Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes: tempo-espaço de possibilidades para a formação crítica na educação superior

Abstract

This study investigates the potential of the Popular Higher Education model to foster critical formation. The research focused on a formative experience developed at the Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF), linked to the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), located in the state of São Paulo. The theoretical framework draws on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pedagogy of Hope, and Pedagogy of Autonomy. Anchored in the methodological paradigm of critical theory, the study adopts a qualitative approach and a case study design, combining observation, interviews, and document analysis, guided by content analysis as the interpretive axis. The findings show that ENFF constitutes a time–space of possibility in which political education, knowledge production, and the collective construction of meaning intertwine. In the context studied, Popular Education emerged as an experience of humanization and emancipation, grounded in the dialogue between knowing and doing, the valuing of experience, and the centrality of collective work. The dimensions of Problem-Posing, Dialogical, and Liberating Education were identified in formal educational practices, pedagogical relationships, and the organization of school time and space. The study also found that ENFF reproduces the Pedagogy of the Movement, which challenges the traditional university model by affirming Popular Higher Education as a political and epistemological horizon of resistance and social transformation. The thesis thus reaffirms the strength of Popular Higher Education as a practice of freedom and of education as a political and humanizing act.