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DOSSIER: Internationalization of educational policies within the framework of human rights • Educ. rev. 40 • 2024 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-0411.94402-T linkcopy

Open-access International and bilingual schools as a global representation of internationalized curricula in Brazilian Primary Education

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ABSTRACT

The primary objective of the work is to highlight the discursive strength produced concerning the curricular models of the so-called prestigious international schools and bilingual schools; both characterized as global representations of internationalized curricula, indicating reflections of this movement in curricular policies for Primary Education in Brazil. For this purpose, the first section presents an overview with information on standardization, typologies, quantitative data, and comments on schools with internationalized curriculum involving these two models in primary education in Brazil today. The second section highlights the discursive power built by international agencies and organizations, as well as managers of educational systems and schools around this idea of school education. To conclude, reflections of this movement are indicated in the production of curricular policy texts in Brazil, notably in official curricular guidelines such as the Common National Curricular Base (BNCC), the Law that instituted the so-called New High School and other curricular documents of state and local education systems.

Keywords:
Internationalization; Curriculum; International Schools; Bilingual Schools

RESUMO

O principal objetivo do trabalho é evidenciar a potência discursiva produzida em torno dos modelos curriculares das chamadas escolas internacionais e escolas bilíngues de prestígio, ambos caracterizados como representação global de currículos internacionalizados, indicando, inclusive, reflexos desse movimento nas políticas curriculares para a Educação Básica no Brasil. Com esse propósito, apresenta-se na primeira seção um panorama geral com informações relativas à normatização, tipologias, dados quantitativos e comentários sobre escolas com currículos internacionalizados envolvendo esses dois modelos na Educação Básica no Brasil atualmente. Na segunda seção, destaca-se a potência discursiva que vem sendo construída por agências e organismos internacionais, gestores dos sistemas educacionais e pelas próprias escolas em torno desse ideário de formação escolar. Para concluir, são indicados reflexos desse movimento na produção de textos de políticas curriculares no Brasil, notadamente em diretrizes curriculares oficiais tais como a Base Nacional Comum Curricular - BNCC, a Lei que instituiu o chamado Novo Ensino Médio e outros documentos curriculares de sistemas estaduais e locais de educação.

Palavras-chave:
Internacionalização; Currículo; Escolas Internacionais; Escolas Bilíngues

Introduction

It is widely known in the contexts of research production in education and the world of academic debate that the internationalization of education and curricula has recently become an educational and curricular phenomenon on a global scale, impacting local contexts, especially for the discursive power it articulates and for producing some results in the field of learning. Similarly, bilingual education advances, especially in networks of schools that serve elite social groups.

Concepts and ideas of internationalization in education have been occupying different institutional spaces and public and private governance more and with greater speed, representing a significant portion of managers’ attention in elaborating and developing strategic planning, projects, and programs, or even serving as the basis for defining criteria in rankings in the scientific production of universities. This theme was on the Higher Education agenda until recently and is gaining strength in Primary Education, including serving as a reference for measuring quality in terms of school performance in the national systems of some countries, such as Israel and Taiwan (Ming-Min Cheng, et al., 2023).

Interestingly, this movement follows rationalities, conceptions, and strategies in Primary Education, similar to that of Higher Education, but produces its own discourses and agendas, generally more adherent to school education environments. At this level of education, internationalization is fundamentally focused on aspects related to the curriculum, especially in proposals dedicated to reconfiguring its architecture and achieving what has commonly been called an international or internationalized curriculum. This characteristic reinforces and seals the brand of Prestigious International and Bilingual schools as the most evident in terms of overall representation worldwide.

Unlike Higher Education, which prioritizes institutional aspects related to professor and student mobility, international research networks, scholarship and funding programs, cooperation and exchanges, internationalization of research and scientific production, international events, etc., Primary Education attention focuses on the possibility of organizing curricula that include central notions derived from what I am calling the ideas of internationalization (Thiesen, 2021), notably focusing on learning aimed at training for global citizenship, intercultural skills, language skills, and global mindset, among several others.

