Políticas públicas para a educação profissional técnica de nível médio (1996 a 2011)

Abstract

Vocational and technical training in the high school has been presented as a ground for disputes about conception of education which were intensified since the reforms of 1998. The present thesis aims to contribute to the studies on public policies for such modality of professional education, developed from the promulgation of the Law No. 9.394/96, the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education. The option for this selected period was due to such Law to express the difficulties of defining a national project to this level of formation, whose disputes were occurring in recent years, especially after the ending of military regime and the return of Democracy. This research seeks to examine the reasons that guided the choices by the governments in three moments: from 1996 to 2004; 2004 to 2008 and from 2008 to 2011. This study analyzes legal documents, promotional material and the opinion of the managers of these policies through interviews. This paper seeks to identify the influences to which governments were exposed, the determining factors in the choices made, the way they operated in the formulation and implementation of policies and their results. The historical-critical approach is the method used to analyze the material. Some categories are explored such as the concept of hegemony in Gramsci (1982), in search of the discussion on the disputes observed inside and outside the government for the design of professional education; With Teodoro (2003, 2006, 2011), Barroso (2005) and Afonso (2010) as a reference, are analyzed the different political options chosen during the periods, particularly in the identification of models of managerialism, with special emphasis on trend of transfer of responsibility for the provision of vocational education. It is also possible to observe in this process, the public funding of this teaching modality similar to privatization, according to the studies of Ball (2004), Canosa (2010) and Harvey (2008). The periods are defined from the density of the debates about the concepts in dispute. There were conflicts and contradictions, in their different moments, as well as little political consistency and social appeal that eventually subdue the resistance to the process of institutionalization of a state more managerialist and less public character.