AS POLÍTICAS DA GESTÃO ESCOLAR: FINALIDADES EDUCATIVAS NO CONTEXTO NEOLIBERAL

Abstract

This dissertation is linked to the research line Education, Institutions, and Educational Policies of the Graduate Program in Education at Centro Universitário Mais (UniMais) and is part of the research activities developed by the Research Group Educational Policies and Educational Purposes of Schooling (PEFEE). The study analyzes how educational purposes, shaped by the neoliberal context and expressed in policies related to school management, influence the educational process and the actions of school administrators in public schools. The guiding research question is: how do educational purposes defined within a neoliberal context influence the educational process and the work of school administrators? The general objective is to analyze how the educational purposes and guidelines contained in official documents influence the development of the educational process and the actions of school administrators. The specific objectives are: (i) to investigate the educational purposes of school management under the tension between conservation and transformation, considering democratic management as the central analytical category; (ii) to examine the incorporation of democratic management into the main normative documents of Brazilian education, identifying how educational purposes are (re)defined and the advances, limits, and contradictions involved in this process; and (iii) to analyze theoretical approaches that explain the influence of these purposes on the educational process and on administrative practice, confronting management models with the democratic principle. This is a qualitative study of a theoretical nature, grounded in authors who adopt historical-dialectical materialism as a method of analysis, employing bibliographic and documentary research procedures. In order to understand the phenomenon in its depth and contradictions, the theoretical framework includes authors such as Afonso (2009), Dourado (2007, 2020), Freitas (2012), Gadotti (2011), Libâneo (2012, 2016, 2023), and Paro (2003, 2010). By adopting democratic management as an analytical category for understanding the competing educational purposes, the findings indicate that although normative frameworks consolidate democratic management as a structuring principle, its implementation remains constrained by structural conditions, centralized decision-making, and managerial rationalities aligned with neoliberal ideology. At the same time, experiences of resistance are identified, particularly through the strengthening of collective participation, the development of the School Political-Pedagogical Project, and the reinforcement of deliberative bodies such as councils and assemblies. It can therefore be argued that school management constitutes a field of dispute between conservation and transformation: under neoliberal logic, it tends to be reduced to a mechanism of control and standardization; under a democratic perspective, it may assert itself as a political practice committed to the social quality of education, equity, and the emancipation of subjects.