In the conceptual sense of this movement, an internationalized curriculum is understood as one that engages students with internationally informed research and linguistic and cultural diversity, purposefully developing their intercultural and international perspectives as global citizens and professionals (Leask, 2015). In other words, it is that which promotes or seeks to promote knowledge and skills demanded by international requirements and standards to students when developed in educational institutions (Thiesen, 2021).

A significant part of the studies dedicated to the theme of the internationalization of Primary Education, have highlighted the place of international schools and, to some extent, the prestigious bilingual schools1 as the primary representation of this movement on a global scale (Thiesen, 2021; Yemini, 2017; Barbosa, 2023). These school typologies combine and develop what is most significant in terms of an international curriculum for researchers, managers, and other policymakers that formulate and disseminate ideas of internationalization of the curriculum.

Therefore, it is based on what has been produced about this brand of representation in the internationalization movement in Primary Education that I present in this text, discussing aspects that show the discursive power built around this ideology and indicating experiences of International and Bilingual schools that serve as a reference model for strengthening this rationality in the production of policies and/or curricular reforms in Brazil. In this sense, this work aims to identify the discursive power produced around the two curricular models of schools, which represent internationalized curricula, and indicate some of its reflections in Primary Education in Brazil.

I organize the article into two sections to meet the indicated purpose. Initially, I present a general overview with information concerning standardization, typologies, quantitative data, and comments on the existing experiences of schools with internationalized curricula in Primary Education implemented in Brazil. In the second section, I highlight aspects of the discursive power built by international agencies and organizations, educational system managers, and schools around this idea of school education. To conclude, I indicate some reflections of this movement in curriculum policies in Brazil.

Given the article’s limitations and considering a significant set of other works that discuss conceptual aspects of the internationalization of education and curricula in Higher and Primary Education, I inform readers that I do not deepen the topic’s conceptual bases. However, I ensure that the exercise of discussion and analysis are based on theoretical conceptions that address this complex movement.

As primary sources of research, I use information provided by networks and management agencies, schools, and other organizations that offer education with this educational typology; specific legislation of the federal and state governments; texts by Brazilian researchers dedicated to the subject; and other references of international scope, especially works that analyze the internationalization movements of education and curricula. Theoretical approaches of the critical matrix for the analytical discussion guide me. The primary criterion for selecting the analyzed documents was the theme/content of the official standard or guideline, especially related texts, such as the formulation of curricular policy and internationalization.

International and bilingual schools in Brazil: aspects of a poorly defined scenario

I open the section presenting the normative pieces that regulate the offer of this educational typology within the scope of education systems in Brazil. On the specific subject of the provision of Primary Education with curricula different from or additional to the regular national standard provided by the Law of Guidelines and Bases of 1996, we have so far a sparse, confusing, and incomplete legislation. In the case of federal regulation, the National Council of Education (CNE in Portuguese) enacted only Opinion No. 02/2020 (Brasil, 2020), approved on June 9th, 2020, still without approval by the Ministry of Education. The Opinion establishes the National Curriculum Guidelines for the provision of Multilingual Education.

In this document, the National Education Council (CNE) proposes a draft Resolution that defines the characterization of four types of schools: i) Bilingual Schools, ii) Schools with Extended Hours in Additional Language, iii) Brazilian Schools with International Curriculum, and iv) International Schools2. A draft whose text proposes the establishment of National Guidelines for Bilingual Education is processing simultaneously in CNE. In this case, even the Opinion was considered and approved by the Primary Education Commission. Therefore, all aspects concerning conceptual definition, requirements, and curricular criteria for offering Primary Education involving these four types of schools are contained in the two propositions, without the official conclusion the Brazilian system requires.

