Collective concept formation in educational management: An intervention study in São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how a new concept of educational management was produced in a formative intervention project for manager educators in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Drawing on Vygotsky and Leontiev, we asked: What is the nature of the interplay between participants' personal senses and the societal meaning of educational management in the process of collective concept formation? The collective concept formation discourse was analyzed in three steps: initial explication of a raw object, clashes in further elaboration of the raw object, and stabilization of the new concept. The raw object reproduced a taken-for-granted meaning of educational management as promoting conditions for teaching and learning. The clashes occurred mainly between the notion of management for teaching and learning and the notion of management for teaching and learning for community transformation. The stabilization was achieved by a vote and defined the purpose of educational management seemingly as it was already formulated in the raw object. However, this stabilization was temporary and involved attempts to transcend the opposition between the two alternative definitions. Thus, the actual meaning and concept of educational management remained open to further steps. In this paper, we report on how manager educators engage in a collective effort to conceptualize educational management. Our article proposes and tests a new theoretical framework for studying changes in educational management as processes of collective concept formation.

The creative chain of activities towards educational management transformation

“…The creative chain of activities organizing educational management One of the tasks in the formative meeting was to define the object of educational management, what was educational management for, PCs expressed difficulties in defining if management was for teaching-learning, or if it was for teaching-learning for community transformation. On the one hand, some PCs stated that the focus of educational management was on teaching and learning since they focused on evaluation and assessments results, on the other hand, other PCs were concerned about how community issues affected school, so the definition should be teaching and learning for community transformation (Lemos and Engeström, 2018). One of the PCs who stood for teaching and learning for community transformation, used the example of a river nearby the school she worked as the dramatic event to support her argument.…”

“…They often state that they have so many things to do at the same time and that there are so many urgent issues popping up that they get overwhelmed losing track of the activities that are essential to develop their work as educational managers. Besides, as a result of evaluation systems, educational managers become more concerned about grades, reports and aims, instead of teaching, learning and transformation of communities (Lemos, 2017;Lemos and Engeström, 2018;Liberali et al, 2015). In this line, Neumerski (2013) suggests that studies on educational management should uncover the interaction between educational managers, followers and community toward the improvement of teaching and learning.…”