The Estudos Avançados Journal

IEA's journal seeks to fulfill one of the objectives of the institute: to combine academic research and interest in the improvement of the public policies. The areas of scientific knowledge included in the issues (115 so far) are directly articulated with essential themes of the Brazilian and world societies, as poverty, malnutrition, and the public health system. Some highlights of the latest release can be found below.

Estudos Avançados #115

Basic education has been one of IEA's priority topics since the early 1990s and has become increasingly prominent on the Institute's agenda as evidenced by the existence of three chairs currently dedicated to it. This focus is also reflected in the recurrence of related material in the journal Estudos Avançados, which now features one of the most comprehensive collections of articles on the subject ever presented by the publication.

Assessment Systems

Sociologist Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, holder of the Ayrton Senna Institute Chair for Innovation in Educational Assessment, based at IEA's Ribeirão Preto Center (IEA-RP), is one of the authors of the dossier "Basic Education," participating with a summary of some of the main trends in innovations introduced in international large-scale educational assessment systems, considering the need to improve Brazilian systems, according to her.

She believes it is crucial to improve the Basic Education Assessment System (SAEB) and the National High School Exam (ENEM), aligning them with the curricular changes implemented by the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC). Her article also examines the expansion of educational assessment research centers in Brazil and the excellence of research, providing telling evidence to inform national assessments and update the country's public education policy agendas.

The researcher says that the SAEB has undergone significant improvements that have increased its capacity for monitoring and assessing learning in Brazil since its creation in 1990, "but it has not introduced conceptual and methodological changes in the last 20 years." On the other hand, the BNCC requires profound changes in the assessments conducted by both SAEB and ENEM, "so that the tests assess the competencies and skills expected throughout basic education as well as new formats, concepts, and methodologies for large-scale assessments aligned with technological advances such as observed in international assessments."

She emphasizes that the consequences of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic still persist. Only 56% of children were literate at the appropriate age in December 2023, according to data released by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in 2024.

Data from the 2021 SAEB, conducted during the aforementioned pandemic and released in September 2022, confirm this impact: "Only 31% of high school students in public schools demonstrated adequate Portuguese language proficiency and 5% demonstrated adequate mathematics proficiency. Unfortunately, the performance was no better than in previous years. The vast majority of children finish fifth grade unable to read simple sentences, unable to recognize distinct opinions on the same subject, unable to convert more than a full hour into minutes, or unable to recognize that a number remains unchanged when multiplied by 1."

The sociologist states that data from the SAEB and Brazil's results in international assessments show that even before the pandemic most Brazilian schools were unable to offer the necessary learning for students to reach adequate proficiency levels.

For her, any future agenda for basic education must begin with a clear diagnosis to propose policies to overcome inequalities and improve learning. Brazil is competent to carry out this diagnosis, she states, as it "has numerous research centers and high-level experts in the area of ​​assessment and curriculum who produce studies and scientific evidence to improve large-scale assessment systems in the country."

Inequality between Schools

Several of the articles in Estudos Avançados #115 present examples of the expertise of Brazilian scholars in providing diagnostics in the area of ​​learning assessment. This is the case of the collaboration between the Sérgio Henrique Ferreira Chair, also based at the IEA-RP, and the municipal administrations of Cubatão and Taquaritinga, two cities in the state of São Paulo. Chair holder Mozart Neves Ramos and his team have analyzed the performance inequality of municipal schools in both locations before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis has considered five educational indicators for elementary school students in 2019: adequate learning in Portuguese and mathematics, school performance (pass rate), student performance on standardized assessments, and age-to-grade distortion. Only the last indicator is not one of the components considered in calculating the Brazilian Basic Education Development Index (IDEB).

The authors explain that the percentage of students with adequate learning corresponds to the proportion of students who have achieved academic proficiency above a certain number of points on the SAEB scale when compared to the total number of students assessed. This represents achieving a performance equal to or higher than 200 points in Portuguese and 225 points in mathematics for the fifth grade of elementary school. The standardized score, in turn, corresponds to the average score obtained by students on the SAEB's Portuguese and mathematics exams. School flow is the average pass rate of students at each stage of schooling, calculated by dividing the total number of students who have been approved by the total number of students enrolled in each grade. The age-to-grade distortion rate is defined as the proportion of students who have accumulated two or more years of academic delay, in line with data from the Brazilian School Census for a given year.

According to the researchers, the work shows that the use of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) integrated into the construction of school georeferencing maps can be useful for managers and staff in understanding existing inequalities in school performance.

The analysis has revealed that the percentage of students with adequate Portuguese and mathematics proficiency are the most important factors explaining the variance in the data collected. The study recommends the adoption of specific measures to mitigate educational inequalities, including interventions to reinforce Portuguese and mathematics proficiency and targeted actions to support municipalities with high age-to-grade distortion rates.

Ramos and his team, however, recognize that the study has limitations, as the PCA is an exploratory technique and does not establish causal relationships between the analyzed variables, in addition to not fully portraying the range of factors that influence academic performance.