It is interesting to note that some state councils had already regulated, at their discretion, the offer of bilingual and international schools, even before the approval of Opinion 02/2020 (Brasil, 2020) in the CNE, such as Paraná (CEE/CEIF/CEMEP Opinion No. 26/12 of December 5th, 2012), Rio de Janeiro (CEE/RJ Deliberation 372 of October 1st, 2019), Santa Catarina (CEE/SC Resolution No. 087 of November 22nd, 2016), Rio Grande do Sul (CEE Resolution No. 348 of November 6th, 2019), and Maranhão (CEE/MA Resolution No. 84/2020 of March 5th, 2020).

Other Councils have been regulating the offer of this school typology in their own way, based on this precarious normative base of national scope, mirroring themselves in Opinion 02/2020, although it depends on approval by the Ministry of Education. The State Council of Education of Minas Gerais, for example, also approved Opinion No. 381-SEE/EEC in 2020, which Standardizes the provision of Multilingual Education in the Education System of the State of Minas Gerais, defining rules for the four types of schools. The State Council of São Paulo (Resolution 4-11-2020 of December 3rd, 2020); Bahia (CEE Resolution No. 155 of July 25th, 2023); and Mato Grosso (Normative Resolution No. 002/2021/CEE-MT) also did this.

In summary, according to the regulations of the CNE of 2020 (Brasil, 2020) and with CEE Resolutions of Brazilian states, multilingual education in Brazil is classified into four types, with the following basic conceptual definition:

i. Bilingual Schools are characterized by promoting a single, integrated curriculum taught in two languages of instruction to develop students’ linguistic and academic skills and abilities in these languages. (ii) Schools with Extended Additional Language Hours are characterized by promoting the school curriculum in Portuguese in conjunction with learning language skills and abilities in additional languages, without integrated linguistic development occurring simultaneously with the development of curricular content. (iii) Brazilian schools with international curricula are characterized by establishing partnerships and adopting materials and curricular proposals from other countries, therefore offering curricula in Portuguese and additional languages for them to be called bilingual schools. (iv) International Schools are linked to countries from where their curricular guidelines emanate, and partnerships with national educational institutions must observe Brazilian legislation and standards, such as the BNCC, for the expedition of double diplomas (Brasil, 2020, n.p., our translation).

As can be seen, the definitions are somewhat confusing, especially if we consider what is established by the current Law of Guidelines and Bases - Law 9,394/1996 (Brasil, 1996), especially for Elementary Education. It should be noted that the Opinion restricts its objectives to the “development of language and academic skills and abilities” for Bilingual Schools, completely ignoring basic training through knowledge content in the different scientific areas. The Opinion text is generic for International Schools, even without defining training purposes, indicating only the need to observe Brazilian standards. Confusion ensues in the two other typologies (Schools with Extended Additional Language Hours and Brazilian Schools with International Curriculum), given that schools with an additional language already exist in the regular education system, and schools with an international curriculum can be constituted as bilingual, according to the Opinion. In any case, with this superficial and truncated basis, state systems and especially private networks continue to advance alternatives that interest them, which are to occupy the territories of education, managing it as a service to be operated in the instrumental logic of the market.

Another finding is that there is no specific data on these school categories from the National Institute of Educational Research (INEP in Portuguese). The school census data gives no information on the number of institutions, enrollment, number of professors, and other statistics that can provide a specific picture of this nature of supply in the country, in the Brazilian states and regions. In other words, a differentiated schooling project is underway, which seems to follow parallel to State control and is advancing fast, like almost everything that interests the private sector.

Still, the data are sparse concerning the number of schools that develop experiences in these typologies. The information is usually presented in fragments to meet the specific interests of academic research involving the themes or fragmented information made available by schools’ websites or international networks that manage them. As far as I can ascertain for this work, no reliable official data in Brazil indicates the current number of international and bilingual schools or the other typologies defined in Opinion 02/2020 (Brasil, 2020) of the CNE.

