. 3 [Accessed 25 October 2021], pp. 555-567. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-311X2001000300011>. Epub 5 June 2001. ISSN 1678-4464. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102311X2001000300011.

FUJIMOTO, Gaby. Cenário Mundial das Políticas de primeira infância. In: BRASÍLIA. Câmara dos Deputados. Primeira infância: avanços do marco legal da primeira infância. Brasília, 2016.

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JANNUZZI, Paulo de Martino. Indicadores para diagnóstico, monitoramento e avaliação de programas sociais no Brasil. Revista de Serviço Público, Brasília 56 (2): 137-160 Apr./Jun. 2005.

LANG, Aline Elisa Maretto. A Agenda Brasileira No Campo Da Primeira infância: Avanços e Retrocessos. Sociedade em Debate 26, n. 2 (28 July 2020): 98-114. Accessed 9 October 2021. https:// revistas.ucpel.edu.br/rsd/article/view/2697.

OECD. The OECD SOCX Manual (2019 edition). A guide to the OECD Social Expenditure Database. OECD Publishing, Paris, 2019.

PEREIRA, P. A. P. Política Social: temas e questões. 2. ed. São Paulo: Cortez, 2008.

PITOMBEIRA, Delane Felinto. OLIVEIRA, Lucia Conde de.

Pobreza e desigualdades sociais: tensões entre direitos, austeridade e suas implicações na atenção primária. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva [online]. 2020, v. 25, n. 5 [Accessed 25 October 2021], p. 1699-1708. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1590/141381232020255.33972019>. Epub 8 May 2020. ISSN 1678-4561. https://doi.org/10.1590/1413-81232020255.33972019.

UNICEF. Global Annual Results Report 2020. New York, June 2021.

VENACIO, SI. Why invest in early childhood? Rev. LatinoAmericana de Enfermagem. 2020; 28:e3253. Accessed September 2021; Available at: https://www.scielo.br/j/rlae/a/bv5zZdjNh79spv nL9H7jkLm/?lang=pt

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STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES, PROFESSIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION, FUNDING AND POLITICAL CONSERVATISM Talita Prada

Introduction

I

t is urgent to reflect on student support to promote academic permanence and development as these are inseparably entwined from basic right through to higher education. We start from the approach that student support is a right that should be universalised and articulated with other social structures and policies that are complementary to ensure permanence at school and academic development. This requires public funding to meet student needs, respecting their differences, necessities and singularities.

Our analysis traverses the Brazilian fiscal austerity, as it is impossible to envisage equal conditions of permanence and access disconnected from the economic crisis that affects social policies and increases inequalities in the national panorama. This taxation policy generates inequalities and is used to attenuate market inequalities, with Constitutional Amendment 95 being a means of perpetuation that relegates social policies to the level of privatisation and philanthropy (FAGNANI, 2018). Austerity is an ideological form of intervening in reality and justifying the cuts to social expenditure in essential public services for the working class. It exempts the State from implementing social policies free of charge and opens the door to strengthening market forces in the most diverse areas such as health and education. Yet, as a counterpoint, it does not attack the true causes of the economic crisis (BLYTH, 2017).

Thus, our goal is to analyse the federal funding of the National Student Support Programme (Pnaes) for Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education (EPCT) from 2010 to 2020 in order to investigate the financial inflection in the programme’s planning and implementation following the emergence of the Brazilian economic and financial crisis, evincing the programme model enabled by this funding.

We argue that the intensification of the austerity as an economic policy and the funding cuts in education policies reverberated across the Pnaes, precluding the implementation of the programme as a social right in EPCT due to its increasingly restrictive and selective trend. This, in turn, hindered the achievement of the proposed goals of securing the permanence of low-income students at these institutions.

Our methodological procedure follows a mixed documental research approach. We examined the programme rules established by the 41 EPCT institutions, the matrices of the National Council for the Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education Institutions (Conif ) from 2010 to 2020, the Conif matrix methodologies (2017 – 2020) and the databases of the Transparência Brasileira website (2014 – 2020) and of the Integrated Budget and Planning System (2010 – 2020), endeavouring to obtain the whole picture. The qualitative data review was based on the analysis of discourses and the quantitative aspect consisted of regression analysis using panel data. It should be stressed that all the figures were corrected according to the General Price Index– Internal Availability (IGP-DI) of September 2021 in order to update the real values intended for student support.

Daily struggles, student support, EPCT and funding Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education (EPCT) has a centenary-old history in Brazil. Despite this, the period of strongest expansion of units took place after 2003, when the 142 units in 2002 increased to 644 in 2016, distributed countrywide (BRAZIL, 2016). We could thus refer to three periods: a) from the creation of EPCT in 1909 to 2002 with a gently slow-moving expansion; b) the

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accelerated expansion between 2003 and 2016 during the “petista” (Workers’ Party - PT) governments; and, c) the stagnation of the expansion process of 2016-2021, under conservative governments.

From 2003, under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers’ Party (PT), Brazil witnessed a new drive towards social policy and policies of access to goods and services (SILVA, 2002), featuring EPCT expansion. This led to an increase in the number of vacancies in secondary and higher education. In the second government, the permanence of black and indigenous students from school up to university gained prominence in the government programme (SILVA, 2006) and the expansion policy enabled the approval of the PNAES. The half-open door to student support EPCT offered 10,878 different courses (from basic to doctorate level) with 1,507,476 enrolments and with the offer of 898,787 vacancies in 2020. Its students, primarily non-white (54.56%), black (11.04%), mixed (43.03%) and indigenous (0.49%) with income up to one and half times the minimum wage per capita, and 67.8% (BRAZIL, 2021) are PNAES target groups which also implies academic provenance from state schools.

The programme directs resources to meet the needs of students of face-to-face education, distance education and full boarding-schools (CONIF, 2018). However, 73.1% of institutions state that their target group consists of students of face-to-face education, 31.7% of distance education, and 24.3% do not specify their mode of school attendance.

In 2.4% of institutions, the participation of distance education students is limited to visits and participation in events, revealing that despite the resources, this target group is precluded and made universally accountable for student permanence at school and academic development. Postgraduate students were mentioned in 39% of the institutions, with 36.58% placing them under rules that prevent them from participate in these programmes. The above demonstrates that these students are viewed in an excluding manner and depend on the availability of grants from other programmes supporting research.

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Graph 1: Target group stated in the student support rules Target Group 30

Presencial

13

EaD

1

Semi-presencial

9

Todos os níveis e modalidades de ensino

5

Regularmente matriculados

7

Formação Inicial e Continuada - FIC (+ de 160 h)

7

Não inclui FIC

2

Proeja

1

Pós-graduação

15

Não inclui pós-graduação

1

Candidantos e egressos

0

10

20

30

Source: EPCT, 2021. Author’s own systematisation.

Graph 1 presents the diversity of the programme’s target group and reveals the institutional differences in the coverage of student support. On the one hand, there is a tendency to provide support, and on the other hand there are particularities such as the coverage of postgraduate students, applicants of selective processes and egresses, demonstrating more standardised concepts, some explicitly stated, others presumed and others not stated, some more encompassing others more restricted.

PNAES underfunding and slashed funding: between cuts and more cuts Student support has never been an area of concern or incidence of significant public expenditure and enforcement strategies by public power. Before the approval of the Pnaes, student support was occasional, residual and largely provided in exchange for work.

This scenario changed with the approval of the Pnaes that aims to democratise conditions of permanence; mitigate the effects of social and regional inequalities in permanence and completion; reduce

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retention and drop-out rates; and contribute to fostering social inclusion through education (BRAZIL, 2010).

Despite the regulations concerning institutional specificities (BRAZIL, 2010), the programme’s restricted budget does not enable this due to insufficient financial, human and infrastructure resources.The financial resources are 99% allocated to defrayal. Capital resources are allocated to infrastructure according to the pre-approved institutional projects. This precludes the implementation of student support beyond financial aid on campus that do not have infrastructure to provide food, student accommodation, childcare or other facilities. Thus, the programme is primarily implemented via transfer of financial resources directly to the student, in a selective manner.

Graph 2 presents the budget growth between 2010 and 2016 in a shifting context of expansion and cuts. The allocation of student support funds based on the approval of the PNAES experienced enormous growth compared to the previous budget implementation.

Average annual growth up to 2007 stood around two million. EPCT approval for students made growth soar to peaks that were only subject to budget cuts in 2016, bringing the percentage variation down to levels prior to 2010.

Graph 2 – Budgeted x implemented funds in Pnaes

Budgeted Funds x Implemented Funds R$900,000,000.00 R$800,000,000.00

R$700,000,000.00 R$600,000,000.00 R$500,000,000.00 R$400,000,000.00

R$300,000,000.00 R$200,000,000.00 R$100,000,000.00 R$-

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Orçado

Executado

Source: Conif; Mec. Author’s own systematisation, 2021.

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The implemented percentages in 2017, 2019 and 2020 were lower than in 2008 when there was growth of 2.11% in relation to 2007. The percentage variations in relation to the previous year were -0.67% in 2017, 4.32% in 2018, - 2.30% in 2019 and -19.14% in 2020. During that period, the budget declined by 17.79% while the number of enrolments increased by 66.71%.

Added to this, the picture offers indications that these resources did not allow funding all the students with the programme profile and/or did not meet their needs for permanence. This situation tends to worsen as a downward trend in funds and an upward movement in enrolments are simultaneously underway. Although the progressive increase in public expenditure related to student support up to 2016 led to the attainment of a threshold that had never been reached before at the institution, it did not actually meet the demand for student support, as student needs are considered in the available budget but expenditure is not established according to demand, thus weakening the programme.

Table 1. PNAES value per capita 2020 Implemented value

R$590,962,543.58

Number of students

1,504,476

Students with PNAES profile

67.8% of total students or 1,020,035

Annual value per capita (implemented value / students) – average 10 academic months

R$579.35

Monthly value per capita

R$57.93

Daily value per capita (average of 20 academic days)

R$2.89

Source: BRAZIL, 2021. Author’s own systematisation, 2021.

Thus, if all the students with PNAES profile were placed, the average income per capital allocated to each would be R$2.89 per day, considering 20 academic days. This value is insufficient for any student support action, whether for meals, transport, accommodation,

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childcare or any other facility, demonstrating that the resources allocated to Pnaes are insufficient to meet student needs demand.

In other words, despite the regulations suggesting a prioritisation and non-restriction to caring for students with the required profile and/or state school provenance, even with selection, it is not possible to ensure that the actions will be delivered to all students who are eligible for the programme, because the transferred amounts have fallen in line with the budget cuts. Although the rules seek to adjust for regional particularities, they cannot be honoured with these budgetary restrictions, increasing the programme’s residual and selective nature.

Opening Pandora’s box: PNAES funding sources Information about PNAES budget sources is not presented in 97.6% of the rulings, hindering access to this information and social control. Despite this concealment, in ten years, 95% of the funds came from source 100, ordinary funds of primary origin, or not financial, of the National Treasury and related to the current financial year intended for free allocation to social policies, bodies and spheres of federal, state or municipal government.

In 2010, source 100 funds corresponded to 78% of total funds; a figure that increased to 94% in 2011 and 96% in 2012. From 2013 to 2019, these funds stood at more than 99%, but fell to 59.6% in 2020. It was only in 2010 that own funds (source 250) reached 20% of the total. In 2011 and 2012, the sum of these funds came to approximately 6% and 4% of the total amount. The approval of the programme with federal funds, the reduction of funds with the end of the expansion and budget cuts in other institutional areas implied that the use of own funds declined.

Despite the institutional efforts to provide student support with its own funds, these funds essentially stem from revenue raised from rentals and selective processes, implying financial restrictions.

Fund-raising to maintain institutional activities is becoming unsustainable, which hinders the education strengthening process,

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as the social function of these institutions should not be directed towards the market and entrepreneurism. Hence, federal resources are fundamental for this funding.

From 2020, source 144 is the second largest with budget allocation, contributing to 40% of the annual total. This occurred because 40% of Pnaes funding was submitted to the golden rule in the public budget. The golden rule is enforced when the federal government exceeds the amount of capital expenditure in conducting credit operations and, therefore, requires authorisation from the legislative government, by absolute majority, for a supplementary budget. This measure prohibits financial inflows arising from debt – credit operations – for the payment of current expenditure such as staff wages, welfare benefits, interest on debt, and charges and costs related to the public machine (BRAZIL, 201-). This practice remained in the Pnaes budget of 2010, covering the entire EPCT and other policies, negatively affecting the academic community, due to the difficulty of planning and the uncertainties of this budget division.

Source 144 arises from the issue of public National Treasury public securities, related to the year in course, and are the result of the austerity policies that had most impact on the PNAES budget, brought in by the budget planning of the Bolsonaro government.

