A proposal to transform schools

Researchers in Brazil reveal how four schools adopted a Spanish concept and became examples of respectful coexistence and quality education.

By Fábio de Castro

Agência FAPESP – A researcher from the Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar) brought a little bit of Spain to Brazil ten years ago with the concept of “Learning Communities,” a proposal to transform schools by guaranteeing optimal learning, full coexistence with diversity and community participation in all processes and decisions.

Since then, Professor Roseli Rodrigues de Mello, of the Department of Learning Methodology at the Education and Human Sciences Center, has been dedicated to adapting this proposal to the Brazilian reality. This effort resulted in the transformation of four São Carlos (SP) schools into learning communities.

The conceptual basis of the proposal, as well as the experience of adapting the program to Brazil and implementing it in an interior São Paulo city, is detailed in the book Learning Communities: Another School Is Possible (Comunidades de Aprendizagem: outra escola é possível), published with the support of FAPESP in the Research Assistance – Publications modality.

Mello co-wrote the book with Fabiana Marini Braga and Vanessa Gabassa, two students she mentored during the process. Mello’s work proposing learning communities began in 2001, when she received a FAPESP grant to conduct post-doctoral studies at the University of Barcelona’s Center for Research on Theories and Practices that Overcome Inequalities in Spain.

“I went to Barcelona to study this program, which brings the school and students’ families closer together, offering shared management through dialogue with the surrounding community with a view to effecting high-quality learning for all students in the public system. The proposal brings together the concept of dialogic learning with cultural diversity as human wealth,” Mello said in an interview with Agência FAPESP.

In Brazil in 2002, the professor presented the proposal to the São Carlos Municipal Secretariat of Education, which adopted the idea. This began the process of transforming the schools in the municipality.

Merullo said, “I began to serve as a mentor for master’s and doctoral students with fellowships from FAPESP, with projects focused on investigating the ability to adapt the proposal. We needed to know whether it would be possible to implement learning communities in the same format as the Spanish model or if there were local nuances that needed to be considered.”

Braga, who had Mello as a mentor for both her master’s and doctorate studies, conducted a comparative analysis of the context of legislation in Spain and Brazil. “The comparison has the objective of identifying whether Brazilian legislation favored or hindered transformation of these schools,” explained Mello.

From 2007 to- 2009, Mello coordinated the project “Learning Communities: Betting on the Quality of Learning, the Equality of Differences and Democratization of School Management,” funded by FAPESP through the Public Education Improvement Program.

At that time, Gabassa was finishing work toward her master’s degree on learning communities, with Mello as her mentor, and was beginning her doctorate on the impact of learning in the classroom.

The work is the fruit of 10 years of research funded by FAPESP. “The book presents this entire trajectory and describes what we developed in research and by implementing these Learning Communities in Brazil,” Mello said.

Three municipal elementary schools and one state high school in São Carlos currently operate as Learning Communities, according to Mello. “The Learning Communities program envisages the transformation of schools to guarantee two fundamental objectives. The first is the highest quality learning of school subjects for all students. The second is creating what we call respectful coexistence among the varied cultures and realities of students, professors and the community,” she explained.

With a view toward guaranteeing maximum learning for all students, which historically has not occurred in Brazilian schools, the program envisions bringing the community into the school rather than pushing the student outside the classroom. “We summoned the people of the community to participate in discussions, raise issues and consider the prospects of a joint solution with the school council, intensifying its interactions with students,” she affirmed.
 
The transformation, according to Mello, requires a process of study based on sociology, psychology, organizational theory and learning theory to ensure feasible school interactions with the surrounding community.

“The school does not have experience in this regard,” Merullo explained, “and for this reason establishing abstract guidelines is useless. One must establish a consistent way to make the changes. If not, transformation could generate more conflict. For this reason, our proposal for Learning ommunities was prepared with a group that has 120 researchers in different areas.”
 
In Spain, according to Mello, 150 schools have become Learning Communities. “The research conducted in 14 countries in the European Union to locate the most successful educational practices on the continent named Learning Communities as an example of respectful coexistence and quality education,” the professor said.

The first chapter of the book presents the Learning Community in its current context, in an international environment, and examines the implications and specificities of Brazil that create challenges for transforming schools. The second chapter details the concept of dialogic learning, which is the theoretical methodology of the proposal.

The third chapter addresses the phases of the transformation of schools. The fourth chapter presents the functional processes of the Learning Community, based on the experiences studied by the authors in the two countries. The last  chapter presents a balance of the elements that favor or hinder the transformation of schools in the Brazilian context.