Reformulation

The need to reformulate the SAEB, advocated by Guimarães de Castro in her article, has been analyzed by researchers from the São Paulo School of Economics at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (EESP-FGV) and the Brazilian Industrial Social Services (SESI). The group conducted a systematic review of documents, interviews with experts, and an analysis of academic presentations. The study has identified the main consensuses and divergences regarding the objectives, format, structure, and governance of the new SAEB. The results indicate broad agreement on the need to update the assessment matrices to align them with the BNCC, but reveal disagreements regarding the scope of this update and the methods for implementing it. The authors state that, despite the extensive debate, there is a lack of practical actions and convergence between the different visions for the effective reformulation of the SAEB.

However, this alignment of assessment matrices with the BNCC must consider changes to the Brazilian Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDB), which guides the BNCC. Eduardo Deschamps, from the Regional University of Blumenau (FURB), explains that the 2017 high school assessments presented a worrying scenario in terms of learning in addition to a high dropout rate. These results have been attributed to problems in the curricula, which were aimed at preparing students for higher education even though 80% of students did not pursue this path. Given this situation, he states, Law No. 13.415/2017 inserted competency development, interdisciplinarity, curricular flexibility, greater coordination with vocational education, and full-time training into the curricula. Nonetheless, before the reforms were completed, the Ministry of Education proposed changes that resulted in Law No. 14.495/2024, Deschamps emphasizes. In the article, he discusses both the principles of the 2017 law and the impacts of the 2024 law on the way secondary education is offered in Brazil.

The set of articles also presents a pointed critique of the BNCC regarding the limited space given to literature, using the concept of "non-place" as a reference. The authors, who are members of institutions in the state of Tocantins, describe an environment where utilitarianism and transience prevail, existing as a physical structure but lacking identity construction or relational and/or historical value. For them, by confining literature to the "literary non-place," making "empty, controversial, and sometimes impractical recommendations for the artistic-literary field," the BNCC acts to deplete access to literature in the educational sphere and "contributes to covertly directing it toward market utility and other neoliberal ideals."

It is also important to consider the importance of expanding the focus of educational assessments beyond academic performance, incorporating other aspects of the students' comprehensive development, as advocated in an article by researchers from several universities and the Ayrton Senna Institute. They clarify that this is a guideline of the BNCC in accordance with the LDB. Contributing to this process, the authors propose an assessment protocol for the ten general competencies listed in the BNCC, intended for application in empirical research and educational diagnostics.

While improving assessments aims to provide substantive support for actions that promote improved learning levels in elementary schools, it is crucial to address current problems. Researchers from the Center for Public Policy and Education Assessment Foundation (CAEd), a support institution for the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), have contributed to the journal with an article on the challenges of implementing learning recovery policies in Brazil in the post-pandemic context, focusing on student regrouping and formative assessment.

The discussion draws on the concept of learning reorganization and 2022-2023 research data from the CAEd and IMAGO Global Grassroots in partnership with the municipal education system of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco, to address the strategy of regrouping students based on learning levels. Case studies from schools in different regions of Brazil have also been considered. The researchers believe that the regrouping should take the specificities and contexts of education systems and their schools into account. At the same time, they consider formative assessment to be an indispensable tool for any action aimed at overcoming learning gaps.

Early Childhood Education

The latest issue of Estudos Avançados focuses on more than just elementary and secondary education. Two articles specifically center on early childhood education (ages 0 to 3). Two researchers from USP's Laboratory of Studies and Research in Education and Social Economy (LEPES) have addressed the challenges of this educational stage in Brazil and the importance of national quality standards. In October 2024, the National Board of Education (CNE) and the Basic Education Chamber (CEB) issued a resolution establishing the National Operational Guidelines for Quality and Equity for Early Childhood Education in Brazil. However, according to the authors, challenges remain to be overcome, such as the quality of early childhood education, the low political priority given to daycare, the impact of partnerships on service quality, and the need for intersectoral coordination to ensure comprehensive early childhood care.

Another study, authored by researchers at Fucape Business School, emphasizes that promoting equitable access to early childhood education is an effective public management strategy that requires priority on government agendas to achieve educational goals. The conclusion stems from an analysis that has found a positive correlation between enrollment in early childhood education and student performance at the end of the fifth grade considering data from the 2019 SAEB.

Diversity and Inclusion

Other topics covered in the publication are not directly linked to assessments and curricula but are fundamental to the full educational support of children and adolescents. These include accessibility and inclusion for students with disabilities, and the recognition and appreciation of ethnic and racial diversity.

According to Ivan Cláudio Pereira Siqueira, from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), for accessibility and inclusion to be effective, people with disabilities need to be served by appropriately trained professionals, as inclusive education poses specific challenges for personalized learning. He states that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools promise to facilitate productivity, which is feasible in administrative tasks and in the production of teaching resources, but learning objectives have not yet been demonstrated in studies correlating the use of GenAI and the achievement of educational goals. This is despite the fact that available technology already allows for the development of applications for specific audiences, the challenge being the availability of data for this audience, says Siqueira. Still, he sees GenAI as a window of opportunity for personalized learning.

