O redesenho da educação profissional e tecnológica no Brasil nos dois governos de Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva: de Centros Federais de Educação a Institutos Federais de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia: a experiência do IFPB (2003 – 2010)

Abstract

The research that served as a basis for the construction of this doctoral thesis had as an object of investigation the process of transformation of the Federal Center of Technological Education of Paraíba into Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology that took place during the two governments of President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010). It was sought to reflect on the reasons for this process at the national level, and then to understand how it took place in the said state. Why, this was the central issue, the institutions that make up the federal network of professional education, although already having reached a very complex level, in their juridical-institutional form, had to be reconfigured to form Federal Institutes that can offer, from initial basic training, to master's and doctoral courses? What caused this phenomenon and what are the justifications for doing so? In the Paraíba experience, given the lack of secondary sources that reconstitute and analyze this process and the scarcity of primary sources, except for some official documents, what exists is the oral reports of the participants. For this reason, non-structured interviews were conducted with eight individuals, between managers and former managers of the former CEFET / PB, and also used, as a data source, the conference of a representative of SETEC / MEC, held in Paraíba, besides official documents. The method of analysis of the interviews was the thematic analysis, according to the guidelines of authors such as Bardin (1977), Richardson (2013), Bourdieu (2012) and Amado (2013). Among the theoretical supports on professional education in Brazil, the following stand out: Cunha (1991, 2000), Manfredi (2002), Kuenzer (1990, 2015), Pacheco, Pereira, Domingos Sobrinho (2010), Pacheco (2011). On social representations, the authors are Moscovici (2012) and Jodelet (2001). The results indicate that: the transformation process of CEFET / PB into IFPB reproduced, on a micro scale, the macro complexity of the expansion process that occurred throughout the country; despite the limits and contradictions between the discourse and the practice of a government of a popular and democratic nature, it has shown that it is possible to introduce changes in the structure and format of the network, in order to meet not only the demands of the economy but also to contribute to the strengthening of citizenship; the analysis of the psychosocial dimension of the researched phenomenon, based on social representations (JODELET, 2001; MOSCOVICI, 2012) allowed a better understanding of the actions of the subjects engaged in the process, avoiding to reduce them to epiphenomena of economic structures, political-ideological disputes or mere manifestations of individual idiosyncrasies.