Discourse and governmentality as operators in curriculum research and curriculum policy

Abstract

The paper discusses, from a theoretical-methodological point of view, the potency of notions of discourse and governmentality in the practice of research in curriculum and curricular policies, having as a subject of reflection the investigations that a group of teachers and researchers have been developing in the postgraduate course in education at a Brazilian public university. These investigations focus on changes in the curricula for professional teachers’ education and in basic education, and the transformations in the forms of teaching professionalism, over the last few decades, in relation to official educational and curricular policies. The paper is organized into three sections, further the introduction. Firstly, it discusses the legacy of some contributions from authors in Sociology and Sociolinguistics for the contemporary understanding of the notion of discourse. In the second section of the text, a debate is held on the notions of discourse and governmentality based on Michel Foucault, understanding the discourse of politics as a practice of power and technology that establishes forms of government of the behavior of the school and school agents. Therefore, it argues that official educational policies have made curricula and teaching work precarious in the way of submitting them to market demands and national standardization policies and external auditing. Finally, it concludes with an exposition of procedural usage aspects of the notions of discourse and statement in research, highlighting the requirement for rigor in selection of documents and discourses and their treatment as monuments.