It is known that there is intense discursive training around the strengthening of the ideology in school education at International Schools in Brazil. However, little is known about the number of schools, geographical location, networks they belong to, teaching profiles, number of students enrolled, etc. Even without official data or any prior discussion, the Ministry of Education organized the production of a document called National Parameters for Internationalization in Primary Education in Brazil (2022) by convening a narrow team of specialists. It is the only official guidance document on the topic. It is a text with a weak conceptual basis, without diagnostic reference that supports or justifies the need for a policy with this specificity in primary education and without evident adherence to other curricular policies relatively consolidated in the country’s education systems.

In parallel with the document mentioned above, the MEC launched a digital application called Escolas pelo Mundo, whose device, according to the Secretary of Primary Education, will allow citizens to have “quick and easy access to these practices, plus brief explanations on key concepts related to internationalization” (Brasil, 2022, our translation). Navigation carried out in the application due to this work indicated little conceptual content and practices/experiences worldwide. Considering that both MEC actions were moved in the last months of the Bolsonaro government and that the parameters and application were launched on December 13th, 2022, therefore with only 17 days left until the end of the mandate, it is evident that it is an action of a predominantly political-pamphletarian nature, without support in the face of the educational policies recognized as ongoing in Brazil.

Regarding the number of international schools currently in the country, the most reliable reference is the one provided by the International Baccalaureate - IB organization based in Switzerland, which certifies international schools globally. According to information on the institution’s portal, Brazil has 58 international schools certified in at least one of its various programs3 (International Baccalaureate, IB, 2024).

According to Megale (2018), the ongoing experiences in bilingual schools in Brazil can be categorized into five profiles or propositions: Indigenous bilingual education, bilingual education for the deaf, bilingual education in immigration contexts, bilingual education in the context of borders, and prestigious or elite bilingual schools. Megale affirms that the latter, representative of the dominant groups, has been expanding rapidly, even without specific legislation regulating and defining parameters for its operation.

In a study on research production in bilingual education published in 2023, Davi Barbosa and Fernanda Mota-Pereira also highlight the expansive growth in the number of prestigious or elite bilingual schools, especially in the southeast and south of Brazil, contexts in which the private sector operates with greater strength. They also note that parallel to this movement, research on bilingual schools is concentrated in the same regions, representing 75% of the total investigations. It is developed predominantly by professors from private institutions. In the analysis of this scenario, the authors assess that:

The growth in the number of bilingual schools associated with the production of research in private institutions on bilingual education is suggestive of the interest of elites in this type of education and neoliberalism. Bilingual schools have become big business (...) capable of meeting the purposes of a utilitarian education and focused on the labor market, as BNCC (2018) recommends amid the arguments for learning English (...). A reason for the marked development of research in the southeast and southern regions on bilingual education may lie in the fact that the languages of descendants and many immigrants are European, these being the ones that most commonly appear in language course offerings (Barbosa; Mota-Pereira, 2023, p. 184, our translation).

Regarding the other profiles of bilingual schools (for Indigenous people, the deaf, from the border, and in immigration contexts), what we have in Brazil is also legislation produced in fragments, generally to meet civil society pressures, as is the case of bilingual education for the deaf, for example, which only in 2021 was standardized through Law No. 14,191 (Brasil, 2021) - amendment to LDB/1996 -, fruit of a “long journey of deaf community claims” (Reis, Barleta e Souza, 2023, p. 386).

Regarding bilingual border schools, legislation presents only MEC Ordinance No. 798 of June 19th, 2012 (Brasil, 2012), which “Establishes the Intercultural Border Schools Program, aiming to promote regional integration through intercultural and bilingual education.” The project was originally named Bilingual Border Schools Program (PEBF in Portuguese) in 2005, then changed to Intercultural Bilingual Border Schools Project (PEIBF in Portuguese), and finally, in 2012, it was renamed Intercultural Border Schools Program (PEIF in Portuguese). According to Ordinance 798, the primary purpose of the PEIF is to “contribute to the integral formation of students, seeking to develop actions with a view to regional integration through intercultural education in border public schools” (BRASIL, 2012, our translation).