Of financial origin, this source supplements the funds budgeted in the Annual Organic Law that declined from R$757,399,413.17 in 2019, to R$421,031,391.59 in 2020, preventing impacts of the cuts in student support on the academic community from further limiting the programme. Source 144 supplements the funds by R$282,193,147.59, which amounted to the total of R$703,224,539.18 in 2020 (BRAZIL, 2019). This funding was only higher than that up to 2013, although the number of enrolments of 2020 (1,504,476) was more than double that of 2013 (702,958), demonstrating the disproportion between the growth of enrolment and the reduction of resources.

This is the trend for the next few years, as funds for the four-year period (2020 – 2023) stand at R$1,085,865,445.00. By removing the

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funds corresponding to 2020 that have already been implemented, the average funds for the following years is R$262,906,224,33, in other words, a true setback for student support in a context that is increasingly more complex on a daily basis. In the words of Ferguson (2013, p.84) “while a system is flourishing, reforms may be granted; when, however, the system is in crisis, then the dominant class will do its utmost to regain everything that was relinquished in the reforms undergone in previous periods”.

Between universalisation and selectivity based on income or merit The PNAES and its diversity of actions, criteria and methodologies of selection are defined by institutions through regulations (BRAZIL, 2010) that establish type, offer, values, duration and other aspects. These regulations are open to interpretation, forms of implementation and sometimes kindle disputes over resources (PRADA; SURDINE, 2018) that are, in themselves, insufficient.

Based on these regulations, we classify this Pnae’s actions along three lines: • • •

Selective programmes (students with income per capita up to one and a half the minimum wage); Universal programmes (all students); Merit-based programmes (students selected due to academic achievement).

The income profile programmes basically transfer income for student expenses related to food, photocopying and printing, educational material, accommodation and other items (Figure 1).

Another form of selection is meritocracy, a living component at 85.3% of the institutions materialising programmes that are considered universal, but where student are screened according to grades and particular behavioural standards, which is why they are classified as

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merit-based, such as income transfer for research, outreach, sports, monitoring, participation in events, student exchanges and others.

Figure 1: Student support actions implemented in EPCT

The universal programmes are offered at 87.8% of institutions by providers with projects and programmes divided into: 1. Uninterrupted actions promoting health, teaching and psychosocial support, support to students with special education needs and food.

2. Projects fostering culture, sports and leisure, digital inclusion, diversity, citizenship or teaching, research and outreach.

These projects use financial resources to acquire materials and pay students who are jointly accountable for the activities and follow-up of the project. Here, a differentiation is made between the two student categories: worker students/ scholarship holders and the students benefiting from these actions, revealing one of the forms of inequality that affects the programme’s students.

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3. Technical visits carried out by teachers with specific classes whose content is related to the teaching project of the course.

This action was placed under the regulations from 2015, following the onset of the budget cuts. On the one hand, this reflects the shrinkage of resources, and on the other hand that, although the lower funding did not initially affect the PNAES, it did affect student support via the institutional reorganisation of actions.

We highlight that some of these student support actions were suspended with the pandemic, due to the inability to enforce their implementation, with the reallocation of resources to other actions, thus adapting their coverage. Additional support was regulated in 2020 for acquisition of equipment, internet access and to support students with special education needs.

This need stemmed from the shift from face-to-face teaching to remote teaching, and due to previous rules, regulated digital inclusion in a universal manner (19.5% – eight institutions) at laboratories, institutional equipment, data and learning networks.

Nonetheless, digital inclusion needs to be provided at home, with equipment – mobile phones, tablets or computers – connected to the internet. Without these prerequisite, it will be impossible to restore academic activities.

Conclusions Drawing conclusions about this work is part of a reflection conceived over the last four years, where we identified the underfunding of the PNAES since its inception, with an upward trend of its resources until 2015 that enabled some of the low-income students to remain at school. Despite this, new underfunding started to be imposed in 2016, with the entrenchment of fiscal austerity policies and political conservatism, designing a more residual, restricted and selective programme for the extremely poor.

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We conclude that the underfunding and funding cuts of the programme stems from a conservative and meritocratic ideal rooted in the belief that student support should be limited to students that may even be poor, but who must have strong academic achievements.

This de-legitimises student support as a right, and weakens and questions its results.

With the cuts, permanence within the education system tapers for the extremely poor implicated in individual effort for success, requiring satisfactory academic development regardless of the social conditions differentiating these students, demonstrating a limited and limiting perspective of student support. The social, institutional and developmental reality of students appear disconnected and students are individually held accountable for their academic development.

The reverse side of this picture requires resources for the adequate funding of education, student support and its institutions as a legal right, articulated with different social agents and policies. Moreover, the fostering of monitoring and assessment research to theorise veiled aspects could strengthen and legitimise student support as a right and instrument for academic development. So, student support is part of combating school leaving and years repeated, albeit not the only one.

References BLYTH, M. Austeridade: a história de uma ideia perigosa. Tradução de Freitas e Silva. São Paulo: Autonomia Literária, 2017. 400 BRAZIL. Law 11.892 of 29 December 2008. Institutes the Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education, creates the Federal Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education Institutes, and lays down other provisions. Brasília, 2008. Available at: < http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ ato20072010/2008/lei/l11892.htm >. Accessed: 20 september 2013.

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BRAZIL. Decree 7.234 of 19 July 2010. Provides for the National Student Support Programme. Brasília, 2010. Available at: < http:// www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2007-2010/2010/Decreto/ D7234.htm > Accessed: 20 november 2013.

BRAZIL. Ministry of Education. Expansão da Rede Federal.

Brasília, 2016. Available at: < http://redefederal.mec.gov.br/ expansao-da-rede-federal >. Accessed: 14 july 2016.

BRAZIL. Ministry of the Economy, Federal Budget Secretariat.

Orçamentos da União. Exercício financeiro 2020: projeto de lei orçamentária. Brasília, 2019. 6v. em 8. Available at: < http://www. planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Projetos/PLN/2019/Anexo/MSG39519-Volume%20%20II.pdf > Acesso em: 7november 2019.

BRAZIL. Ministry of Economy. Tesouro Nacional Transparente.

Painel da Regra de Ouro. Brasília, [201-]. Available at: < https://www.tesourotransparente.gov.br/visualizacao/painel-daregra-de-ouro#:~:text=Denomina%2Dse%20Regra%20de%20 Ouro,financeiras%20e%20amortiza%C3%A7%C3%A3o%20 da%20d%C3%ADvida) >. Accessed: 15 une 2021.

BRAZIL. Vocational and Technological Education Secretariat.

Ministry of Education. Nilo Peçanha Platform 2021 (baseline year 2020). Brasília, 2021. Available at: < http://plataformanilopecanha. mec.gov.br/2021.html > Accessed: 30 october 2021.

CONSELHO NACIONAL DAS INSTITUIÇÕES DA REDE FEDERAL DE EDUCAÇÃO PROFISSIONAL, CIENTÍFICA E TECNOLÓGICA – CONIF. Metodologia da matriz orçamentária da Rede de Ensino Profissional e Tecnológico de 2019. Brasília, 2018.

FAGNANI, E. Austeridade e Seguridade: a destruição do marco civilizatório brasileiro. In: ROSSI, P.; DWECK, E.; OLIVEIRA, A.

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L. M. de. Economia para poucos. Impactos sociais da austeridade e alternativas para o Brasil. São Paulo: Autonomia Literária, 2018, p. 57-82.

FERGUSON, I. Austeridade no Reino Unido: o fim do estado de bem-estar social? Argumentum, Vitória (ES), v. 5, n. 2, p. 65-88, jul./ dec. 2013.

PRADA, T.; SURDINE, M. C. da C. A assistência estudantil nos Institutos Federais de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia. Ser Social.

Educação e Lutas Sociais no Brasil. Brasília, v. 20, n. 43, julho a dezembro de 2018. Available at: < http://periodicos.unb.br/index. php/SER_Social/article/view/18860/17575 > Accessed: 26 july 2019.

SILVA, L. I. L. Programa de Governo 2002: Um Brasil para Todos – coligação Lula Presidente. 2002. Available at: < https:// fpabramo.org.br/csbh/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/04/14programagoverno.pdf >. Accessed: 18 september 2019.

SILVA, L. I. L. Programa de Governo 2007/ 2010: Lula de novo com a força do Povo – coligação a força do Povo. 2006.

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ENCCEJA IN THE PERSPECTIVES OF STUDENTS: OPPORTUNITY AND/OR IMPERTINENCE? Talita Valadares Edna Castro de Oliveira

Introduction Brazilian education is historically marked by the exclusion of the poor, non-white persons, women, disabled, youngsters and adults who did not had access to formal education at the so-called “right age”. Public education policies in Brazil are immersed in struggles to guarantee the right to education to everyone, which has not yet been conquered. In this light, it is evident that public policy cannot be discussed without knowing and understanding the history of education.

Returning specifically to Youth and Adult Education (EJA), public policies have been historically linked to government and non-government initiatives. According to Costa and Machado (2017, p. 139): [...] at different times of history, the discourse on illiteracy served the interests of governments and qualification of labour for the industrialisation process. On the other hand, civil society, partly resisting to these principles, organised education offers for workers that represented movements of resistance to the State model [...]

It is clearly not possible to discuss education in a hermetic or dichotomous way, separating the modes of teaching of the same Basic Education as education policies are tangential, sometimes interwoven, not in only in the induction of public policies on education but also within the actual education process.

We focused our studies on the National Exam for Certification of Skills for Young People and Adults (ENCCEJA), which has been much disputed by social and popular organisations that fight to ban it “as this assessment and certification instrument does not meet the specific needs of Youth and Adult Education” (BRAZIL, 2009, p. 57).

This exam, created in 2002, is an education public policy linked to the Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP). It is defined “as an assessment instrument to ascertain the skills and abilities of young people and adults at Primary School and Secondary School level” (BRAZIL, 2002).

This entails large-scale assessment specifically for youth and adults, and simultaneously certifies and enables the pursuit of education of those who pass the exam.

The decision to research the ENCCEJA presumes understanding whether the exam can double up and shift from the proposed education assessment instrument into a means of certification aimed at offering an opportunity to young people enrolled at Primary Schools. Our disquiet is directed at understanding the personal, social, economic and professional impacts that the action of migrating to certification has on the life of the adolescents, young people and adults of Ouro Preto.

We thus proposed to investigate young persons certified by the ENCCEJA, in the city of Ouro Preto, enrolled at Secondary Schools, at the time of taking the exam, between 2017 and 2019.

The time frame was determined as 2017 was the first year that Ouro Preto certified Secondary Education through ENCCEJA and 2019 because it was the last year that this exam was set before the pandemic. Our investigation has the singularity of addressing the

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issue based on hearing the persons concerned in order to consider the certification policy in force.

The starting point was the hypothesis that secondary education students are motivated to seek certification as a form of lightening their studies, under the belief that, in doing so, they become eligible for the labour market, thus ensuring their own future subsistence, by opening the way to unilateral human training.

We aim to substantiate the thesis that the certification exam for youth and adult education has not achieved its objectives and, furthermore, has superimposed itself on the basic education policy, leading young people to choose certification in detriment of completing their basic education in a regular manner. This prerogative enables the State to economise education resources, applying them in other sectors that prioritise the market.

The methodological path was designed by starting with searches for studies already carried out on the topic, then building on the bibliographic review including recorded catalogues of dissertations and theses provided by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) and platforms of journals and annals of events of the National Association of Postgraduate and Research in Education (Anped).

The research, which is currently underway, has a qualitative approach of an exploratory nature based on documentation, theoretically supported by critical sociology and Political Sociology of Education. Our data collection instrument involved the use of questionnaires and discussion group meetings.

The relevance of the proposed study is embodied in the possibility of gaining information from the study subjects that contribute to understanding the implications of the exam, and the continued need for confrontation in the dispute over a youth and adult education policy, underpinned by knowledge of the economic and educational situation of the intended target group, in addition to designing subsidies for the construction of policies for quality education.

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The ENCCEJA as public policy for youth and adult education In 2018, on International Literacy Day, Audrey Azoulay, DirectorGeneral of Unesco at the time, warned us in her speech that 617 million children and adolescents in the world had not acquired basic reading, writing and maths skills. At that time, Brazil was ranked in the 8th place among the countries with the highest number of illiterate people. In Brazil, illiteracy is direct related to the sociocultural legacy of the colonial period when few had access to school education.

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) published the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), indicating that merely 48.8% of the Brazilian population completed Basic Education. This percentage leads us to consider that, despite basic education being mandatory and free of charge countrywide, why has more than half the Brazilian population got lost along the school pathway?

