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.