Gestão escolar e participação das famílias: contribuições para a prática da direção geral de uma Escola da Rede Jesuíta de Educação

Abstract

This study analyzes the notions and meanings attributed to the school from the perspective of families of first year students from elementary school, who entered a Jesuit Education School in the year 2018 and their relationship with the practice developed by the General Principal of the Institution. It was conducted with 20 families from the school field of research. The choice to carry out this study, based on the principles of the participant research, strengthened the idea that the research work would be carried out together with the families, and not only about them. The intention was not to be a researcher of purely scientific action together with the participants, but that they were subjects involved in a common work, interactive and motivated by individual and collective needs that, when shared, made possible a critical reflection on the subject under study. The interest in this research led to the following question: how can the creation of spaces for dialogue with families suggest actions of general management of the school, in order to establish participatory management that goes beyond banking conception? Thus, it establishes as general objective to transform the general principal's practice by listening to families and, in a specific way, to enable families to be heard through Dialogue Groups, to propose strategies that will increase the participation of families in school and revisit the plan of action of the general principal, and then redesign it from the listening of the families. We took as a reference the thoughts of Freire (1987, 1991, 1996) and sought dialogue with Dalmás (2014) and Lück (2006), among others, whose works investigate the school management theme in the educational scenario. The procedures for dialogue with the community took place through two Dialogue Groups through discussions in small groups, summaries presented on posters, videotaping and records in a descriptive table of positive points and points that were also an opportunity to be improved in school, from the practice of the general principal. This work reveals that as it is established the relation of the practice developed by the director with the notions and meanings attributed by the families, we understand that these two aspects are at the same time connected and isolated. They are linked because some transformations in the senses and meanings of the general principal's practice, perceived from the subject's speeches, necessarily imply transformations of the general principal's practice, while others do not allow any transformation. It also reveals that the study was also an opportunity to create in the school a culture of critical reflection on the subject under study.