O fórum de classe numa escola pública: significados e práticas direcionados à construção de uma coletividade

Abstract

School constitutes itself in social relations of time and space. Having in mind what was just said, this dissertation aims at knowing and analyzing practices and meanings in the collective proposal of evaluating a school. Such an aim took us to participate of an every day life of a public elementary school (ESEBA) where we had been carrying out our research in 2005. At this school, we had the opportunity to be in different kinds of meetings, which allowed us to discuss the process of evaluation as well as the daily life of a classroom of the second grade of the basic cycle of human formation. Our research confirms the dynamicity and historicity of everyday life in school, which could be seen in the subjects. By being part of the routine of the school, we could realize its limits and possibilities in order to make the subjects get united, discuss and make their classroom meetings. We could find, on the one hand, that, at this specific school, the existence of a discourse that intends to construct a qualitative and collective evaluation process. But, on the other hand, we could also realize that there are practices or even actions related to the classroom meetings in which what one can see is bureaucracy, hierarchy, ritualism and authoritarianism. Therefore, if we can consider the time we spent in this school in order to carry out our research, we can say that the classroom forum was a process in which a certain emancipating discourse takes place, that is, it shows itself as wide moment of dialogue and reflection, although in practical terms what one can really realizes is an evaluative process which tries to discipline the behavior of students. This discourse also stimulates students to internalize values, rules, and the discourse of the school and teachers, especially by practices developed in groups. Thus, we have pointed out that the construction of a democratic and collective practice of evaluation still remains as a goal to be concretized at ESEBA. This implies, among other challenges, that it is necessary to establish relations in which those subjects involved in the process of teaching and learning can express themselves and be heard.