Práxis - coletivo de educação popular: uma análise das compreensões e práticas dos educadores

Abstract

This work presents an analysis of the understandings and practices of popular education among educators of the Práxis - Collective of Popular Education. Through this, we seek to contribute to the reflection on educational practices within the collective in question and also within the field of popular education. To support the understanding of Práxis, we contextualize higher education in Brazil and its dynamics of access, as well as popular education and its dynamics within the collective. Based on this context, the research problem built was: what understandings and practices of popular education are present among the Práxis educators and coordinators? To answer this question, we aim to know the profile of Práxis educators and coordinators, to know and understand the practices and understandings of popular education among them and to know and understand the specifics of these practices and understandings during the period of social distancing. The research was developed following part of the years 2019 and 2020, through the technique of participant observation, as well as through the application of questionnaires and interviews with these individuals. We realized that Práxis educators have a diversified profile. We also understand that their understandings of popular education, outside or inside the collective environment, are also diversified. Such understandings, for these individuals, are related to methods and intentions in the educational space. Within Práxis, these are understood through four aspects: 1) the management; 2) the pre-ENEM course activities; 3) the projects; 4) the political and cultural activities. We conclude that the relations of Práxis with higher education and popular education interfere in the understandings and practices developed by the educators of the collective, presenting the democratization of higher education as an element to which such understandings and practices point.