Discourse analyzes about the (de)construction of the concept of democracy: sayings and doings in the school context

Abstract

With the promulgation of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (1988), the word 'democracy' starts to reverberate and (re)define themselves in all circles of thought about Brazilian education, which we highlight in our research. Being discursively materialized in LDBEN (1996), among other official documents such as PCNs (1998); Guidelines: national network of continuing education of teachers of basic education (2005) and; official documents of the CONAE (2010), that in the first gestures in reading we find directing the implementation of an ideal of democracy education, to build critical and independent citizens, and search for achieving a model of democratic management of schools in accordance with the paradigm of decentralized administration. The observation of the performance of professionals, involved in educational practice performed daily in schools, prompted us to reflect on this goal and about practices necessary to achieve them. Therefore, this research aims to investigate how the (de)construction of the concept of democracy in the school context and its materialization in practices, noting differences and similarities between sayings and doings, as well as the ideological implications of these experiences built on observable relations between teachers and students and yet, how they materializes and organizes this ideological concept in textual productions of subjects-students. To do so, we will rely on the theoretical paradigms about the democratic school, building social-historical-ideological concept of democracy and its Brazilian's idiosyncrasies, socio-historical theory of literacy and the theoretical and methodological French Discourse Analysis. The research will be conducted in three public primary schools, cycle II, in the region of Ribeirão Preto, state of São Paulo, involving a total of nine subject-teachers, three subjects-managers, three subjects-employees and thirty subjects-students. We chose the qualitative approach, using as instruments of data collection: semi-structured interviews, field diary notes for systematic descriptive of the activities undertaken by the subject-teachers, managers and other individuals and participants; textual productions of students, to research how they organize and materialize the interspeech made on the subject democracy. The choice of epistemological discourse analysis is justified by the conjunction of three areas of scientific knowledge, as conceived by Pêcheux, which are: linguistics, which focuses on the processes and mechanisms of enunciation; historical materialism, looking for the society building process and social transformations, the theory of discourse, all crossed and articulated by a theory of subjectivity in psychoanalytic bases. Seek corroboration in the works of Foucault, Althusser, Orlandi, Assolini, Tfouni, among many others, to analyze whether the school creates opportunities for their students to be subjects of his sayings and doings. With the hypothesis that the school eventually build an environment often undemocratic, of subjecting students to institutionalized procedures and values casts, limiting their autonomy, interpretable and written productions in the words of participating subjects, and that this limitation is often a reflex of the administrative structure, we will highlight and we will suggest, within the framework analyzed, researched practices that can help to build a democracy context, such as setting up meetings, work with transdisciplinary projects that involve community and strengthen their ties between this institution and the constitution and effectiveness of student unions, on the criticality of the textbook, among other practices that enhance the student leadership and community involvement in order to approach the ideal of the school we seek.