The years of schooling of the Brazilian population has increased.

That is a fact. However, the IBGE data reveal that not all the population has guaranteed access to or permanence at schools. The current reality shows that Goal 3 of the National Education Plan (PNE), that establishes the universalisation of Secondary education by 2016, raising the rate of enrolment of youngsters of school age to 85%, is far from being achieved. The evidence indicates a considerable number of youngsters aged 15 years old or more who are outside school not having completed Basic Education.

The National Plan monitoring reports also demonstrate the apparent complexity of attaining Goals 8, 9 and 10. Opinion 11/2000 already pointed to the difficulty of analysing the situation of youth and adult education based on statistical indicators. According to this opinion, “the School Census and diagnoses of the INEP [Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research] and IBGE [Institute of Geography and Statistics], as to the educational situation of young people and adults, have already provided figures that enable a visibility of the universe to be worked” (BRAZIL, 2000, p. 54). This note is evoked in the analysis by Machado and Rodrigues (2014).

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Education should be accessed by all as it is defined as a constitutional and universal right regardless of age. It is essential not to lose sight of the fact that education is, and has always been, culturally desired to meet demands and relations of power, notwithstanding the social policies and movements of any give time and context. However, it is fundamental to understand that, bearing this in mind, it cannot merely serve part of the population. The National Education Plan, PNE 2014-2024, approved by Article 2 of Law 13.005/2014, established as guidelines: I - Eradication of illiteracy; II - Universalisation of school attendance; III - Overcoming of educational inequalities, stressing the promotion of citizenship and eradication of all forms of discrimination; IV - Improvement of the quality of education; V - Training for work and for citizenship, emphasising the moral and ethical values underpinning society; VI - Promotion of the principle of the democratic management of public education; VII - Humanistic, scientific, cultural and technological promotion of the country; VIII - Establishment of a target for the allocation of public resources to education as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), ensuring the meeting of expansion needs, pursuant to quality and equity standards; IX - Valorisation of education professionals; X - Promotion of the principles of respect for human rights, diversity and socio-environmental sustainability. (BRAZIL 2014)

This legislation also determines, in Article 11, that the National Basic Education Assessment System, coordinated by the Union, in collaboration with the States, Federal District and Municipalities, will constitute a source of information for the appraisal of the quality of basic education and guidance of public policies at this education level (BRAZIL, 2014).

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This implies that large-scale assessments should, henceforth, take into account the need to create data and subsidies for the theorising, evaluation and design of public policies for quality education.

According to Costa and Machado (2017), ENCCEJA was created to meet the need of Brazilians resident abroad for school certification in order to hold jobs, explicitly in Japan. Although prior to the National Education Plan, ENCCEJA was intended to be an instrument to: Serve as national benchmark for youth and adult education; Structure the appraisal of knowledge (abilities and skills) of young participants as defined in the Education Law LDB 9394/96 (15 years old primary education and 18 years old secondary education); Offer classification for correction of school flows; Consolidate a database to improve the quality of the youth and adult education offer and construct an indicator for appraisal for public policies for youth and adult education (BRAZIL 2002).

The perspectives of the ENCCEJA, described in the legislation that created the exam, point to the possibility of designing a public policy, based on data, that meets the real needs. However, eighteen years after its creation, there is still no document that systematises, presents or even indicates the real data of this education modality in the country. This allows us to infer that the State does not yet view perceive youth and adult education as a regular and constant education modality, or even as a public policy, corroborating the provisions established in Article 38 of the LDB, primarily in § 2, namely: The education systems will maintain courses and supplementary exams comprising the common national base of the curriculum, enabling the pursuit of regular studies. § 1 – The exams referred to in this article shall be taken: I – upon completion of Primary Education for students over 15 years old; II – upon completion of Secondary Education, for students over 18 years old. § 2 – The knowledge and abilities acquired by the students via informal means will be ascertained and recognised through exams (BRAZIL, 1996, our bold).

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The Basic Document Introductory Book of the ENCCEJA (BRASIL, 2002) is presented for the purpose of offering youth and adult education students with the opportunity of obtaining recognition and validation of abilities and knowledge acquired throughout life, outside formal education. Due to inferring that during daily experience, individuals structure knowledge that enables them continue formal education, as a result of the comprehensiveness of the requirements of the world of employment, the exam was launched under the responsibility of the Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP).

The ENCCEJA received great resistance from society and entities representing and operating in youth and adult education, who saw this new policy as a threat, a mechanism to possibly end the youth and adult education modality. The Government justified the policy as a condition to meet the demand for supplementary exams, following a perspective of national assessment to unify and propose a single assessment matrix for the entire country. The pressure of social movements and discussions coming from the International Conferences on Adult Education (CONFINTEA) led to a change in the perspective on youth and adult education.

The ENCCEJA was first implemented in 2002 and 2003. In that last year, the Government yielded to the pressure exerted by the entities and social movements involved in youth and adult education, and proposed to discuss the issue, indicating to Inep that it was necessary to restructure the exam in order to harmonise the Assessment Matrix with the National Curricular Guidelines for youth and adult education. A change was made in the text of the new ordinance that would regulate the exam, Ordinance 3415 of 21 October 2004.

Since its creation, the exam has only not been offered in two years: 2004 and 2012. This exam is provided to youth and adults resident in different Brazilian states who, through their Secretariats for Education, applied for certification of primary education, from residents abroad to young people deprived of freedom or under socio-educational corrective measures. This also covered young

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people aged more than 15 years old and secondary education with the minimum age of 18 years old.

The organisation of the ENCCEJA evolved with modifications.

In 2010, 2013 and 2014, the exam was only provided at the level of primary education, with the certification of secondary education being given by the National Exam for Secondary Education (Enem).

Some editions were offered by general public notices (for Brazilians resident abroad and young people deprived of freedom) and by specific public notices for each target group, also applied at different times for each target group.

According to National Education Council (CNE) / Basic Education Chamber (CEB) Opinion 11/2000, an exam provided outside Brazilian territory, for purposes of national validity and certificate of completion, should necessarily entail the exercise of the national sovereignties in question. Which is why these initiatives must have national authorising entities. In this case, the appropriate jurisdiction is the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Education Council (BRAZIL, 2000, p. 47).

Thus, based on a single exam defined by the highest bodies of education, the aim is to guarantee a proposal of continuity and coherence of the certification exams with a single assessment matrix in light of the National Curricular Guidelines for Youth and Adult Education, the target group for which the certification was created, regardless of place of residence.

From the point of view of a national education assessment system, the ENCCEJA would, alongside the Basic Education Assessment System (SAEB) and National Secondary School Exam (Enem), complement the assessment of basic education in Brazil, serving as an input to consider education pathways, constructing policies able to elevate the quality of education in the country. However, the largescale assessments gained the connotation of school ranking and the scapegoating primarily of teachers for poor results. Furthermore,

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since its creation, ENCCEJA has been examined in detail or given rise to public policies.

Catelli (2016, p. 284) noted that “an effort is being made increase the number of people who complete basic education by means of certification exams, but there is almost no investment to appraise the work done and, therefore, progress in terms of quality of the services offered. ” Apart from the point highlighted by Catelli (2016), there is also the situation that the youth and adult education subjects, despite not having attended school at the appropriate age, have developed strategies for survival based on socially acquired knowledge as a result of experience, which is also important for the subject’s skills.

Hence, values and lifestyles, individualities and subjectivities must also be considered in the assessment process. These crucial issues are not appraised in an assessment encountering so much diversity, and that seeks, in addition to certification, to point to public policy needs in an education modality.

(In) conclusions The research is underway at the data collection stage. Up to date, it is clear that the migration expresses an overlapping of public policies.

In other words, these policies compete with each other, sometimes annulling, sometimes voiding, sometimes offsetting one another.

Somewhere along its historical pathway, ENCCEJA strayed from its original goals of assessment and became merely an exam. As such, it has become a deviation, a sidetrack in the implementation of other policies strengthening Secondary Education. In this way, it has overlaid basic education policy, leading young people to choose certification in detriment of completing their basic education in a regular way. Its induction appears as a path to enhance the flexibility and shorten Secondary Education.

Having said that, this reinforces the idea presented by Ball (2007) apud Rosa (2013), that pointed to privatisation in a macro form in the research conducted in the United Kingdom. Other similar research has been conducted in other countries, demonstrating

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a phenomenon of investment and webbed engagement among philanthropic institutions, businesspersons and the State.

In an interview of Prof. Dr Sanny Silva da Rosa (2013, p. 461), Ball (2007) also noted that “the State currently plays the role of “midwife”, producing market relations within which the private sector is able to develop lucrative activities in the delivery and management of public services. Thus, the privatisation process becomes profitable to the State that reduces its expenditure on education, an individual right of the citizens, while simultaneously justifying the service rendered by the intermediary, referred to as the third way.

This prerogative enables the State to economise education resources, applying them in other sectors, that prioritise the market.

In this context, ENCCEJA itself becomes a market connotation of certification.

References BRAZIL. Casa Civil. Law 9.394 of 20 December 1996 – Establishes the Guidelines and Foundations of National Education. Brasília 1996. Available at: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l9394. htm Accessed: 4 july 2019.

BRAZIL. CNE/CEB Opinion 11/2000. Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação de Jovens e adultos. Available at http:// www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l9394.htm Accessed: 4 july 2019.

BRAZIL. Ministry of Education. Ordinance 3.415 of 21 October 2004. Available at: https://download.inep.gov.br/educacao_basica/ encceja/legistacao/2004/portaria22_10_04.pdf Accessed: 11 july 2020.

BRAZIL. Ordinance 2.270 of 14 August 2002. Available at: http://download.inep.gov.br/educacao_basica/ENCCEJA/ legistacao/2002/portaria2270.pdf. Accessed: 31 october 2019.

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BRAZIL. Ministry of Education, Livro Introdutório: Documento Básico: ensino fundamental e médio / Coordination by Zuleika de Felice Murrie. – Brasília: MEC; INEP, 2002.

BRAZIL.Ministry of Education.Secretariat of Continued Education, Literacy and Diversity. National Preparatory Document for the VI International Conferences on Adult Education (VI CONFINTEA) / Ministry of Education (MEC). – Brasília: MEC; Goiânia: FUNAPE/UFG, 2009. Available at: <http://portal.mec.gov.br/ index.php?option=com_docman&view=download&alias=10024CONFINTEA-6-secadi&Itemid=30192> Accessed: 24 may 2020.

BRAZIL. CASA CIVIL. Law 13.005/2014. Approves the National Education Plan (PNE) and establishes other provisions. Available at: <http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei/ l13005.htm> Accessed: 27 july 2020.

CATELLI JR., Roberto. Políticas de certificação por meio de exames nacionais para a educação de jovens e adultos: um estudo comparado entre Brasil, Chile e México [Certification policies by means of national exams for youth and adult education: a comparative study between Brazil, Chile and Mexico] (Doctoral thesis in Education) – Faculty of Education, Universidade de São Paulo. São Paulo, 2016.

COSTA, Cláudia Borges; MACHADO, Maria Margarida.

Políticas públicas e Educação de Jovens e adultos no Brasil. São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 2017.

IBGE. Educação. Panorama por cidade. Available at: <https:// cidades.ibge.gov.br/Brazil/mg/ouro-preto/panorama> Accessed: 3 august 2020.

IBGE. Educação 2019. PNAD Contínua (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua). Available at: <https://

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biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/liv101736_informativo. pdf > Accessed: 18 june 2021.

MACHADO, Maria Margarida; RODRIGUES, Maria Emilia de Castro. A EJA na próxima década e a prática pedagógica do docente.

In: Revista Retratos da Escola, Brasília, v. 8, n. 15, p. 383-395, Jul./ Dec. 2014. Available at: <http://retratosdaescola.emnuvens.com.br/ rde/article/view/448/579> Accessed: 19 may 2021.

ROSA, Sanny Silva da. Entrevista com Stephen J. Ball Privatizações da educação e novas subjetividades: contornos e desdobramentos das políticas (pós) neoliberais. In: Revista Brasileira de Educação v. 18 n. 53 Apr.-Jun. 2013. Available at: <https://www.scielo.br/j/rbedu/a/ yh8RkkJ4LKF84GGzvvZpjdd/?lang=pt> Accessed: 14 May 2021.

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WORK IN SOCIO-EDUCATION POLICY: BETWEEN TENSIONS, CONFLICTS AND POTENTIALITIES Pollyanna Labeta Iack

Introduction It is in this context of necrocapitalism, structural unemployment, deregulation of rights, a drastic reduction in funding and the precariousness of public and social policies, an increase in violence, the criminalization of poverty and the militarization of public policies that a mass of workers experience grievances in mental health (MIRANDA, 2021; ABRAMIDES, 2021).