Concerning the PEIF management, Bueno (2021) informs that the Program was developed with greater dynamics after 2012, with the publication of Ordinance 798, and suffered discontinuity in 2015. During this short period,

the PEIF was generally linked to the Secretariat of Primary Education (SEB in Portuguese) of MEC, and 11 municipalities joined the Program throughout Brazil, totaling the participation of 17 schools, with about 7.5 thousand students enrolled in the initial years of elementary school, the target audience of the Program. In this universe, 250 professors were trained by ten universities throughout Brazil. In 2014, the Program aimed to expand service to 108 schools in 36 municipalities, involving about 2,100 professors receiving continued education from 15 universities (Bueno, 2021, p. 12, our translation).

In the case of Indigenous bilingual schools, according to INEP (Brasil, 2023b), in 2022, of the 178.3 thousand primary education schools, 3,541 (1.9%) are located on Indigenous land and teach specific and differentiated content, according to ethnocultural aspects, and 3,597 (2%) offer Indigenous education through educational networks. Unlike other bilingual schools, indigenous schools have different curricula since they were officially recognized by the 1988 Constitution in Brazil (Brasil, 1988). In this educational modality, states and municipalities mostly manage schools, formulating and developing their own policies in line with national legislation, notably the LDB, the National Education Plan, and the National Guidelines for Indigenous School Education.

Finally, regarding bilingual schools in immigration contexts, Megale (2018) highlights that, although little described and documented, bilingual education projects in different German, Italian, Polish, and Ukrainian immigrant communities, among others, have been implemented in the last decade. The evidence points to a greater expansion of this school typology of minority language groups in the southern region of Brazil, where the incidence of immigration is higher. No consistent information was found regarding quantitative data on this type of school in Brazil.

Internationalized curricula in Brazilian Primary Education: discursive formation around this ideology

The evidence pointing to the models of International and Bilingual Schools as representing internationalized curricula in Primary Education in Brazil and the world is irrefutable. The evidence is even more damning when the debate is led by actors, groups, and organizations that represent what we could call new educational managerialism. This movement of international scale that has been producing and defending ideas of what would configure the need for a global educational and curricular policy aims to fulfill a market project that Dale (2004) called globally structured agenda for education. This agenda can be translated into reformist proposals that, traveling the world, would respond to contemporary demands for modernization, efficiency, innovation, and objective quality improvement in school results.

Despite the predominance of this discursive perspective, I understand that both the debate and other movements involving internationalization transition between the approaches of managerialism-politics and academicism and that both influence the formulation of curricular policies for Primary Education in Brazil. The representatives of political-managerialism are essentially actors and organizations of transnational circulation involved in what Ball called the New Political Networks when he described its characteristics in detail in the seven chapters of the book Educação Global S.A. (2014). For Ball,

Political networks are a new “social” type involving specific types of social relations, flows, and movements. They constitute policy communities, usually based on shared conceptions of social problems and their solutions (Ball, 2014, p.29, our translation).

Regarding the governance modes of these networks, the author assesses that

(...) a new form of governance, although not singly and coherently, brings into play, in the policy process, new sources of authority (...) the boundaries between the State, the economy, and civil society are becoming blurred; there are new voices in policy conversations and new channels through which policy discourses introduce policy thinking. (...) New networks and policy communities are being established through which certain discourses and knowledge flow and gain legitimacy and credibility, and ‘these processes are located within a global architecture of political relations that not only involve national governments but also IGOs (Intergovernmental Organizations) [World Bank, OECD, International Finance Corporation, World Trade Organization, Transnational Corporations, and NGOs (Ball, 2014, p. 34-35, our translation).

They are networks that, due to their primary interests, align themselves with another widely known world movement in the context of neoliberalism called New Public Management (NGP), an administration theory formulated in the 1970s as criticism and opposition to what its authors called the Bureaucratic State, and which continues to be guided by principles such as the private as a reference, the market as a protagonist in the production of public policy, competition as a driver of efficiency, the conversion of the idea of citizen to customer, and even the concept of management apart from politics (Dasso Júnior, 2014).

