As plataformas digitais na rede de ensino pública estadual: a compreensão de professores em uma escola de Sorocaba-SP

Abstract

The expansion of digital platforms in São Paulo's public education, intensified after the covid-19 pandemic, has reshaped pedagogical practices, forms of school monitoring and ways of organizing teaching work, producing new demands and challenges in the daily routine of schools. This study aimed to investigate the understanding of teachers from a state public school in the municipality of Sorocaba regarding the use of digital platforms, as well as its implications for teaching and learning in the post-pandemic context. The specific objectives were: to investigate how teachers understand digital platforms, covering their pedagogical usefulness, their potential and the challenges faced in everyday school life; and to learn about their understandings of the effects of technologies on student learning and on teaching practice. The research was grounded in the historical-cultural theory of Lev Semionovitch Vigotski (1896-1934), beginning with a systematic mapping of academic works on the topic and proceeding with semi-structured interviews conducted with five teachers from the final years of Elementary School and from Secondary School. The results indicate that the potential of the platforms and the possibilities for diversifying materials and pedagogical practices are acknowledged, but the accounts reveal challenges such as standardization processes; the imposition of targets; the centralization of pedagogical decisions; the reduction of pedagogical autonomy; and the displacement of didactic planning towards tasks of monitoring, recording and tracking. The effects on learning include practices marked by haste, by the mechanical execution of activities and by superficial engagement with content. It is argued that digital platforms incorporate logics of management, control and performativity, aligned with educational policies of neoliberal orientation, which affect both the working conditions of teachers and the ways in which students learn. Understanding these processes requires considering the relations between educational policies, concrete working conditions and the forms of mediation established in everyday school life.