A gestão democrática na rede de educação profissional do Estado do Rio de Janeiro: A institucionalização dos conselhos escolares

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how the democratic management is embedded in normative documents and inside Technological Educational Institutes, in State schools in Rio de Janeiro, focusing on Foundation of Support to Technical School (FAETEC). In this study the advances of educational policy will be discussed concerning the incorporation of the principle of democratic management in public system, since the Federal Constitution of 1988 until the PNE (the National Education Plan) of 2001 and, more specifically, in 2014. In this research, we try to identify how the question of participation has been incorporated by the FAETEC schools, analyzing the rules o the school councils. This study is concerned with the consolidation of the democratic management in this Institution and its branches, according to the Federal Constitution of 1988, the LDB (Brazilian Educational System) and to the National Education Plan. The implementation of School councils in Public schoolsis believed to represent a privileged forum to actualize the participation and the democratic management, besides promoting changes towards the participation of the school community into the decisions made there. It's intended, in the first place, to analyze how FAETEC was leading the implementation of the democratic management, the role of participation and the establishment of School councils in its branches in order to find out if the strategies and goals defined by the PNE were being accomplished. More specifically, this work claims to: (1) Analyze the power structure and how the decisions are made, according to the rules of the aforementioned institution; (2) Identify the obstacles that burden the proper implementation of actions oriented by participation nature and (3) Describe how the institution is organized to accomplish the pro participation demanded by the guidelines that can be found on the Federal Constitution/1988, LDB/1996 and the PNE/2014. A weak participation of the school community can be identified when the decisions are made, which lead to centralization of the power benefiting only the local managers. Although the professionals seem to comprehend the importance of the democratic management, the documents analyzed show how some behaviors try cover the lack of participation by the school community, even with democratic speeches and principles being announced as they were being applied. It's been concluded that the institutionalization of the School Council is guaranteed by legal documents, but it does not assure the proper establishment of it. It's understood that FAETEC was conceived taking into consideration the educational policies of the federal government, thus, it's identified that this institution has a “hybrid” conception, in other words, its organization system follows the changes of the federal technical education and this hybridization may represent another defying factor to the consolidation of the democratic management.