Therefore, the discursive formation around education as a service/commodity and the ideology of internationalized curricula are anchored in the convergence of these two theories/perspectives, expanded and disseminated worldwide, including in Brazil. This project gains strength and positive reception in national and local education systems because, among other reasons, it associates what is most modern and innovative with what is already more efficient through this discursive perspective.

In this context, prestigious or elite international and bilingual schools are presented to the world as the most substantive curricular alternatives in representing an avant-garde school education model. However, it is worth remembering that this ideology does not always appear punctually marked in these two school models. Sometimes, it is associated with the defense of more modern, efficient curricular reforms aligned with good practices in other countries, such as what has been occurring in the debate on Brazilian high schools.

Not by chance, non-state organizations involved in education, large private companies, representation of multilateral organizations, and international school management networks articulate with managers of public educational policy both nationally and locally, to together stimulate the (re)formulation of educational proposals that include, among other aspects: curriculum flexibility, creation of normative bases aimed at opening to other alternatives and school models, elaboration of parameters and guidelines to meet specific projects, curricula based on competencies and skills, evaluation of school performance regulated by large-scale standardized tests, just to name a few discursive strategies led by groups from the public and private sectors that represent political-managerialism.

It is observed that most of the projects mobilized from the perspective of reforms and other curricular propositions have used the prestigious international and bilingual schools’ reference model that serves as the basis for discourses in this line since, according to this perspective, they present the best results and those that are more aligned with the demands of a globalized, interconnected, and interculturalized society, in a world that increasingly requires the presence and circulation of global citizens, endowed with broad communication skills and with an international standard mentality.

The resistance, although timid to this hegemonic discourse that circulates widely and rapidly worldwide, is made in the academic field by researchers and professors who work predominantly in public institutions of Higher Education. Even in this environment, generally marked by critical conceptions of neoliberal managerial models, two discursive approaches predominate around internationalization. One of them is based on the counterpoint to any narrative or proposition that originates in hegemonic contexts, among them Euro-US-centric colonial discourses, those with a privatizing market background, those derived from multilateral and business organizations, and all the others that see education as an instrument of social and economic development or as a service. And a second group that I call academic capitalists, which I will discuss later.

For the first group, internationalization only makes sense if it contributes in some way to reducing social and educational inequalities, which is why the only projects they recognize are those that involve less favored groups, including bilingual education for Indigenous/original peoples, deaf population, and education in border and refugee migration contexts. Even in these cases, they cautiously evaluate projects in which deliberate State intervention is used, especially concerning curricular arrangements, which, as a rule, tend to align with instrumental and universalist guidelines such as the common National Curriculum Base - BNCC.

As for the second group, I name them academic capitalists4 because it is generally a profile of researchers of a progressive line, defenders of academic productivism, which dialogues with discourses and internationalization projects, showing itself receptive to their ideas, especially those that bring cultural exchanges, the dissemination of academic knowledge on a supranational scale, the strengthening of international research networks, the different forms of exchange, partnerships, and cooperation, the incentive to mobility, etc. as the horizon. In the specific scope of Primary Education, this group has been identifying with hegemonized discourses within the new political networks and networks of elite international and bilingual schools, which, as we have already said, defend school education with a focus on global citizenship, intercultural and communicational skills, international mentality, etc.

Finally, the discursive articulations around this ideology are not unique and consensual but continue to lead rationalities that lead school education to perspectives of alignment with the significant interests of the market through strategies in a comprehensive world project that Dale (2004) called Global Education Policy.

To conclude: Reflections of hegemonic discourses in internationalized curricula in Primary Education

I have emphasized in other works on this same theme (Thiesen, 2018; 2021) that the production of curricular policies in official education systems in Brazil has been progressively aligning with the principles, demands, and requirements of internationalization and that this displacement, initiated in the 1990s with the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government, especially through the National Curricular Parameters (PCN), continued to be still shy in the various Guidelines for Primary Education formulated in the Lula and Dilma governments, but gained strong momentum in the Temer and Bolsonaro governments.

