Teacher: protagonist and obstacle to the reform

Abstract

The article discusses teacher education within the context of the reform in the Brazilian State, articulated to the recommendations made by the international bodies for education at the start of the 21st century. For that, it makes use of the concept of Globally Structured Educational Agenda (GSEA) as proposed by Roger Dale. This concept invites us to think about these reforms, understanding them inside the dynamics established between the central economies and the peripheral countries in the international division of labor. The analysis focuses on three large educational projects for education in Latin America and the Caribbean: the Proyecto Regional de Educación para América Latina y el Caribe - PREALC, sponsored by UNESCO, the Plan de Cooperación, which resulted from the Cumbre Iberoamericana de Educación sponsored by OEI (Organization of Ibero-American States), and the Proyectos hemisféricos en educación sponsored by OAS. In this article we emphasize the way in which these organizations try to build the teacher simultaneously as protagonist and obstacle to the educational reform, discrediting them theoretically and politically. We seek to evince the fact that in the documental corpus of the above-mentioned organizations two concepts are fundamental to understand the reform in teacher education: professionalization, and management culture. The centrality attributed to these two concepts aims at extending the control over the teaching category and its potential to oppose reforms and the State. These conclusions corroborate the thesis that educational reforms have little to do with strictly educational issues, and are more related to the search for a new governability of public education.