Políticas educacionais e projeto pedagógico na educação superior: um estudo da experiência do curso de Engenharia Elétrica da UFU

Abstract

This study is inserted in the Research Line of Public Policies and Education Management in the Graduate Program in Education of the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. An investigation and analysis of construction process of the Pedagogical Process in the College o f Electric Engineering o f UFU, highlighting the social-historic and institutional conditionals in which this experience is developed. Besides these general objectives, other questions are raised, such as: in which context the discussion about the guidelines for the elaboration of Pedagogical Projects for undergraduate courses takes place? Which are the impacts of contemporaneous social, political, cultural changes in higher education on these guidelines? Specifically in relation to the Pedagogical Project of undergraduate courses, which guidelines regulate their elaboration? And in the case of Electrical Engineering course of UFU, how faculty and students apprehend these guidelines? How elements, such as participation, collective work, and flexibilization are considered in the Pedagogical Project construction process of that course? First, a document search was used as data collection technique, from which an analysis of legal instruments that deal with curricular guidelines for undergraduate teaching and the construction of the Pedagogical Project proceeded. Also the interview technique was called upon, from which an analysis was done about how the Pedagogical Project construction process in the Electrical Engineering course of UFU is happening. Four professors and two students from the course under study were interviewed. This study is structured in three chapters. The fírst chapter analyses the central elements that bound the field of transformations experienced by modern society, highlighting the globalization process, the changes in the labor world and the advancement o f the neoliberal ideology in the field of social policies. Still, it places the role of the World Bank on the defmition of educational policies in peripheral countries, such as Brazil. Chapter two analyzes the policies for higher education in the period 1995 to 2002, highlighting how these policies brought the mark of differentiation, diversification and implementation of a mancigerial model in the university, in which questions about evaluation, autonomy and curriculum reorganization take the centrality. Also, curricular guidelines for undergraduate courses are analyzed. Chapter three recovers the theoretical-conceptual discussion about the Pedagogical Project Idea and presents the data referring to the field study in the Electrical Engineering course of UFU. It also demarcates the analyses of the Fórum de Pró-Reitores de Graduação das Universidades Brasileiras - ForGrad - in face of the new curricular guidelines for undergraduate courses. The analysis of the changes in higher education in the period considered puts in evidence how the institutional diversification and differentiation process articulates with the principie of flexibilization, which is present in higher education since the university reformation in 1968, through the law 5.540/68. Also, it was possible to apprehend that the Electrical Engineering course o f UFU is passing through important changes, from the innumerable studies, researches, debates, meetings, some talks and seminars, evaluations. The comprehension among the investigated subjects about the conception of a Pedagogical Project as a document that should be elaborated in a collective, participative form was evident, despite the recognition of the existing difficulties.