The most evident marks of this advance are stamped in official texts, such as the Common National Curricular Base and, respectively, Law 13,415 of 2017 (Brasil, 2017), which reformulated High School (including the other official documents derived from it); Opinion 02/2020 (Brasil, 2020) of the National Education Council, which provides for multilingual schools in Brazil; the text of the National Parameters for the internationalization of Primary Education of 2022; the curricular documents of the 27 Brazilian states, which recontextualized the BNCC; and in the new government Lula, Ordinance 857 of April 28th, 2023 (Brasil, 2023a), which established the committee to support the management of international technical cooperation projects with international organizations, within the Ministry of Education (MEC).

In addition to other aspects, these documents have in common a theoretical and methodological alignment with the principles and guidelines issued by international organizations and non-state organizations that make up the so-called new political networks. Therefore, there are texts that, markedly or not, assume a neoliberal conception of education and are guided by school training based on competencies and so-called international good practices. In general, they define what should be considered school knowledge and what learning objectives are most relevant to compose the curricula of Brazilian schools. They adopt large-scale evaluation frameworks with standardized tests to measure school performance, assuming meritocratic, competitive, and performative education principles5. A kind of cognitive capitalism, according to Morgan (2016).

In the specific case of the BNCC documents, the alignment is even highlighted by representatives of non-state organizations that made up the well-known Movimento pela Base Nacional Comum Curricular (MBNC), whose actors contributed to elaborating their texts. This marking is affirmed in Corrêa (2019), with several testimonies, among which I cite only three:

Interviewee 16: Private organizations gave us only support. They have no experts in the field. Their support was only financial. They paid for us to bring, or come to know, other international experiences. They took people from MEC to have other experiences or brought some experts (England, Australia, and the USA). They had no direct influence on the technical part of building the Base. (...) Interviewee 2: The MBNC contextualized this debate with Common Core in the United States of curricular reforms in Europe, with tendencies that spread in the international academic environment, which influenced the debate on the relevance of the curriculum for quality here in Brazil. Interviewee 3: From there, we began discussing what was a Base and what was in the Law. The experience of Common Core in the USA was very important. It is a standard of learning with only two disciplines, and we managed everything. The idea came a little from this: we were in the USA, Lemann organized the trip, 40 people went to Yale University, and Common Core experts came to talk to us about the construction process; this inspired a lot (Corrêa, 2019 p. 173, our translation).

It is evident that the formulators for the production of the BNCC, the reform of Secondary Education, and other guidance documents for Brazilian Primary Education aligned their texts to this international agenda for education, an agenda that, among other things, includes the so-called Agenda 20307 with guidance on Global Citizenship Education, an idea that, not by chance, figures as an axis of the internationalization of curricula in Primary Education.

The case of the municipal network of Blumenau, Santa Catarina, is another example that reflects hegemonic discourses on internationalized curricula in Primary Education in public systems. Since 2018, the municipality has provided bilingual education for schools in the early elementary years, emphasizing English and German. According to information from the portal of the Secretariat of Education,

Bilingual Education was studied and planned in the municipal network in 2018, with its first implementation in 2019, initially in English and German. The municipality has 18 educational institutions with Bilingual Education, 13 in English, four in German, and one in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) (Krieger, 2023, s.p., our translation).

This project highlights the proportionality between the number of prestigious or elite bilingual schools in relation to the bilingual offer for the deaf. It is also observed that the number of schools with a Portuguese-English curriculum is significantly higher than schools with a Portuguese-German curriculum, even in a region with a very strong presence of German culture. As with the case of Blumenau, we could mention several other public systems that already act in the same vein, such as the Federal District8, Rio de Janeiro, and9 Minas Gerais10.