In times of a covid-19 pandemic, reality has become more complex. The fear of contracting the disease and transmitting it to family members, co-workers and users is a torment. Data from the Coronavirus1 Panel, updated on 12/07/2021, indicate that in Brazil 616,018 thousand people died as a result of the disease.

According to information from the Bulletin of Conjuncture n. 29 – June/July 2021 of the Inter-union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese), the pandemic has deepened social inequality, increasing the number of people in extreme poverty, which is equivalent to the entry of 1.2 million people in this category (9% increase); the number of less educated employed persons decreased by 10.4%, equivalent to less than 7.5 million people; inflation is 1. Available at: < https://covid.saude.gov.br/>. Access in: Dec. 2021.

higher for low-income people (8.9%), while for high-income people it was 6.3%. Inflation has hit hard the price of basic food basket, cooking gas and fuel, among others. (DIEESE, 2021). Therefore, it is necessary to fight and create survival strategies.

In view of the above, health organizations warn: mental health is at risk! Data from the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) reveal that depression is the leading cause of work disability worldwide. In Brazil, about 5.8% of the population suffers from depression, which corresponds to 11.5 million people. As for treatment, the WHO warns that despite the existence of effective actions, less than half of the affected people receive them (LABOISSIÈRE, 2017).

The 2017 Sinase Annual Survey warns about the need for qualified listening, the work of producing mental health with the teams responsible for care, as well as attention to aspects of the institutional dynamics that are producers of mental illness. (BRAZIL, 2019, p. 23). Given the relevance and urgency of reflection on the subject, we will seek to reflect the reality of social workers’ job in socio-educational policy.

To this end, we will divide this essay into two sections. The first will address the legal basis for inserting these professionals into politics, as well as the ethical and political foundations of the profession. The second will be dedicated to contextualizing the professional practice at the Instituto de Atendimento Socioeducativo do Espírito Santo – Iases (Institute for Socio-Educational Assistance of Espírito Santo), an institution responsible for managing the socio-educational policy aimed at adolescents who are attributed the authorship of legal offences, bringing to the fore the tensions, challenges and the need to improve the collective struggle as a mediation to overcome the processes of moral harassment and illness of workers.

The legal, ethical and political bases for the professional exercise of the social worker Social Work is a profession born from the clash between capital and work, being called to act in the face of the social question.

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(IAMAMOTO, 2005). From its genesis with conservative and clientelistic perspectives, the profession underwent a movement of renewal and reconceptualization, which started in 1965, with the objective of building a more critical professional profile, for a better orientation and resizing of the professional exercise of Social Work.

(NETTO, 2005).

Netto (2005, p. 131) understands by renewal: [...] the set of new characteristics, which, within the framework of the constrictions of the bourgeois autocracy, the Social Service articulated, based on the rearrangement of its traditions (...), seeking to invest itself as an institution of a professional nature endowed with practical legitimation, through responses to social demands and their systematization, and of theoretical valorization, through the reference to theories and social disciplines.

Thus, social work, inserted in the socio-technical division of work, is regulated by Law 8.662 of March 13, 1993, having as a standardizing document for professional practice the Code of Ethics that materializes the Ethical-Political Project of Social Work, defining fundamental principles, rights, duties and prohibitions for social workers. (BRAZIL, 1993).

Having among the fundamental principles the commitment to the recognition of freedom as a central ethical value and the political demands inherent to it – autonomy, emancipation and full expansion of social individuals and the uncompromising defense of human rights and refusal of arbitrariness and authoritarianism is no small feat. It is the rejection of the old “ethics of neutrality” and the affirmation of a theoretically, technically and politically competent professional profile, affirming the commitment to the subjects served.

Often these principles will clash with the institutional culture.

However, it is not the ethical principles that should be reviewed, but the institutional culture, inherited from the Minors’ Code, where children and adolescents were treated as mere objects of State

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intervention. The Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA), established

by Law 8.069/90 came to break through this logic, recognizing them as subjects of rights. (LABETA-IACK, 2020).

The Role of Social Work in Socio-education In Espírito Santo, the policy manager is the Instituto de Atendimento Socioeducativo do Espírito Santo (Iases), an autarchy with a legal personality governed by internal public law, with administrative and financial autonomy, linked to the Secretariat of Human Rights (SEDH), through the Supplementary Law No. 830 of July 6, 2016 (ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2020).

In the entire history of the institute, only one public competitive exam was held, regulated by Public Notice 001/2010, which established 36 roles for social workers. According to the competition, the duties of the position are: Participate in the elaboration and execution of the political pedagogical project of assistance to adolescents, in the construction and execution of the Individual Assistance Plan (PIA) and in socioeducational intervention projects. Carry out reception and initial assessment of the adolescent and the family. Develop methods and techniques of assistance. Carry out individual and group activities.

Conduct case studies. Issue opinions, reports, periodic reports, social diagnoses, individual and group interventions. Participate in community mobilization and organization processes. Carry out home visits, data collection and socioeconomic studies. Accompany assisted visits involving family members and/or personal references of adolescents. Promote family and community integration activities.

Promote the social inclusion of adolescents. Articulate with the System of Guarantees of Rights the promotion of social inclusion of adolescents and their families. To act from the perspective of the intersectoriality of public policies. Assist in the construction of institutional programs and projects. Carry out studies, research, technical notes and publications within the scope of its activities.

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Develop and implement instruments for planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation. Work in the context of institutional intervention with planning, organization, implementation and execution of routines. Develop fundraising projects, according to organizational policy. Act in the planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation of institutional plans, programs and projects. Liaise public and/or private organizations in order to encourage and develop partnerships. Develop and carry out activities related to human resources management. Provide social service to the civil servants. Participate in continuing education processes (ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2010, p. 41).

Thus, the attributions of social workers range from providing direct care to adolescents and young people in compliance with socio-educational measures and their families to managing the policy, either by acting in transversal sectors (planning, training, psychosocial care aimed at the civil servant, health, education, sport, culture, leisure, professionalization etc.) or in the exercise of commissioned positions or remunerated occupations.

The entry of the public service candidates only took place after the filing of a writ of mandamus by the Sindipúblicos union, given that the Iases continued to hire workers on a temporary assignment basis instead of giving tenure to the candidates. Thus, the arrival at the body took place in a tense way, some made it very clear that we were not welcome and that the exam was only given by judicial determination. Little by little, we got to know the institution, the people, the power relations, seeking the necessary mediations to carry out the attributions announced to us by Public Notice n. 001/2010.

The institutional history of Iases is marked by contradictions.

It is worth noting that Brazil has been responding at the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) for human rights violations against adolescents since 2009. (OLIVEIRA, 2021). The Court imposed numerous measures on the State to stop the violations and guarantee the physical and psychological integrity of adolescents and young people, as

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well as workers. ( JUSTIÇA GLOBAL, 2021). In these ten years, the Institution has experienced small advances and numerous setbacks. In 2012, it experienced “Operation Pixote2”, a police action that culminated in the arrest of thirteen people for fraud and embezzlement of public money. (NOSSA, 2012).

The State Plan for Socio-Educational Assistance of the State of Espírito Santo (2014), an important instrument for planning and agreement with the other actors of the rights guarantee system for the period (2015-2024) brings in its Axis 01 the Management of State Policy of the Socio-educational System. It is established in objective 08 “to value the servants considering that human resources are the main and most strategic resource for achieving the goals of socio-education.” Among the actions listed are, among others: 1. Increase the number of tenured Iases servants, according to Sinase parameters.

6. Implement the Iases People Management Policy, ensuring actions in workers’ health.

7. Expand psychosocial care to Iases employees, according to demand.

8. Carry out studies aimed at reducing the workload of Iases’ technicians.

9. Establish bonuses to civil servants according to distance, dangerousness, insalubrity and flexibility in working hours.

10. Regulate vertical promotion at Iases.

11. Conduct public competitive exams for all positions involved in socio-education (ESPÍRITO SANTO, 2014, p. 76-77).

However, none of the goals of this axis were achieved. They walked the opposite direction. In the period 2019-2021, following the national movement, we have experienced the dismantling of politics with a marked process of militarization, among them we 2. See more at: <http://g1.globo.com/espirito-santo/noticia/2012/08/operacao-queinvestiga-fraudes-no-iases-leva-13-pessoas-prisao.html>. Access in: Oct. 2021.

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highlight: the rise of some militarized socio-educational agents to management positions, including roles that are intended for the technical area; implementation of the use of less lethal technologies; equalization of agents to criminal police officers; agents’ uniforms; insertion of socio-educational agents in the Integrated Operational Center for Social Defense (Ciodes); as well as the prioritization of courses and resources for the security area. (SANTO, 2020). In the words of Batista (2007), the ideopolitical call is for the hardening of the Penal State and subjective adherence to barbarism.

Strategic sectors responsible for planning, training and psychosocial care for civil servants, and which had social workers on their staff, were dismantled, impacting the quality of the service provided to adolescents/young people and their families, in the articulation and direction of policy, as well as in the process of sickening of civil servants linked to mental health problems. For Dejours (1949, p. 11) “man’s confrontation with his task puts his mental life at risk”.

Inversely to the management model instituted by Sinase, which is democratic management, Iases has authoritarianism as its basis for action, and institutional moral harassment3 as a management instrument. This instrument has had a direct impact on the removal of workers from the institution due to illness.

Moral harassment is characterized by repeated inappropriate conduct that has the objective or effect of degrading physical and mental health, violating the rights, dignity and professional future of a worker (GRENIER-PEZÉ, 2017).

Work conditions and organization are poor, a process facilitated by the rotation of directors, managers and servants. For Dejours (1949), in working conditions, it is the body that receives the impact, while in the organization of work the target is mental functioning.

This context brings us closer to the concept coined by Sawaia:

3. Available at: <http://www.cress-es.org.br/cress-es-participa-de-assembleia-geral-dosindipublicos-com-servidorases-do-iases/>. Access in: July 2021.

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[...] ethical-political suffering encompasses the multiple affections of the body and soul that mutilate life in different ways. It is qualified by the way I am treated and I treat the other in intersubjectivity, face to face or anonymously, whose dynamics, content and quality are determined by social organization. Therefore, ethical-political suffering portrays the daily experience of dominant social issues in each historical period, especially the pain that arises from the social situation of being treated as inferior, subordinate, worthless, a useless appendage of society (SAWAIA, 2001, p. 105).

Among the causes of suffering in the practice of social work in socio-education is that generated by moving away from an assignment with significant content to develop roles in a situation of underemployment of their abilities. This fact is increasingly commonplace at Iases and is used as a way of inflicting pain on workers.

Another cause of suffering is knowing that the care offered to the subjects of the policy, the adolescents and young people who are attributed the authorship of legal offences, occurs far from what determines the ECA, Sinase, the National Policy for Full Health Care of Law-breaking Adolescents (Pnaisari) and the State Plan for Socio-educational Assistance. Legal and political orders are summarily neglected. And those who dare to contest such violations will be objects of harassment, which day by day kills subjectivity and takes away the meaning of work.

Dejours (1949) alludes that the depressive experience concentrates the feelings of unworthiness, uselessness and disqualification, enhancing them. This depression, dominated by tiredness, mainly the result of the state of “Taylorized workers”.

Iases conceals civil servant’s illness data. But, in everyday life, it has become more and more recurrent to hear that co-workers were on leave due to depression, stress, anxiety and other disorders and mental health problems. The refusal to provide data has been an instrument that makes it difficult for the workers to fight.

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Faced with the publicization of the violence culture that uses moral harassment as a management instrument, the State Board for the Defense of Women’s Rights of Espírito Santo (Cedimes) created the Special Temporary Commission on the Iases’ Case4, established through Resolution n. 2/2020, which aims to investigate the various complaints of institutional harassment, mainly directed at women.

However, there is no information on the completion of the work and the measures adopted.

In a meeting held on March 6, 2020, by the Civil Servants’ Union of the State of Espírito Santo (Sindipúblicas), Professional Category Boards – Regional Board of Social Service (CRESS), Regional Board of Psychology (CRP), Regional Board of Administration of Espírito Santo (CRA/ES), Union of Psychologists in the State of Espírito Santo (Sindpsi/ES), Boards of Rights (CEDH and Cedimes), Iases and SEDH, having among the agendas the institutional moral harassment, there were reports of “suicide and suicide attempt, panic or burnout syndromes” by a civil servant as a result of the violence suffered in the institution (p. 55).

Even though the essence of the violence perpetrated against the workers at Iases was revealed, after 2 years, no effective action was taken. The harassers remain in the same places, with the same practices.

