Recent reforms in the curriculum guidelines for mathematics in Portugal

Abstract

The article in question deals with the construction process of the Mathematical Curriculum Programs and Goals for Basic Education, concluded in 2013, and the Essential Apprenticeships concluded in 2018, in Portugal, prescribed curricular documents, whose constructions showed political components and which are being the subject of many conflicts and tensions in the context of the country. For the study, the policy cycle approach, formulated by Stephen J. Ball and collaborators, has been frequently used by curricular policy researchers, among other fields, configuring a relevant methodological bias for understanding the approval processes of documents from the contexts of production and influence, as well as the paradigms that guided these constructions and the ideological constraints that result from the international reform agenda. To achieve this objective, positions were analyzed through public letters and reports from entities at specific times during the processes of recent reforms of the documents prescribed for mathematical learning in Portugal. The study raised reflections on the vertical models, redemptions of curriculum documents that are no longer in force, the contents as instruments of management and performance, as well as the silencing of voices of educational entities during the reform processes.