This is further evidence of the discursive potential of this movement, which Verger (2018) calls Global Education Policy. This project is hegemonized in the four corners of the world, transiting and recontextualizing its ideas locally. As Verger points out, although globalization presents common features worldwide, its effects on education policy are mediated by domestic history and politics and the complex interplay of global and local forces, among other contingencies (Verger, 2018, p.21, our translation).

We assess that projects aligned with internationalization should expand rapidly, occupying the different spheres of power, given the strong presence of the private sectors in public education currently in Brazil, especially with political support from the state and municipal education systems aimed at efficient management of actions of the curricular scope.

References

  • SUPPORT/FUNDING
    No funding was received.
  • RESEARCH DATA AVAILABILITY
    Not applicable.
  • HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE
    THIESEN, Juares da Silva. International and bilingual schools as a global representation of internationalized curricula in Brazilian Primary Education. Educar em Revista, Curitiba, v. 40, e94402, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-0411.94402
  • 1
    We will discuss further the concepts and features of this typology of schools.
  • 2
    The description of each is presented later.
  • 3
    We suggest reading Barbosa (2023).
  • 4
    According to Costa and Goulart (2018), the capitalist academic regime structures new knowledge circuits, modifies academic work, creates new structures within universities, modifies student-teacher relations, increases control over professor work and the products of their work, introduces the university into the new economy, through university-company partnerships, and increases competitiveness between universities.
  • 5
    Performativity plays a crucial role in this set of policies. It works in a variety of ways to “tie things together” and rework them. It facilitates the monitoring role of the State, “which governs from a distance” - “governing without government.” It allows the State to insert itself deeply into the cultures, practices, and subjectivities of public sector institutions and their workers, without appearing to do so. It (performativity) changes what it “indicates”, changes meanings, produces new profiles, and ensures “alignment”. It objectifies and commercializes public sector work, and work with knowledge (knowledge-work) of educational institutions is transformed into “results”, “performance levels”, and “forms of quality”. The discourses of accountability, improvement, quality, and efficiency that surround and accompany these objectivations make existing practices fragile and indefensible - change becomes inevitable and irresistible, especially when incentives are tied to performance measures (Ball, 2004, p. 1116).
  • 6
    The number of each interviewee indicated here does not correspond to the one adopted in Corrêa (2019). It serves only as a simple ordering for composing the quote.
  • 7
    According to ECAM: The 2030 Agenda is a global action plan that brings together 17 sustainable development goals and 169 targets, created to eradicate poverty and promote a dignified life for all, within the conditions that our planet offers and without compromising the quality of life of the next generations. This plan was born out of an agreement signed in 2015 by the 193 member states of the United Nations-UN, with a commitment to follow the measures recommended in the document “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”(A/70/L.1) for the next 15 years, 2016-2030 (ECAN, s.d.).
  • 8
    “The Federal District Government has taken the first step towards implementing bilingual intercultural schools. The project will begin (2019) by the Centro Educacional Lago Norte (CEDLAN), full-time high school. French will be part of the regular curriculum there, where over 90% of the students are from Varjão, Itapoã, and Paranoá. This is part of the Bandeira Excelência para Todos, of Educa DF, a strategic plan for education in the capital. The process is expected to be completed gradually over three years” (Antunes, 2022, s.p.).
  • 9
    “As of 2017, there were nine bilingual schools for English and one for Spanish. Given the benefits of learning a second language in early childhood, the Municipal Secretariat of Education decided to expand the project in the number of schools serviced, the number of years of study to be covered, and the number of languages available. There are currently 25 bilingual schools in the municipality, nine for English, 12 for Spanish, three for German, and one for French. The goal for 2019 is for that number to double, reaching 50” (Altoé, 2023, s.p.).
  • 10
    Information at Projeto de Ensino... (2023).

Data availability

Not applicable.

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    16 Dec 2024
  • Date of issue
    2024

History

  • Received
    10 Feb 2024
  • Accepted
    02 Sept 2024
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