For Marilena Chaui (2000): Conserving the marks of colonial slavery society, or what some scholars call “manorial culture”, Brazilian society is marked by the hierarchical structure of the social space that determines the form of a strongly vertical society in all its aspects: in it, social and intersubjective relationships are always carried out as a relationship between a superior, who commands, and an inferior, who obeys.

Differences and symmetries are always transformed into inequalities that reinforce the command-obedience relationship. The other 4. Available at: <https://www.seculodiario.com.br/sindicato/estado-cria-comissao-docaso-iases-para-investigar-assedio-institucional>. Access in July 2021.

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is never recognized as a subject or as a subject of rights, is never recognized as subjectivity or otherness. [...] Finally, when inequality is very marked, the social relationship takes the naked form of physical and/or psychic oppression. The social division of classes is naturalized by a set of practices that hide the historical or material determination of exploitation, discrimination and domination, and that, imaginatively, structure society under the sign of the one and undivided nation, superimposed as a protective mantle that covers the real divisions that constitute it. (p. 55)

The relationship of command and obedience is conveniently preserved by having within the frameworks employees according to these types of bonds: 1,311 employees hired by temporary assignment (DT), 67 remunerated employees, seven are subject to RJU5 and 3146 are permanent. The precariousness of the employment relationship is interesting to the “maintenance of the established order”. Temporary civil servants have much more difficulty in confronting institutional orders, given the vulnerability of their employment contract.

Of the 36 social workers approved in the exam, five asked to be dismissed. Of the 31 that remained, nine are assigned to other state agencies. Going to another agency/secretariat is used as a survival strategy, and the possibility of ending the suffering arising from the lack of recognition for the work performed and the institutional moral harassment.

Social workers assigned to other agencies report improving physical and mental health and finding the recognition they deserve.

According to Grenier-Pezé, Recognition of the quality of the work performed is the answer to the subjective expectations that we carry. When we obtain this recognition, the doubts, difficulties, fatigue disappear in the face of 5. Single Legal Regime.

6. Data from the Transparency Portal. Available at: <https://dados.es.gov.br/ dataset/4c3ef6d6-6a55-4c54-958b-87678d2b4d4e/resource/c46efbdc-ecf5-44a2-8c6a-c7176864b0f0/download/cargosfuncoes.csv>. Access in: July 2021.

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the feeling of having contributed to the collective construction and of seeing the place they built among others validated (GRENIERPEZÉ, 2017, p. 90).

The socio-educational policy loses, the care provided to adolescents loses quality, the workers who stay lose when these qualified social workers leave. Who wins? Those who do not have an ethical commitment to defending the subjects of this policy?

Does anyone ask: How are the workers? Are they having access to adequate health care? What are the consequences of institutional moral harassment in their lives? Has the violence stopped? What strategies did you use to get out of the harassed condition? The suffering perpetrated by the State to the servants does not seem to cause any effective action in the inspection and control bodies. Until when?

However, history shows us that there is nothing that is immutable and no evil that lasts forever! To paraphrase Freire, there are transformations of all sizes. My goal is social change, but I work to bring about the possible transformations within the space where I work. (FREIRE, 2013, p. 46).

In this sense, having the collective struggle of workers with the professional and rights boards is a potential that can be used so that social workers in the socio-educational policy can enjoy the right to exercise social work without being discriminated against for their ethical and political position.

Final Remarks This study sought to reflect on the determinations of social workers’ job in the socio-educational policy of Espírito Santo, highlighting institutional moral harassment as a management instrument that has caused psychic illness of many workers. Ethicalpolitical suffering has permeated the lives of workers. May it become fuel for the strengthening of the fight against all forms of violence and oppression.

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The dismantling of the socio-educational policy was also highlighted, with an accentuated process of militarization, which is incompatible with the doctrine of integral protection established by the Statute of Children and Adolescents. May the inspection and defense bodies act in order to strengthen the workers’ struggle in the uncompromising defense of human rights, as well as the professional boards make efforts so that social workers exercise their professions with freedom, materializing to the ethical-political project.

We do not intend here to exhaust the theme, nor to take this reality as immutable. On the contrary, praxis allows us to create mediations to alter reality. In this context, we have the collective struggle as the main element to enhance the construction of the political struggle for decent work not only for social workers, but for all workers. We also believe that research and the production of knowledge can reveal the contradictions of the system, revealing its essence.

I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to the brave workers of the Espírito Santo socio-educational policy, who have been fighting tirelessly for a decade for the uncompromising defense of human rights to which adolescents attributed the authorship of legal offences are also subjects. We know the value of what we do, so let’s keep working for better days!

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DIEESE. Desigualdades Sociais e econômicas se aprofundam. São Paulo, junho/julho de 2021. Boletim de Conjuntura n. 29. Disponível em: <https://www.dieese.org.br/ boletimdeconjuntura/2021/boletimconjuntura29.html>. Acesso em: dez. 2021.

ESPÍRITO SANTO. Plano Estadual de Atendimento Socioeducativo do Espírito Santo (2015-2024). Conselho Estadual da Criança e do Adolescente. Vitória, 2014.

ESPÍRITO SANTO. SEDH. Nota técnica sobre a utilização da “tecnologia não letal” – TNL na política de socioeducação.

Conselho Estadual de Direitos Humanos do Espírito Santo (CEDH). Disponível em: <https://sedh.es.gov.br/Media/sedh/ Documentos%202020/Nota%20T%C3%A9cnica%20sobre%20 a%20utiliza%C3%A7%C3%A3o%20da%20TNL%20na%20 Socioeduca%C3%A7%C3%A3o%20(2).pdf>. Acesso em: dez. 2021.

ESPÍRITO SANTO. Edital n. 001/2010 – Iases. Disponível em: < https://iases.es.gov.br/Media/iases/Importacao/Arquivos/Generico/ Edital_Concurso_Iases_2010[1].pdf>. Acesso em: out. 2021.

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ESPÍRITO SANTO. O Iases. Instituto de Atendimento Socioeducativo do Santo. 2020. Disponível em: <https://iases.es.gov. br/quem-somos-2>. Acesso em: dez. 2021.

DEJOURS, Christophe, 1949 – A loucura do trabalho: estudo de psicopatia do trabalho / Cristophe Dejours; tradução da Ana Isabel Paraguay e Lúcia Leal Ferreira. 5. ed. ampliada. São Paulo: Cortez Editora/Oboré, 1992.

FREIRE, Paulo, 1921-1997. Medo e ousadia [recurso eletrônico]: o cotidiano o professor / Paulo Freire, Ira Shor. Tradução Adriana Lopes. 1. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2013.

GRENIER-PEZÉ, Marie. O assédio moral no trabalho: privação da liberdade. In: BENSAID, Annie; BAILLY-GUIHO, MariePierre; LAFOND, Patrick, GRENIER-PEZÉ, Marie. Sob direção de Christophe Dejours. Tradução da Vanise Dreseh. In: Psicodinâmica do trabalho: casos clínicos. Dublinense. Porto Alegre/São Paulo, 2017, p. 87-103.

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A CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW OF INSTITUTIONS AS BIPARTRATE IN PERPETUATING THE VULNERABILITY OF FEMALE DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURS Efe Imiren

Introduction

F

emale entrepreneurship has continued to develop around the world, over the last decade, digitalisation has significantly increased opportunities for some women; as a range of tools enhance their ability to develop independent businesses. Whilst institutions can constrain some forms of entrepreneurship, they are also enablers as they provide resources for navigating enterprise pathways and providing frameworks for tackling challenges. In the same vein, institutions could perpetuate vulnerability by the constraints imposed through the underdevelopment or lack of institutions. Too often, in such cases, traditional roles and processes are reproduced with limited room for innovative change. Although institutions have been addressed in terms of their impact on female digital entrepreneurs, little connection has been made between institutions and their bipartrate role in the vulnerability of female digital entrepreneurs. This paper contributes to the debate as one of the emerging attempts to provide a conceptual review on debates at the intersection of vulnerability, female digital entrepreneurship, and institutions.

In this paper, a narrative literature review method is used to map structural barriers argued to impact on female entrepreneurs

thus touching on the dimensions of vulnerability in female digital entrepreneurship. The findings contribute to suggestions for programmatic and policy engagement to support women to access inclusive and dignified careers through enterprise and entrepreneurship that builds on the success of female entrepreneurs who have gone before them.

The rest of the paper is organised as follows: first the theoretical background at the intersection of vulnerability, institutions and digitalisation is presented, next a narrative review of the impact of institutions as bipartrate is developed to present a conceptual overview of vulnerability in female digital entrepreneurship. Whilst the conceptual overview shows that institutions reproduce normative societal realities for female entrepreneurs, the study concludes that female entrepreneurs navigate the vulnerability posed by the bipartrate impact of institutions drawing on innovative and creative actions to lead novel enterprises through digitalisation.

Theoretical Background: Vulnerability, Institutions and Digitalisation Entrepreneurial discourse acknowledges the cultural and economic marginalities (Darkwah, 2007) females navigate in the business sphere. Females are often denied access to capital, face increased challenges in relation to security, bare the emotional labour of family chores, care of the elderly and childcare and the sole responsibility of childbirth (McDowell, 2011; Elson, 1999).

However, the homogenous perspective that all women are relegated to the fringes of society because of lack of access to rights, resources, and opportunities is changing (Dzisi, 2008), it is important to recognise the “effects of the complex, multiple, and shifting layers of institutional contexts in which they are embedded” (Langevang et al., 2015, p. 449). There are a number of successful, high achieving females in entrepreneurship; many have broken glass ceilings and worked efficiently in male dominated sectors. Yet, millions of female entrepreneurs are limited by the environmental and societal

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challenges (Cavada et al., 2018; Dos Santos et al., 2019) they face and are obliged to tackle problems their male counterparts will not, see examples from Saudi Arabia (McAdam, Harrison and Leitch, 2019), Tanzania (Naegels, Mori and D’Espallier, 2018), Peru (Rezaei and Marques, 2021).

The term vulnerability is adapted to suit different disciplinary frameworks quite widely (Heijmans, 2013). It often refers to physical or economic susceptibilities such as exposure to natural disasters, economic deprivation, and health risks. As noted by Adger, (2006, p. 268), “vulnerability is the state of susceptibility to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental and social change” thus vulnerability is linked to exposure to harmful practices associated with the social and environmental context of the one experiencing such susceptibilities. Following this logic, it is arguable that within given contexts individuals are vulnerable in one way or another and given the planet as a context, there is an increasing focus on the fragility of the shared planet, its limited resources and the way societal hierarchies and structures restrict access for individuals in different contexts (Butler, 2018; Diamond, 2013). However, the literature focusses more on the vulnerability of the people and less on critical examination of the systemic nature of the precarity embedded in societies (Heijmans, 2013). Female entrepreneurs have proven to be rather resourceful and innovative drawing upon informal institutional networks and genius innovation to succeed where systems have not functioned in a way to provide business support (Webb, Khoury and Hitt, 2020). It is thus important to understand how the gaps created by institutional voids (Mair and Marti, 2009) open channels of opportunity in spaces characterised by vulnerable economic and social structures that limit economic activity.

Institutions support interpersonal, communal and societal interactions, they provide guides on the normative structures that ought to support humans interactions; in so doing they also constrain and limit the set of choices available to individuals (North,

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1991; Aidis et al., 2007) in order to govern excessive inequities.

Institutions are enduring social structures and they could be formal, informal or cognitive (Scott, 2001). Institutions influence social life in that the normative dimension impacts on the social obligation whilst the cognitive dimension is the shared social reality through which individuals make sense of their perceived reality (Scott, 2001; Amine; Staub, 2009; Gohar; Abrar, 2016). Thus, through social obligation and shared social reality, entrepreneurial behaviours are regulated by the normative and cognitive institutions which govern the socialisation process (Ritchie, 2016).

The absence of institutions implies the presence of institutional voids which poses barriers to entrepreneurship and represent situations of non-existent, weak or malfunctioning institutions for supporting entrepreneurship (Elert and Henrekson, 2017; McAdam et al., 2018; Khanna and Palepu, 2010; Mair and Marti, 2009).

Although institutional voids manifest in weak or unsupportive institutional environments which constrain entrepreneurial behaviour and outcome (McAdam, Crowley and Harrison, 2018), institutional voids also enable entrepreneurship, for example, an entrepreneur can introduce a new product or service in an unregulated market (Elert and Henrekson, 2017) causing the emergence of permission-less innovation (Thierer, 2016).

