Formação de diretores de escola/ diretores escolares: conhecimentos e desafios para a educação das relações étnico-raciais e decolonização dos currículos

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the knowledge and challenges regarding Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations and curriculum decolonization made explicit by school principals working in schools in a city in the interior of São Paulo state, starting from the research question: "What knowledge and challenges regarding Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations and curriculum decolonization are made explicit by school principals?" The study is grounded in the concepts of coloniality of power, of knowledge, and of being, articulated with the perspective of decoloniality as a way of confronting the Eurocentric structures present in Brazilian education, drawing on the theoretical contributions of Quijano (2005, 2007), Mignolo (2017), Walsh (2018), Gomes (2012, 2013, 2018, 2019), Kilomba (2019), Bento (2022), and other authors in the anti-racist and decolonial field. This is a qualitative study, carried out by means of an electronic questionnaire applied to twenty-two school principals from the state education network in a city in the interior of São Paulo, with approval from the Research Ethics Committee and from the School for Training and Improvement of Education Professionals (EFAPE). Data were analyzed through Content Analysis. The results show the presence of different levels of racial literacy among participants — Critical, Normative, and Reactive — indicating that principals with a broader understanding of ethnic-racial relations tend to develop formative processes more closely articulated with the curriculum and with the Political-Pedagogical Project, and that insufficient initial training, the discontinuity of formative policies, and the managerial model adopted by the São Paulo state network constitute significant obstacles to the implementation of ERER and curriculum decolonization. As an educational product, the Trilha Formativa Reexistir em ação: porque nós somos — trilha formativa para uma educação antirracista e decolonial was developed, structured around five thematic axes and grounded in Ubuntu philosophy. It is concluded that the school principal occupies a strategic position in promoting anti-racist and decolonial practices, acting as an organizer of collective formative processes able to strengthen the construction of a school culture committed to racial equity and social justice.