ENTRE DIRETRIZES E DINÂMICAS DE PODER NO LIVRO DIDÁTICO: Uma análise discursiva de materiais didáticos do Projeto de Vida no Novo Ensino Médio

Abstract

In the current educational setting, the school textbook plays a special and dominant role, as a fundamental instrument in the process of forming students in basic education. In addition to constituting content manuals, they also offer methodological orientations for in-class activities, developed in conformity with the directives of the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC). Given their homogenising characteristics and, in some circumstances, their restrictive nature, these materials are not exempt from mirroring and reinforcing the many power dynamics that prevail in society. For this reason, it is relevant to conduct an analysis that addresses the discursive controls present in the discourses found in such materials. Therefore, this research was conducted under the following research question: How are the multiple voices and discourses found in textbooks constituted based on power relations? As such, materials produced for the 2021 cycle of the Programa Nacional do Livro Didático (PNLD) have been selected, in particular textbooks designed for the Life Project course, in view of its introduction at the moment referred to as the New High School, as well as the themes defined as being essential for the development of the subject, such as identity matters, professional planning and competences for the 21st century. Based on a discursive analysis, the aim was to investigate the power relations implicit in the discourses of New High School textbooks, in order to identify discursive movements that may indicate power disputes in the school textbook; to understand the processes of control of the BNCC guidelines for publishers, teachers and high school students; and to analyse how social and cultural identities and representations can be controlled through the pedagogical discourse of the textbook. The analytical approach follows a path that leads from the presentation letters of each version of the textbook, the teacher's manual and the student's book, to an investigation that considers the proposed activities, which were chosen on the basis of the evidence that characterises them within the selected categories of analysis. These exercises include texts, cartoons and posters, as well as resolutions and guidelines for teachers. The essential theoreticalmethodological framework for this study was Foucault's (1999; 1979) research on power and control mechanisms, Althusser (1983) on the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) and his approach to the school as an element of the domination system, as well as concepts from Materialist Discourse Analysis that contribute to understanding discursive methods, taking the work of Pêcheux (1997) into special account. It was found that the implementation of life projects can strengthen the power dynamics at school by giving educators greater authority over students' narratives regarding their futures, thus potentiating a dynamic of control that limits the autonomy of students, coercing choices in accordance with institutional expectations, at the expense of their individuality.