The institutional regulation of entrepreneurial behaviour through digitalisation is on the rise (Gartner Group, 2016; Tilson, Lyytinen and Sørensen, 2010; Rachinger et al., 2018. Digitalisation has transformed the world of work, giving rise to alterations that allow for richer participation from females as a result of the flexibility associated with digital entrepreneurship and the fact that the resulting digital jobs and enterprise could be less labour intensive (Berg et al 2018). Thus, digitalisation has improved access to entrepreneurial platforms for women in many middle and low–income countries.

However, extant research suggests that the barriers that make female entrepreneurs vulnerable to societal expectations are replicated on digital platforms (Marlow and McAdam, 2013; Acker, 1992).

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Institutions and female digital entrepreneurs The bipartite role of institutions in perpetuating the vulnerability of female digital entrepreneurs is developed through a narrative review of the following studies: Luo and Chan, (2021), Pergelova et al. (2019), McAdam, Crowley and Harrison (2019). This is selective narrative overview serves as a precursor to further studies at the intersection of vulnerability and female digital entrepreneurs.

In a study on the gendering of digital workspaces, Luo and Chan, (2021, p. 1) note that digitalisation has led to restructuring which has led to a focus on “enterprise culture” precipitating the boom of female digital entrepreneurship globally. Thus, there is a rise in the proportion of female entrepreneurs undertaking entrepreneurship digitally. The empirical location of the study which is China is considered “the largest internet market” “with over 904 million” users and a 64.5% penetration rate with female entrepreneurs accounting for over 55% of digital entrepreneurs in China. Luo and Chan (2021, p. 1) argue that while extant research shows that digitalisation enables “flexible working times and spaces” for female entrepreneurs, “further research is needed to understand whether subordination is reproduced for female digital entrepreneurs. Although Dy, Marlow and Martin, (2017) made a similar argument, Dy, Marlow and Martin, (2017) suggested that barriers are replicated online whilst Luo and Chan, (2021) specifically focused on understanding whether the particular barrier of subordination is reproduced online.

However, Luo and Chan (2021) suggest that further empirical research is needed from a feminist geography standpoint.

Acknowledging that “without a digital focus, female entrepreneurial literature reports the subordination of women’s businesses” Luo and Chan, (2021, p. 2), the authors found that vulnerability was perpetuated through under-representation and reproduction of gendered division of work which led to subordination of female digital entrepreneurs.

Under-representation stemmed from low intentions (Luo and Chan, 2021). Whilst most start-up teams had female entrepreneurs,

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these women rarely became chief executive officers (CEO) as these women worked on “auxiliary duties such as human resources, logistics, and administration” Luo and Chan, (2021, p.4). Such low leadership rate the authors argued was linked to low intentions as they argued that not intending to be in leadership position keeps the entrepreneur out of these leadership positions. Entrepreneurial intentions have been argued elsewhere to impact on the choice of entrepreneurship as a career and on the advancement or success of the enterprise and the entrepreneur (Lee et al., 2011) and linked to gender entrepreneurial intentions are impacted by institutions (Wilson, Kickul and Marlino, 2007).

Luo and Chan (2021) argue that the businesses of female digital entrepreneurs are the reproduction of gendered division of work.

As noted by the authors the businesses ran by these entrepreneurs were positioned in fields regarded as feminine, such as education, healthcare, and content provision. Linked to the argument of work experience and human capital as a source entrepreneurs draw from (Marvel, Davis and Sproul, 2016), Luo and Chan, (2021, p. 4) found the transition of female entrepreneurs into digital entrepreneurship could be traced to extant work experience. Furthermore, the reproduction of gendered division of work in the business is linked to woman’s role as caregivers and this precipitates long working hours which Luo and Chan (2021) argue illustrates how the socialization of the female entrepreneur to identify as women conflicts with their role as entrepreneurs to produce the subordination of the women as female digital entrepreneurs.

The role of institutions can be seen in the study by (Pergelova et al., 2019). The authors note that female entrepreneurs are less likely to engage in international activities when compared to their male counterparts, thus in Bulgaria, the context of the study only 13% of female entrepreneurs engage in exporting their products and services. The author thus explore how digitalisation enables export and thus internalisation of the female entrepreneurs enterprise. As noted by Pergelova et al. (2019, p. 15) digitalisation impacts on the internationalisation of an enterprise and such impact is more

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evident “for traditionally disadvantaged groups of entrepreneurs such as women entrepreneurs”. Furthermore, noting that those voids emerge when the institutional framework within an institutional context is lacking or underdeveloped, McAdam, Crowley and Harrison (2019) argued that the presence of voids generate cultures which are non-supportive of the entrepreneurial process which could impact negatively on the female entrepreneur, their legitimacy and thus access to resources. Whilst the reason why culture influences the entrepreneurs actions within the entrepreneurial process remains underexplored, digital entrepreneurship has been argued to enable the navigation of “unsupportive cultural practices” in an institutional context. McAdam, Crowley and Harrison (2019) thus found that female digital entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia navigated the unsupportive practice of gender segregation by working online and using male secretaries.

Conceptual Overview Gendered stereotypes have been reproduced for centuries by the many forms of organisational and governance structures that shape society (Naegels Mori; D’Espallier 2018)) democratic representation has been useful in highlighting how discrimination against females have hindered societal development and exacerbated vulnerabilities.

Yet gendered concepts of cognition, emotion, psychology, learning, endurance and courage materialise in the practice and processes of normative institutions from access to capital through to leadership.

The persuasive relic of female dependence often reproduced in the postures, identities appearances and dreams of women as well as the behaviours they perceive as acceptable (Rezaei and Marques, 2021).

Institutions enable and sometimes constrain or serve to restrict female entrepreneurial engagement and development because they sometimes unwittingly create traditional systemic hierarchies and reproduce the systemic discrimination of female entrepreneurs.

There are no obvious unique institutional constraints dissociated from familiar sociocultural, political and everyday economic

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realities. Though female participation in entrepreneurial activity is broad and well established, it remains superficial (Urbano, Aparicio and Audretsch, 2019). Too often, female digital entrepreneurs still need to contend with reproduced challenges. The emotional labour of providing care and support to the young and elderly, which characterise the highest forms of vulnerability to the ecosystem of productive entrepreneurship are still largely female – led (Terjesen and Lloyd, 2015).

Nevertheless, the literature shows it is important to include context in analysing the impact of institutions and that research should account for individual level of analysis in accounting for the complexities posed by institutions. Whilst the argument that context matters has been made elsewhere in studies on female entrepreneurs, the argument in relation to vulnerability, institutions and female entrepreneurship is new and/or an emerging view.

Conclusion This narrative overview provides insights of how institutions enable female digital entrepreneurship. Whilst there is evidence underpinning the argument that institutions have played a bipartite role empowering and disempowering female digital entrepreneurs, institutions are prone to reproducing normative societal realities, often posing as negative impacts to the very purpose of the organisations.

To counteract the negating impact, it is important to enhance the development of broader representation within institutions and promote discussions and studies that expose various dimensions of vulnerability and the ideas, practices and structures that enable the perpetuation of vulnerability. Whilst acknowledging the complexity of dealing with such complicated threats to vulnerability (Terjesen and Lloyd, 2015), it is important to analyse in a systematic way the factors and interactions that allow the continued experience of vulnerability amongst female digital entrepreneurs. The mixed evidence from this study suggests that some institutions with strong links to multiple structures of business support are more likely to be

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effective in developing female entrepreneurs whilst the innovative and creative action of some female entrepreneurs have also led to radical start-ups and novel models drawing strongly upon the support from informal structures.

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THE PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTES AND SOCIAL MOBILITY OF FEMALES IN SRI LANKA Pavithra Wickramasuriya

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify and investigate the reasons that cause female graduates of private higher education institutes (PHEI’s) with working class parents to forego the barrier of social reproduction and show upward social mobility. PHEI’s have gained popularity in Sri Lanka recently as the demand for higher education has increased but the public universities are not capable of fulfilling this need. Even though the government policy is to provide “free education” for all, to fill the supply and demand gap they have authorized PHEI’s to operate in collaboration with universities in other countries on fee levying basis.

Parents, mainly from working class are unable to send their children to another country for their higher education in case these children are not selected to a public university where education is delivered free of charge.

Research Design/ Methodology/ Methods: Existing conceptualizations based on the theory of social reproduction (Bourdieu, 1986) have contributed to understand the reasons that cause working class students to remain in the working class. Social reproduction theory does not provide a plausible

explanation for the “few” students who move to a higher social positions. This shortcoming can be compensated by drawing on Blau and Duncan’s (1967) status attainment theory and Wisconsin model developed by Sewell, Haller and Portes (1969).

Research will be conducted with an interpretivistic approach based on qualitative methodology. In-depth interviews will be conducted with 30 female graduates selected through snowball sampling method from private higher education institutes who have shown upward mobility. Life stories will be constructed based on the narrations made by the interviewees on their lived experiences to identify the factors, which are causing them to be upward mobile.

Findings: This research would support to identify the association of family background, student characteristics, significant others, educational and occupational aspirations, learning environment with educational and occupational attainment.

Research Limitations: Sample comprises of female graduates who completed their degrees 10 years ago and they may not have a clear memory on all the details about their experiences during that time. They would share their perceptions rather than the actual experiences they had as it is difficult to remember exactly what happened and that may affect the findings.

Research Implications: Number of PHEI’s keeps increasing in Sri Lanka. Many students select this option to fulfill their higher education needs. Common belief is that expansion of educational opportunities would help working class to move up in the social hierarchy, which is not true most of the time. Knowing which factors would guide them towards social mobility expectations is very important since this knowledge can be manipulated to gain benefits for many.

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Originality/ value: Emphasizing the role played by private higher educational institutes in social mobility of its graduates and answering the question that factors support female graduates to reach their mobility expectations.

Introduction

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ntroduction Sri Lanka has introduced “Free Education” as a means of ensuring education for all. This helps individuals to acquire skills needed to reach the social positions they prefer, by reducing the influence of social status and politics. Importance of higher education is a widely accepted fact as educational qualifications create opportunities to gain employability and maintain a better lifestyle. According to Brock (2010), income earned by a graduate is twice as much as a person who does not have a degree, in their lifetime. In the year, 1945 free education policy came into effect in Sri Lanka, and enforcement of the Regulation of Compulsory Education (Gazette notification 1003/5 of 25 November 1997) which was enforced in 1998. Today education at all the levels from grade one up to bachelor’s degree level, is provided free of charge through public sector schools and universities but limited opportunities in these institutes results in severe competition.

After facing highly competitive GCE (A/L) examination, which is the university entrance qualification, all the students who gain eligibility will not get a placement in a public university.

University entrance is offered to a limited number of students, which is less than 20% of the total, based on the average “z” scores they obtained. (Refer table 1)

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Table 1 – Number of candidates qualifying and selected for undergraduate programmes at State Universities Year of GCE(A/L) Number Qualified

Number Admitted Percentage

2015

2016

2017

2018

155,550

160,517

163,160

167,992

18.68

19.10

19.25

18.98

29,055

30,662

31,415

31,881

Source: UGC website

To fulfill the higher education needs of the students who were not selected to a public university, the government has authorized to establish private higher education institutes (PHEI’s). This initiative helps students to pursue higher education while being in Sri Lanka at an affordable price. About 100’000 students seek higher education opportunities annually, through these PHEI’s and the numbers keep increasing (Abeygunawardena, 2018).

Social mobility is one of the major expectations of an individual completing higher education. According to Muller (2001), social mobility is the movement in time of social units of individuals between different positions in the social stratification system in the society. Cho (2016) define social mobility as an indicator of movements or changes in social status or positions for individuals or groups. Higher education is considered as one of the significant elements that bring about changes and plays a mediating role in the mobility process (Basit, 2013; Torche, 2013). In Sri Lanka education is considered as the major path of social mobility specifically for socially disadvantaged groups like the poor, females, and people in rural areas (Samarakoon et al., 2016). This means that students coming from low-socio economic background would be at a better socio-economic position than their parents, once they receive higher education (Walpole, 1998). However, research has pointed out that income, educational achievements, and aspirations are lower for students from low-socio economic background, unlike their counterparts coming from high-socio economic background.

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About twenty years ago, social mobility research has been limited to men and excluded women (Li; Singelmann, 1998). This has happened as women were not considered as a part of labour force traditionally and their social classes were dependent upon their husbands. In recent research, women were not included as their employment was frequently interrupted due to many reasons and hence show a weaker attachment to labour force although their participation in the labour market has increased. This situation has drawn heavy criticism from feminists and has limited the understanding on the social mobility process. Previous research indicates significant differences in the mobility pattern for women; when consider the inheritance of father’s class or occupational position, daughters show a weaker tendency than sons. In addition, women were likely to be downward mobile than men (Erikson; Goldthorpe, 1992; Goldthorpe, 1987).

