Entre autoritarismo e diálogo: a democracia como processo na gestão escolar

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to understand the relationship between public school and democracy, mediated by democratic management, the perspective of school managers, believing that democratic development in society comes through participation spaces, with decisions. It reflected on the importance of democracy and its significance in the context of school relations, taking into account that it is an epistemological problem as much as a political enigma seizing axes articulators of public policy. Had the mainspring three concerns: the extent to which the managers interviewed established democratic practices in school management? In what areas? How these practices were considered democratic, and how they strengthened? In the empirical part we selected a city located in São Paulo, midsize, called Rio Claro. It set up a sample of ten managers, with whom semi-structured interviews were conducted. Presented a study on democracy, from the economic, political and social that characterize modernity, with reflections on modern liberal democracy; Theory of Communicative Action and the transformations that characterize modernity, according to Jurgen Habermas, and a panorama of relations that characterize the formation of the state and of Brazilian politics. It was understood that the managers interviewed were creating democratic practices in school management, to stimulate dialogue and hosting, while listening demands, respect for differences, singularities and interests in the school daily, to share decisions and responsibilities to respect the limits of the functions and duties of a member in the hierarchy of the workplace, to pursue work together, the use of "instruments" as simple questionnaire for families of students, the flexibility of schedules to attendance of parents and family, participation and training partnership between school and family for the benefit of students, the collective construction of PPP as an approximation between the school and community. These actions allowed us to understand how managers understood to be enabling democratic practices in school, the school administration and school linking democracy. The spaces for these actions were: meetings HTPC; APM meetings, meetings with parents or guardians; "politics of coffee" etc.. Despite the respondents did not indicate a reference or a theorist of democracy in particular, it was possible to see that realized, procedurally, a democratic relationship within the school and interpersonal relationships.