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This paper is a written dialogue among four activists from the Emancipa Popular Education Movement in Brazil, following the principles of Freirean pedagogy as a 'circle of culture'. It delves into how popular knowledge can be experienced as popular power, narrating the history, struggles, and strategies employed by the Emancipa movement in their pursuit of democratizing Brazilian universities. The discussion is set within the context of Latin American structural inequalities and the issue of educational exclusion in Brazil. It emphasizes the vital role of contesting culture and knowledge as part of the movement's fight against social injustices perpetuated by peripheral capitalism, including racist violence and gender oppression. The paper adopts emancipatory pedagogy as the method to empower and mobilize grassroots efforts in this transformative endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 2015–2016, high school students in Brazil occupied hundreds of schools across the country. Students fought to keep public schools open, funded, and functional, against outsourcing and privatisation, and in solidarity with teachers' trade unions and strikes. The 'primavera secundarista' ('student spring') was the most significant school student movement since the struggles against the military dictatorship (1964–1988). This paper firstly addresses the political dynamics of the primavera secundarista. Secondly, it discusses the movement's educational practices, which flourished in the months that students occupied their schools. Thirdly, it discusses the forms of community and solidarity that students built with other social actors and how they each learnt from this. In doing so, the paper builds on the work of Aziz Choudry and other scholars of social movement learning to argue that such student movements are prime sites of counter-hegemonic knowledge production and dissemination. Shown through the Brazilian high school occupations, the paper highlights how student movements are unusual in being situated in formal epistemic institutions, and yet are not widely recognised, especially in high schools, as blending formal and informal learning to produce and share knowledge-from-below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the rise of authoritarian populism in Brazil following the election in 2018 of Jair Messias Bolsonaro to the Presidency and reflect on the consequences of his far-right-wing politics for education. Our focus is broadly on three historical blocs (with five different presidents of the Republic) which make up the policy trajectory of Brazil over the period 1995–2019. We explore the complex cultural political economy surrounding more than a decade of left-wing government by Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016) of the Workers Party (PT). In what has been described as simultaneously a tragedy, a farce, and a soap opera, Bolsonaro's rise involves the impeachment of Dilma, accusations of corruption, the imprisonment of Lula and the resignation of multiple ministers of the government. The intersections of right-wing conservative discourse, evangelical proselytising and populist discourse in Brazil, coupled with resentment from those whose fortunes had been diminished because of declining economic competitiveness, contributed to the election of Bolsonaro in 2018. A final section focuses on the education policy in Brazil, the ways in which any progressive gains have been erased and what this means for Brazilians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time the historical/colonial relations between Brazil and Portugal guaranteed the mobility of Brazilian elite that wanted to obtain a degree mostly from the University of Coimbra. However, only in the twenty-first century the flow of Brazilian students to Portuguese higher education increased, turning it into the largest community of foreign students in Portugal. This paper will discuss the motivations that, since 2008/2009 (the school year in which, according to data from the General Directorate of Education and Science Statistics – DGEEC – in Portugal, the supremacy of this community over the others was verified), have put Portugal back on the route of Brazilian higher education students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines social coordination by the Brazilian Black Movement in the area of Brazilian education. It explains how these developments relate to the construction of race-based public education policies in the country. Focus goes to the process of creation and implementation of law 10.639 in Brazilian Basic education. Using the concept ‘diffuse governance’, the argument is made that at present it are the multiple actions by the Brazilian Black Movement, in diverse arenas of dispute, and interacting with a range of actors, that enable us to understand the social coordination/regulation in the process of constructing and implementing Law 10.639. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to discuss the relationship between higher education (HE), globalisation and regionalism projects focusing on HE in Latin America and Brazil. It is claimed that HE has predominantly taken the diverse, yet concerted and co-ordinated routes of globalisation and regionalisation and, by doing so, been profoundly transformed. The first section considers a set of theoretical categories in relation to the phenomena of globalisation and regionalisation. The second section analyses the global and regional dimensions of HE in Latin America, exploring: (1) the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), along with the processes and mechanisms put into place to settle MERCOSUR's Educative Sector. It is argued that despite the political relevance of this regional project, its major developments are still harbouring important but preliminary preparations for future regional positioning and empowerment; (2) it is argued that the commodification, privatisation and ‘marketisation’ of HE, having occupied the centre stage in determined nations of the world, have become the founding conditions of a global market in HE; and (3) the Brazilian HE policies are examined in order to develop an argument about the decisive role played by national government in promoting and adjusting the process of globalisation and the regionalism project for HE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines Brazilian higher education (HE) politics from a post-colonial perspective. The term 'post-colonial' originally referred to a historical period of colonial empires established by European nations. Nowadays, the term commonly distinguishes a field of contemporary studies of 'defamiliarisation of the imperial North' made up of successive acts of unlearning and re-learning. In the text I discuss the effects of globalisation on the Brazilian HE system, with emphasis on the outstanding role of evaluation and accreditation procedures. These are preparing the HE system for increasing internationalisation. Brazil, the new global player, is showing its potential in HE political acts of unlearning and re-learning. The epistemology could be called 'anthropophagic' because instead of copying foreign ideas there is a tendency to create new ones and re-elaborate them with a Global North anticipatory view and an accent on Global South localism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]