According to Samarakoon et al. (2016), mismatch between the education received and skill requirement of the job market increase unemployment among educated youth including graduates in Sri Lanka. Young people without strong social connections are reluctant to look for formal private sector jobs; instead, they seek public sector jobs (Amarasuriya, 2010). Even finding a public sector job is difficult without patronage or support from political influence. Circumstances of females are further aggravated since Sri Lanka has a large gender gap in labour force participation (LFP) (Ranaraja; Hassendeen, 2016; Solotaroff et al., 2020). In fact, Sri Lanka has maintained low LFP levels for women persistently for the last two decades, which is much lower than expected when compared with the achievements in social indicators such as literacy and life expectancy.

Despite all these findings, it is observed that a lesser number of female students who graduate from private HEI’s manage to reach higher positions than their parents, thereby show an upward social mobility. Although there are research conducted on social mobility of state sector female graduates, (Aturupane, 2018; Perera, 1987), less number of research is there on the social mobility of female graduates of PHEI’s in Sri Lanka. Therefore this study focuses on

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identifying the factors that support these female graduates of private HEI’s to reach their goals in upward social mobility. The research problem that will be addressed is why only few of the first generation female graduates qualifying from PHEI’s are able to show upward mobility? What are the conditions and factors make them behave different to the vast majority who remain at an equal level to their parent’s social level or indicate a downward mobility?

The social class composition of the student population of the private HEI’s in Sri Lanka is diverse. Although majority of the students represent upper social classes, there is a representation of the working class also. If a child does not obtain the required “z” score for him / her to get selected to a public university, the working-class parents select private HEI’s, as sending their children to a foreign university is beyond their affordability. Sometimes even paying the fees levied by the private HEI’s may be difficult for them; hence, they may obtain bank loans, pawn property or spend their life savings for the higher education of their children. Therefore, it is crucial to know whether higher education received through private HEI’s would lead their children towards the expected goals.

Research evidence clearly indicates that there is a relationship between inequalities in academic achievement and the social classes which is the basis of “social reproduction” (Gordon, 2013; Jonsson et al., 2016; Marjoribanks, 1998). When the parents are from workingclass, it is reflected clearly on the student’s academic and social mobility achievement. While most of the students’ behaviour aligns with the social reproduction theory, there are a minority of students who represent the working class but still manage to make above average progress in academic outcome and social mobility.

This research is conducted to identify the causal factors that makes a first-generation female graduate with working-class parents to be successful in academics and occupation moving upward in the society. Factors pertaining to the family background, student, learning environment in PHEI and career are thoroughly investigated to determine the critical factors.

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Objectives • • • •

To identify the associated factors that enable academic success leading to social mobility among female graduates of PHEI’s.

To identify the critical factors that enable occupational success leading to social mobility among female graduates of PHEI’s.

To explore the level and nature of mobility among the female graduates of private HEI’s To identify the role played by PHEI’s for female graduates to achieve academic and social mobility.

Methodology Methodology is based on “interpretivism”, which allows the interpretation of the life experiences of the female graduates in the study sample. A sample of thirty (30) first generation female graduates who are well established in their career and in a social level above their parents will be selected from PHEI’s using the snowball sampling method. An exploration will be done using qualitative research methodology using several rounds of in-depth interviews with the graduates and their parents as well as observations.

These interviews will be recorded and data transcribed verbatim.

Then this data arranged as the order of life events in time of primary importance to the researcher interpreting life stories, time sequencing will be applied. In order to obtain complete structuring of this data, further summarizing and categorization will be done using a coding system and thematic analysis will be done. NVivo package will be used for data analysis.

Contribution This study opens a novel viewpoint about female graduates of PHEI’s regarding the social mobility. Since there is a lacking in

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research conducted on female mobility, there is a gap in the knowledge.

(Ranaraja; Hassendeen, 2016; Solotaroff et al., 2020). The invisibility of women’s contribution to the economy or difficulties faced by many scholars to assess the economic contributions made by women empirically is responsible for this gap. A considerable number of Sri Lankan women not participating in paid labour force continuously or not participating at all due to family commitments can be another reason. Although there are many researches on the reasons for low labor force participation (LFP) in Sri Lanka, research on factors, which support women to show upward mobility, is rare. Not knowing about mobility of female graduates makes the picture incomplete since more than 50% of the Sri Lankan population comprise of females. Once we get to know which factors and conditions facilitate upward mobility, that knowledge can be utilized to support female graduates to reach their mobility expectations.

Bourdieu’s theory of reproduction offers an explanation for the persistent inequalities in educational stratification despite the efforts taken by the governments to expand the opportunities for education (Tzanakis, 2011). Public education is considered and accepted as a meritocratic institution where talent and effort of students is the sole predictor of outcome. Coleman (1967) had a contradictory view on this. The view of reproductionist points out that school does not promote equality of opportunity as per the popular belief instead they support the reproduction of inequalities persisting in the society.

The behaviour of female graduates who reach a higher social level than their parents cannot be explained with the social reproduction theory. This research is based on a sample of graduates who moved from working class to middle class or above surpassing their parents.

Knowledge gathered through this research would provide a scientific explanation to fill the theoretical gap identified above.

Many researchers involved in social mobility research (By; Burd, 2017; Goldthorpe, 2012; Lin, 2020) used large quantities of secondary data collected through National Longitudinal Surveys, attempting to identify the patterns and trends in social mobility. Although these researchers were able to identify different trends in social mobility

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the reasons that caused these patterns were not identified. In Sri Lanka, females show a low level of LFP continuously for the past two decades, even with consistently high educational attainment levels of women (Ranaraja; Hassendeen, 2016). Positivistic approach may not provide thick and detailed explanations for the behaviour of women who are showing upward mobility. This research fills this gap by using interpretivistic approach, as the research philosophy that is best suited for developing new knowledge is interpretivism.

Qualitative research methodology would provide a clear insight into the experienced life of the female graduates. This would clearly bridge the gaps in research work conducted on social mobility using positivistic research methods.

Theoretical Background This research is based on the theoretical underpinnings of Pierre Bourdieu, theory of social reproduction and theory of capitals (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu 1996). Pierre Bourdieu was a Marxist theorist who introduced the notion of habitus to understand the socially structured systems that produce social life and its outcome.

Bourdieu identified schools as breeding grounds for working class as they teach skills and discipline required for a capitalist workplace.

In addition, schools tend to naturalize the student selection process they perform in a society divided by classes. Paul Willis in his book Learning to Labour (1977) mention that it is difficult to explain why working class kids allow themselves to end up with working class jobs. This situation is a puzzle, as there is a liberal and democratic society today with no physical coercion to direct working class and they fully understand the inferior rewards and lower acceptance given for working class jobs. Willis (1977), argument is that experiences, relationships and ensembles set particular “choices” and “decisions” of social actors as a part of working class culture which mould the working class minds. This complemented Marxist interpretation of social reproduction at both individual or firm and societal level (Katz; Norton, 2017).

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Bourdieu’s explanation of social reproduction is based on the concept of capital, which includes cultural, economic, and social capital. He has identified cultural transmission as a strategic process of intergenerational reproduction (Nash, 1990). Even though Bourdieu (1986) refers to different forms of capital, it is not clear about the level of importance assigned to each of them. In addition to capital Bourdieu has introduced two other concepts: habitus and field. According to Bourdieu (1986), habitus are learned set of dispositions which are attained unconsciously through socialization, family, or school. It is created by converting external wealth into an integral part of a person that cannot be transmitted instantaneously like money or property rights. It is an evolving process, which guides individuals to act, think, and perceive themselves as well as world around them. Field represents a structured social environment where the experiences of individuals take place. Field is the space which has specific rules and where people and their social positions are located and compete for desirable resources (Dogaru, 2008). According to Bourdieu (1986), world is a collection of different fields where each individual is objectively ranked based on the capital or the resources they are having. The power within each field is with the individual having the highest level of capital considered as valuable.

Empirical studies (Bourdieu, 1988, 1996) have indicated that both the dominant group of the society and the academic taxonomy is based on a similar set of qualities. This means that the group that has inherited cultural capital due to their social origin is designated as “academically talented” by the education systems. Bourdieu’s theory does not explain the outliers who come from poorer families and perform well in their education and gain upward mobility in the society. Bourdieu has labeled them as anomalies and consider them as a very small number. The behaviour of outliers can be explained by the status attainment theory (Blau; Duncan, 1967), which focus on the impact of father’s occupation and “other” factors affect social destination of an individual (Knottnerus, 1987). These other factors include ambition of the student, mental ability, significant

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others and educational and occupational aspirations. Later this “Wisconsin” model evolved by placing emphasis on structural criteria such as community background, curriculum placement and ethnic origin which facilitated better understanding on social stratification system.

Research Model Existing conceptualizations based on the theory of social reproduction (Bourdieu, 1986) have contributed to understand the reasons that cause working class students to remain in the working class. Social reproduction theory does not provide a plausible explanation for the “few” students who move to a higher social positions. This shortcoming can be compensated by drawing on Blau and Duncan’s (1967) status attainment theory and Wisconsin model developed by Sewell et al. (1969). The below given table two contains the variables identified from previous research on social mobility and status attainment which will be used as the basis for data collection. Areas that would be investigated in the research are; family’s socio-economic background, student characteristics, influence of significant others, educational aspirations, occupational aspirations, learning environment, educational attainment, and occupational attainment.

Methodology Exploration of social reality can be done only by attempting to understand it from the point of view of the individuals who experience it. Accordingly, it is necessary to adopt the thesis of multiple realities, which leads to the generation of subjective knowledge. This would immensely help to understand the nature of knowledge and the relationship between the knower or inquirer and what is known. In order to measure and identify the underlying themes, the methodology is essential. The subjective

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and interpretive nature of qualitative research made it an excellent option when studying human group life.

In this research, I have applied narrative inquiry to capture personal dimensions of the experience of the female graduates over time. Life story does not involve an account on the entire life of a subject like in life history, but focus on the experiences or incidents that took place within a specific time period (Cresswell, 2012). The research subjects describe their lived experiences by narrating life stories. Enabling the research subjects to narrate stories, which help them to make meaning of their life experiences, has been applied in many research areas like medicine, psychology as well as in education and social mobility.

The narrations of experiences of selected female graduates are gathered through several rounds of one to one interviews. These narrations are both personal experiences of the individual and social experiences based on the interactions with fellow students, lecturers and family members. The focus is to understand the past experiences of the female graduates and how it contributes to the present experiences in the form of social mobility and career success. The data gathered in the form of stories are coded into themes or categories, which provides the complexity and depth to the insight about understanding experiences of the individual (Creswell, 2012).

The unit of observation will comprise of at least two generations (daughter and parents) in depth, including the female graduates who have passed out from private HEI’s, prior to year 2009. Multiple sources of evidence will be used to investigate the phenomenon of the impact of private HEI’s on social mobility of female graduates. Indepth interviews conducted with 30 female graduates selected using snowball sampling method. In addition to interviews, observations and reviews will be the main methods of data collection.

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References ABEYGUNAWARDENA, K. A. V. Influential factors in selecting a Bachelor’s Degree from private higher educational institutes in Sri Lanka: A study based on undergraduates of international degree programmes. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), 2018. p. 75-96.

AMARASOORIYA, H. Discrimination and Social Exclusion of Youth, 2010.BASIT, T. N. Educational capital as a catalyst for upward social mobility amongst British Asians: a three-generational analysis, 39(4), 2013. p. 714-732.

BLAU, P. M.; DUNCAN, O. D. The American Occupational Structure.

New York: Wiley, 1967.

BOURDIEU, P. The Forms of Capital. In: Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Westport CT, Greenwood, 1986. p. 241-258.

BOURDIEU, P. The State Nobility. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996.

BROCK, T. Breakthroughs to Success Young Adults and Higher Education: Barriers and Breakthroughs to Success, (August), 2010.

BURD, S. Moving on up? What a groundbreaking study tells us about access, success, and mobility in higher education. New America, 2017.

COLEMAN, J. S. The concept of equality of educational opportunity.

U.S. office of education report. Conference organized by Harvard University Graduate School of Education, 1967.

CRESSWELL, J. W. Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th Edition). Pearson, 2012.DOGARU, C.

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M. Applying Theories of Capital to Understand Parent Involvement at School as a Component of Family-School Interaction: The Special Case of Children with Special Needs. PhD Thesis, 2008.

ERIKSON, R.; GOLDTHROPE, J. The constant flux: A study of class mobility in industrial societies. Clarendon Press, 1992.

GOLDTHORPE, J. H. Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain. Clarendon Press, 1987.

