Between the management and the circulation of pedagogical ideas: a biographical-narrative approach

Abstract

As part of the Curricular Processes and Accompanying Practices research project, we show how, in search for good practices in the educational field, a primary school teacher undertakes the task of trying to implement the educational policies of increasing the quality of education. We adopt the biographical-narrative approach to produce knowledge about the subjects and their practices, as well as the knowledge they generate in the performance of their work. In this text, we show both part of teacher’s journey and instances of the experimentation of pedagogical ideas in the classroom, in order to highlight the tension faced by elementary teachers to manage and circulate pedagogical ideas in daily life when they adopt in their classroom the project-based method to generate innovative educational processes. We describe how concrete individuals carry with them pedagogical ideals that must face a complex network of relationships in which teachers try, day by day, with the development of materials, tensions with parents, principals and educational regulations, to do quality work in a city school that affects the training processes and teaching practices. We close the text with some reflections on the management of innovative projects in basic education in the current educational context.