Negotiation of curricular policies-practices: teachers’ professional development oriented towards curricular decision-making

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the possibilities and impossibilities of policies/programs negotiation processes to contribute to the teachers’ professional development oriented towards curricular decision-making. Using the defense of autonomy of the exercise of teaching enactment, it is considered that professional development permeates the idea of teachers constituting themselves as curricular decision-makers, understood as capacity for action that is developed from the articulation between individual efforts of the subject, available resources and contextual factors. The theoretical-methodological orientation is based on the unstable and undecidable relationship between particularity and universality. The locus of data collection on curricular policies/practices was the municipality of Caruaru, located in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, with the material available on the Caruaru Platform Instituto Qualidade no Ensino (IQE) [Quality in Teaching Institute] and the IQE official website. The analysis of these materials shows disputes around the meaning of curricular policies/practices in this municipality built from the discourses of global educational reforms and national policies that have been proposing, through curricular standardization, the attempt to close the production of contextual curricular responses. However, despite these limitations, it is believed that there is a possibility for teachers to act in the structure gaps to dispute, along with policies, other meanings of teaching enactment that stimulate professional development based on autonomy and considering teaching knowledge.