GOLDTHORPE, J. H. Understanding – and Misunderstanding – Social Mobility in Britain: The Entry of the Economists, the Confusion of Politicians and the Limits of Educational Policy. Barnett Papers in Social Research. Oxford: Oxford Institute of Social Policy and Nuffield College, University of Oxford, 2012.

KATZ, C.; NORTON, J. Social Reproduction. The International Encyclopedia of Geography. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2017.

KNOTTNERUS, J. D. Status attainment research and its image of society. American Sociological Review, 5(2), 1987. p. 113-121.

LI, J. H.; SINGELMANN, J. Gender differences in class mobility: a comparative study of the United Sates, Sweden and West Germany.

Acta Sociologica, 41(4): 1998. p. 315-333.

LIN, M. Educational Upward Mobility. Practices of Social Changes – Research on Social Mobility and Educational Inequality, 8(3), 2020. p.

25-51. https://doi.org/10.11114/ijsss.v8i3.4789 MILLER, S. M. Comparative social mobility. Current Sociology, 9 (1):1-61, 1960.

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MULLER, C. The role of caring in the teacher-student relationship towards at-risk-students. Sociological Inquiry, 71(2). 2001. p. 241255.

NASH, R. Bourdieu, “Habitus”, and Educational Research: Is it all worth the candle? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(2): 1999. p. 175-187. DOI -10.1080/01425699995399 RANARAJA, S.; HASSENDEEN, S. Factors affecting women’s labour force participation in Sri Lanka. International Labour Organization, 2016.

SAMARAKOON, S. J. M. N. G.; RASNAYAKE, S.; CHANDRASEKARA, D. T. Youth aspirations, social mobility and educational target achievement in Sri Lanka. Social Affairs. 1(4):114, 2016.

SEWELL, W.; HALLER, H. A. O.; PORTES, A. The Educational and Early Occupational Attainment Process. American Sociological Review, 34. 1969. p. 82-92.

SOLOTAROFF, J. L.; JOSEPH, G.; KURLAKOSE, A. T.; SETHI, J. Getting to work: unlocking women’s potential in Sri Lanka’s labour force. World Bank, Washington, 2020.

TZANAKIS, M. Bourdieu’s Social Reproduction Thesis and The Role of Cultural Capital in Educational Attainment: A Critical Review of Key Empirical Studies Contextualisation Bourdieu’s Social Reproduction Thesis : Cultural Capital, Habitus and Schools Influence of Family and Habitus on Children, 11(1), 2011. p. 76-90.

TORCHE, F. How do we characteristically measure and analyze intergenerational mobility? 2013.

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WALPOLE, M. B. Social Mobility and Highly-Selective Colleges: The Effect of Social Class Background on College Involvement and Outcomes. (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Diego, CA, April 13-17, 1998).

WILLIS, P. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Teachers Coll. Press, 1977. https://www.ugc. ac.lk/downloads/statistics/stat_2019/Chapter2.pdf Accessed on: 15th July 2021.

Pavithra Wickramasuriya is the Head of Productivity & Quality Centre, National Institute of Business Management, Sri Lanka. She is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Pavi received her MBA from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka Thesis Title: The private higher education institutes and social mobility of females in Sri Lanka

,

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FINAL THOUGHTS OR GOING BACKING TO THE BEGINNING Arinola Adefila Maria Lucia T. Garcia “Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future” (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed).

F

reire’s quote help us orientate our efforts as we present final thoughts. On one dimension, we have learned so much about ourselves, who we are and how organized the 2TV workshop explains part of the learning process between us and how with determination, respect and imagination we can build a future of collaboration. Bringing together people from different countries: Brazil, Venezuela, United Kingdom was challenging.

Using a translation service to tackle the language barrier, during live and vigorous debate was important, ensuring accessibility. Though it had its own challenges, we appreciate the importance for all to understand and to be understood.

Our discussions helped us unpack different layers of oppression and how it is manifested. As Freire suggested this activity should be designed to support people build a future using the tools and insights we have uncovered. We explored the history of Educational Policy that is anti “the oppressed”, and also investigated a number of alternatives. Envisioning possibilities to build a more equitable society, one that is anti-oppressive. As activist scholars it is our duty to continuously develop these pedagogies of hope, criticizing the exploitation and oppressor the capitalism system is. As Angela Davies said: “We are, after all, engaged in a struggle that seems, if we look at it using a mainstream political framework and through

a mass media prism, unwinnable. On the other hand, if we take a step back, look at things from a broader angle, reflecting on what is happening all over the world and the history of struggle, the history of solidarity movements, it becomes clear, sometimes even obvious, that seemingly indestructible forces can be, thanks to people’s willpower, sacrifices, and actions, easily broken” (Angela Davies, 2016, p. xi).

As academics, a tool is an exchange process in an international outlook. International cooperation is widely advocated within the strategic plans of universities and increasingly by professional associations in many parts of the world, as it allows for an understanding of local issues from an international perspective (National Research Council, 2001). The dissemination of our work also includes the intricacies of working together. We believe that we by presenting our findings as well as the collaborative process we can build a network and propagate pedagogies of hope. It means, it is a mutual learning process that impact all of us.

The collaborative process was a mix of challenges and amazing knowledge exchange. At the beginning of this process, we were working with colleagues we did not know and have never met. This demonstrates how important dialogue is. Even though we did not share the same idea we opened our minds to exchange knowledge and experience. Power, powerful, challenging, homogeneity are words that reflect 2TV workshop, a relational process that opens a space for dialogue between subjects who did not know each other but who recognize themselves in the debate.

The powerful nature of the dialectic was evident in the evaluation of the workshop, the word cloud (see below) reveals how participants – empowered, excited, inspired. This is exactly what we set out to achieve when we created the space and time for interested stakeholders to be involved in a critical discussion about education.

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Paraphrasing Freire: We do not wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, because we choose not to be neutral.

This is our final thoughts.

References DAVIES, A. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. Chicago: Haymark Books, 2016.

FREIRE, P. Pedagogy of The Oppressed. New York: Continuum,, 2005.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Aline Elisa Maretto Lang

Social worker. PhD in Social Policy of the Socal Policy Graduate Program at Federal University of Espírito Santo. Scholarship at the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e Inovação do Espírito Santo (FAPES). Email: alinelisa_lang@hotmail.com. ORCID: 00000002-5022-5692 Arinola Adefila

Arinola’s research focuses on educational transformationcollaborative, social and transdisciplinary leaning in diverse spaces.

She has a strong belief in continuous lifelong learning, and the power of education to support adaptability, curiosity, innovation and civic collaboration. She believes transdisciplinary skills and competencies enable humans to be open to new ideas, learn new talents, versatility and solve problems. She has developed invaluable experience in research, evaluation, quality monitoring, and community/ transdisciplinary education. Arinola has significant international experience working and studying in different countries. These experiences have supported her interest in internationalisation and global citizenship. She has successfully led complex projects with collaborative teams from diverse backgrounds. She is committed

to making a significant contribution in society and enhancing design thinking and inclusive environments where everyone has the opportunity to succeed.

Beatriz Gershenson

PhD in Social Work from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS). Professor of the Social Work Course at the School of Humanities and the Graduate Program in Social Work at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS). Graduated in Social Work from PUCRS. Email: beatrizg@ pucrs.br. ORCID: 0000-0002-4118-9749 Edna Castro de Oliveira

Pedagogue. Post-doctorate in Education at the Federal University of Espírito Santo. Associate Professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo. It is part of the coordination of the Youth and Adult Education Center of the UFES Education Center. Av. Fernando Ferrari, 514 - Goiabeiras, Vitória - ES, 29075-910. Email oliveiraedna@yahoo.com.br ORCID 0000-0003-0798-7090 Eliza Bartolozzi

Eliza Bartolozzi Ferreira is a professor at the Center of Education and the Graduate Program in Education (PPGE) at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES). She is a researcher grant (PQ) from The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Cnpq).She was coordinator of the PPGE (2017-2020) and is currently Director of Graduate Studies at UFES (2020-). Coordinator of the Latin American Network of Studies on Teaching Work (Red Estrado). Her research and studies are linked to educational policies, especially on the profession and teaching work; secondary education; educational planning; public management.

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Efe Imiren

Efe is an enterprise and entrepreneurship lecturer at Suffolk Business School. A Fellow of HEA, Efe recently completed her viva for a PhD in Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde.

Efe’s research engages with digital entrepreneurs and stakeholders in digital entrepreneurship ecosystems to explore the navigation of institutional complexity and to understand bifold practices in legitimizing and perpetuating gendered phenomenon in digital contexts.

As a lecturer, Efe brings into her sessions over ten years of experience as a digital entrepreneur while drawing on cutting-edge research to inform her pedagogic practice.

In addition to conducting phenomenological research, Efe’s research and teaching interests include digital entrepreneurship, digitalisation, digital ecosystems, digital research methods, qualitative methodologies, and entrepreneurial practices in nonoccidental contexts.

Fabiola Xavier Leal

Social Work. PhD in Social Policy (UFES). Professor at Social Work Departament and Social Policy Graduate Program at Federal University of Espírito Santo (Ufes) – Brazil. Coordinator of the Grupo de estudos Fênix (Ufes). Contato: fabiola.leal@ufes.br Gary Spolander

Gary is Professor of Social Work at Robert Gordon University. He has a background in social work and public health and has worked in academic and in practice. His research interests include international social work, social policy, leadership and management, early child development, mental health and health and social inequality.

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Katherine Winpenny

Katherine’s research focuses on contextualized and comprehensive internationalization at the interface of decolonization of education practices, embedded in the broader context of curriculum transformation.

She is researching a diversity of learning spaces (digital – especially Collaborative Online International learning, face to face, blended, formal, and non-formal) which interweave to impact educational opportunities which can serve to connect international learning communities, as well as to connect the university to its locale. Katherine has substantial track record as principal and co-investigator on large scale international education research projects and disseminates her work widely through a range of publications/media.

Luciana Gomes de Lima Jacques

PhD in Social Work at the Graduate Program in Social Work at PUC-RS. Master in Social Work by the Graduate Program in Social Work at PUC-RS. Graduated in Social Work from the Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL). Social Worker of the Municipality of Guaíba-RS. Email: lucianagljacques@gmail.com ORCID: 00000001-6048-9467 Maria Lúcia Teixeira Garcia

Titular professsor in the Social Work and in the Social Policy Graduate program (PPGPS) of the Federal University of Espírito Santo (Ufes). She has research Grant from The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Cnpq) and Espírito Santo Research Foundation (Fapes). She was coordenated the National Graduation Programs at Social Work Field in the Coordination of Superior Level Staff Improvement (2014-2018) of the Education Ministry. And member of the Scientific Technical Council – major bureau of CAPES (2014-2018). She has experience in Social Work, researching on the following subjects: social policy, mental health, public policy, early child development and Higher education.

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Marize Lyra Silva Passos

Titular Professor at IFES and at the Masters and Doctoral Programs in Professional and Technological Education and Science and Mathematics Education. PhD in Education and Engineering.

Marize coordinates the research group Innovation and Creativity in Education. She participated in innovation programs at the Finnish universities of HAMK and TAMK. Pollyanna Labeta Iack

Social Worker, Master’s Student of the in Social Policy Graduate Program at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (Ufes). MBA: Public Policies for Children and Youth (FACREDENTOR); Education in Human Rights (Ufes), Public Policies and Socioeducation (UnB). Member of the Center for Studies, Research and Extension on Violence, Public Security and Human Rights (NEVI/Ufes). E-mail: pollylabet@hotmail.com. https://orcid. org/0000-0002-2454-2678.

Pavithra Wickramasuriya

Pavithra Wickramasuriya is currently the Head of Productivity and Quality at The Centre National Institute of Business Management, Sri Lanka. She designs and delivers productivity and quality programmes and supervises Masters students dissertations. Her doctoral study is focussed on private higher education institutes and social mobility of females in Sri Lanka. Her current research explores student engagement in online teaching initiatives during the covid-19 pandemic and more broadly career and social mobility improvement in relation to higher education. She earned her MBA from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Talita Prada

PhD in Social Policy of the Social Policy Graduate Program at Federal University of Espírito Santo. Social worker at Bahia Federal

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Institute of Education, Science an Tecnology. Member of the research Group Fênix. Email: talitaprada@yahoo.com.br – ORCID - 0000-0002-7093-9342.

Talita Valadares

Pedagogue. PhD student of the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Espírito Santo. Pedagogue at IFMG – Ouro Preto Campus. Rua Pandiá Calógeras, 898 – Morro do Cruzeiro, Ouro Preto MG 35.400-000. Email talita.valadares@ ifmg.edu.br. ORCID 0000-0001-8696-1926

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