Search

The education, as a social process and a political practice, can take different perspectives and meanings, acting for or against certain models and values. From this premise, this paper makes a critical analysis about appropriation of the autonomy concept by the current educational discourse, in an attempt to clarify the political meaning of this appropriation ant its consequent implications for various dimensions of the educational process. This analysis shows that, although the autonomy may be being subjected to an instrumentalization that reduces its true meaning and puts it in the service of neoliberal conception, its legitimacy still can and should be ensured in the context of education. This legitimacy requires the autonomy be understood in connection to the social, cultural, political, economic and ideological factors that condition the individuals and institutions experience, towards the construction of social relations fairer and more egalitarian.

This article focuses on discourses about the training of two generations of Brazilian teachers of the early years of elementary school. With regard to the first period, between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the study of documents related to the curricular proposal of Project Cefam/SP was carried out, which revealed discourses emphasizing a teacher’s training geared towards collective work and a critical-reflexive attitude. In the second period, corresponding to the generation of teachers trained from the second half of the 1990s on, the proposals for teacher’s training (represented by guidelines, benchmarks, and federal decrees) are marked by the influence of international organizations and an economic standpoint, assuming a pragmatist orientation based on individual skills, pointing to a political weakening of professorship as a professional group. Thus, one wonders if it is relevant to consider the current moment as a teachers’ professionalization period.