Educational Management Practice: Narratives of Former Municipal Secretaries
Name: JEFERSON MARGON
Publication date: 29/03/2016
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ALFREDO RODRIGUES LEITE DA SILVA | Internal Examiner * |
Summary: The research on educational organization management in Brazil has been based primarily on the schools, rather, on school management. Differently, this study was directed towards discussing educational systems management, that is, the level of Secretariat of Education. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was to understand, based on the experience of three of the city‟s former Secretaries of Education, how the fragments of educational management are structured. Therefore, the necessary data for reaching that purpose were collected from narrative interviews with three former Secretaries of Education. It can be inferred from the results that, because of its relational characteristic, educational management has articulation as an important feature, since it is not a phenomenon restricted to the manager or something under his full control. On the contrary, it presents itself as a dynamic phenomenon, influenced by many players, such as school principals, students, parents/guardians, neighborhood associations, the Mayor, councilmen, among others. Moreover, this practice proved as a phenomenon which "moves" for scenarios characterized by uncertainty and volatility with regard to their modes of organization, so that, being inserted in dynamic and emerging contexts, education secretaries reported constantly be "swallowed up" by the demands that arise unexpectedly, which makes the practice of educational management extrapolate the planned and directed. As a result, it was observed that the practice of educational management demand of these managers to constantly experience the daily life of the network teaching units, having seen that, in addition to positively impact the relational aspects with subjects such as principals, teachers and educators, this posture proved as beneficial to the secretaries practise their management in alignment to the specific characteristics of each school rather than a separated management of their realities. Thus, by being immersed in multiple realities emerging and relational character, these managers are continually reconfiguring different aspects of their practice in an ongoing process of "becoming manager."
