Representations, Educational Processes and Practices in Youth and Adult Field Education in Brazil

Abstract

The Field Education movement emerged in the Brazilian society in the last two decades, bringing to the national political scenario the role of social and trade union movements of the countryside in the affirmation and struggle in defense of a new paradigm of education and school for people living and working in the countryside—farmers, camping and agrarian reform settlers, rural workers, indians, quilombolas, among others. Parallel to the achievements of this movement, especially in the context of State public policies for countryside people, the subject of Field Education has gradually been consolidated in national academic productions. However, despite the increasing volume of work and scientific publications in the area, a balance of academic production reveals the existence of a theoretical gap Youth and Adult Education (EJA) in the field. This recognition of the reality of Youth and Adult Field Education in our society is an area yet to be mapped, and considering the existence of a range of practices and dispersed EJA experiences present in the everyday of the countryside that require more specific studies, the research program entitled Practices in Youth and Adult Education, Literacy and Educational Alternations emerged, whose purpose was to carry out a coordinated study network that would enable the systematic collection and production of data and analysis on the EJA experiences present in the rural reality of Brazil, emphasizing the dimensions of educational practices, processes and pedagogical dynamics constructed within these experiences. In this article, originated from this research program, our purposes are to characterize and analyze under the Field Education movement, the EJA experience in the field, called Agrarian Residency Program in its history, principles and political and pedagogical practices, highlighting the alternated training dynamics gestated in its inside and the social representations built by educators on the alternation. Among other aspects, the study results show that the Agrarian Residence Program, as an experience of Youth and Adult Field Education has become a transformation-propellant space in training professionals of Agricultural Sciences, highlighting both the construction of emancipatory pedagogical practices, and the new political and social relations between universities and social movements. In this respect, besides the processes of dialogical and collective training, the Agrarian Residence Program has also provided the students and educators with a set of experiences and reflections on the reality of the areas of Agrarian Reform and Family Agriculture that, driving another action approach of these subjects in our society, also contributes to a project of a university and professional training in dialogue with social movements and more committed to our social reality.