Researchers from the DACOR Institute, an NGO dedicated to combating racism through data systematization and knowledge dissemination, present historical insights to understand the impact of colonialism and slavery on the social constructions of Black students today. They also discuss the importance of public policies on ethnic-racial relations that allow schools to recognize and value diversity, contributing to the formation and development of a well-rounded individual.

Violence

Attention must also be paid to the impacts of harmful social factors, which manifest themselves within schools and their environment. The increase in violence and other problems affecting student coexistence is one such issue. Researchers from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the São Paulo State University (UNESP) have addressed this topic. The discussion focuses on the final grades of elementary and high school, and explores the specificities and incidence of these problems. The paper also discusses the lessons learned from research conducted by the Study and Research Group on Moral Education (GEPEM), a partnership between UNICAMP and UNESP aimed at addressing and preventing violence, and contributing to improving coexistence in schools. The essay intends to inform those responsible for programs and interventions, as well as those developing assessments and studies on the topic.

Territorial violence and its effects on student life in the city of Rio de Janeiro and a municipality in the province of Buenos Aires are the subject of two articles. A group of researchers, primarily from institutions in the state of Rio de Janeiro, have investigated the effects of territorial control by drug trafficking factions and militias on learning in the examined urban center. The authors point out that there is evidence that crime and violence undermine educational opportunities and outcomes, but the impacts of organized crime are still poorly understood. In the other article, four researchers from Argentine universities have analyzed how the web of violence affects the daily lives of low-income youth who participate in youth centers in the country's capital. They state that "to understand the complex, heterogeneous, and ambiguous nature of violence, it is necessary to offer a more measured perspective that focuses on the smaller, everyday aspects of the games that create precariousness."

Immigrants

In the field of intercultural studies, four articles analyze the schooling processes and performance of immigrant students or students of immigrant descent in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal. Lineu Norio Kohatsu, a professor at USP's Institute of Psychology (IP) and a participant in IEA's Sabbatical Year Program in 2020, authors a paper on the academic performance of immigrant students in public schools in São Paulo. The study has indicated that immigrants have higher grade point averages and lower failure rates.

The schooling processes in the context of immigration have been characterized by two anthropologists from the University of Buenos Aires based on surveys in a locality of the capital including the engagement of a high number of Bolivians, trips to the places of origin of this population, and the collaborative experience of a radio station. The researchers have observed the strength of the allusions to community life in the places of origin and how it continues to be a parameter for life and schooling in the new place of residence.

In the case of the Spanish context, researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona have collected the life stories of 50 mothers of Moroccan origin over a period of five years. The data have allowed for the identification of the strategies developed in the processes of social integration, as well as the ways of supporting the children's schooling.

A study on the performance of immigrant students in Portugal has covered both basic and higher education. Affiliated with universities in the same country, the authors advocate for the adoption of measures related to the reception and integration of immigrants and their descendants in the educational sphere, the development of intercultural education in schools, the fight against academic failure and school dropout as well as against ethnic/cultural, religious, and gender discrimination, and the strengthening of teacher training.

This issue of the journal also includes an article that addresses literacy in the Portuguese language, presenting the history of the teaching method for children and adults created by António Feliciano de Castilho in 1849 on the island of São Miguel, in the Azores, and later disseminated and implemented in other parts of Portuguese territory. Another work, this one of philosophical nature, discusses the thought of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) on educational matters. The reference is Ricoeur's article La Parole est Mon Royaume ("The Word is My Kingdom"), published in 1955. According to the authors, he considered the word shared between generations as the core of teaching.

Reviews

Historian Tania Regina de Luca, a full professor at UNESP, has written about the book Primeiro Leitor – Ensaio de Memória ("The First Reader – An Essay on Memory"), by editor Luiz Schwarcz. At the beginning of the review, de Luca states that the book analyzes issues related to the social figure, role, and actions of a publisher. Half of the chapters are dedicated to the publishing world and its characters, and the other half address deceased writers who have been important to Schwarcz and to the publishing house he founded in 1986, Companhia das Letras.

Authored by writer and journalist Hugo Almeida, the other review is about the book E Viva a Vida! – Correspondência entre os Escritores Osman Lins e Hermilo Borba Filho ("And Long Live Life! – Correspondence between Writers Osman Lins and Hermilo Borba Filho"), published by Hucitec in 2024. The work features a faithful and annotated text edition, documentary research, and an introduction by Nelson Luís Barbosa, who carried out the work during his postdoctoral research at USP's Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB). The book brings together, analyzes, and contextualizes 201 letters, including notes and telegrams, exchanged by the two authors from the state of Pernambuco from 1965 to 1976.