Among the questions related to Brazilian education policies, a number of issues that influence music communities include how students learn music, concepts of multiculturalism, cultural diversity, and cultural citizenship. Another issue is the importance of the dialogue between these Ministries to accomplish a common goal of guaranteeing the right to education and culture for all, as inscribed in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, and ratified by the Brazilian Government in 2006, in the scope of UNESCO's Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
The political role of Brazilian Association for Músic Education – ABEM - is to empower the network composed by several categories of social actors and institutions in elaboration of the
National Guidelines for music learning implementation in Brazilian Schools. These categories include:
• Influence and impact throughout the universities, communities and sector of civil society promoting a discussion and a participatory movement;
• Recognition of the diversity of contexts: social, cultural, economic in an open curriculum design;
• Promoting the dialogue between MEC and MinC to develop collaborative interchange This article attempts to situate the emergence and development of this singular moment in social and educational development in Brazil highlighting role of the public policies on defense and promotion of values such as cultural diversity. To understand the political and cultural implications of this movement this article elects as its axis some aspects of NPE and NPC highlighting points of the documents and discursive national transit involving governments, nongovernmental organizations, and political groups.
Regarding the Education Ministry, we highlight three programs: the National Plan for teacher training for elementary education (PARFOR), the Open University of Brazil (UAB) and the Institutional Scholarship Program for Initiation to Teaching (PIBID). The main challenges in articulating Cultural and Educational public policies include teacher training and qualification;
access to cultural assets for teachers, students and the entire community; the processes of teachers and students sharing their own knowledge; and cultural and musical practices which bring new information and competencies. It’s necessary for academic processes linked to formal educational institutions to promote the recognition of traditional knowledge and culture along with the sharing of these cultural practices. This enhancement of arts instruction could effectively transform these institutions into centers of shared socio-cultural and democratic experiences.
As an example, Figure 1 Axis of Institutional Grant Program for Initiation to Teaching (PIBID), shows the most important program within the Education Ministry’s PNE, the Institutional Grant Program for Initiation to Teaching (PIBID), that points out:
1. Focusing on students, learning, creativity
2. Investment in quality of subject content in integrated conception of curriculum 3. Professional improvement in teaching and learning
4. Collective/collaborative authorship and learning 5. Investment in educational technologies, infrastructure
Figure 1. Axis of Institutional Grant Program for Initiation to Teaching (PIBID)
The debate on the role of the Arts in Basic Education, in particular of Music, is highlighted by the Law No. 11.769, of August 18, 2008, in order to provide for the compulsory teaching of Music in Elementary and High School Education. It means access to music education for all Brazilian people as well as many challenges for all professionals who seek music education for all with cultural diversity as a paradigm.
Another example of a current institutional program developed for Cultural Ministry is “Mais Cultura nas Escolas?” This program means more culture inside schools. The objectives of this federal program are:
1. To recognize and contribute to the qualification of professionals in “educational areas,”
where formal knowledge, community knowledge, and artistic and cultural practices connect in an integrated way
2. Extend the number of protagonists in the educational process in different contexts, encouraging community participation to promote an expansion of cultural spaces,
3. To understand and recognize educational processes (teaching and learning) as a creative and cultural practice in constant transformation.
4. Empower meaningful experiences of dialogue between education, culture, and art
Thus, it is possible to see some actions emerging powerfully in school in all Brazilian regions as:
1. The convergence of public schools with diverse cultural initiatives;
2. An invitation to develop comprehensive and collaborative educational processes, involving cultural and community initiatives in the schools’ plans;
3. The space for effective dialogue between education, art and culture;
4. A partnership between MEC and MinC, marking the beginning of strategic intersections between the National Education and Culture Plans (PNE + PNC)
Framework
In The Forms of Capital, Pierre Bourdieu (1986) presents three different forms of capital:
economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital. He defines social capital as:
the aggregate of the actual and potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – in other words, to membership of a group - which provides each of the members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital. (pp. 248-249)
The two National Plans are seen as social capital with multiple definitions, interpretations, and uses. It is related to connections within and between social networks that is a core concept in business, political science, public policies and sociology. The concept of social capital, in this study, is concerned with the content of social relationships in a network (Gyarmati & Kyte, 2004, p. 3). This content lies behind the interactions that create social bonds. Such content can be accumulated, deepening the sense of bonding within the group. Social capital, then, has two faces:
collective and individual. The former, because it is part of the inter-relationships of a given group or social network and exists only with them. Therefore, social capital can be seen not only as collective resources as it still depends on the individual effort. This leads us to understand that the network of relationships is “the product of investment strategies, individual or collective, consciously or unconsciously, aimed at establishing or reproducing social relationships that are directly usable in the short or long term” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 249).
These networks according to Nohria and Eccles (1992), “structure ties among actors in a social system. These actors can be roles, individuals, organizations, sectors or nation-state” (p. 32).
Consequently, essential in the formation of the network is that “its ties may be based on conversation, affection, friendship, kinship, authority, economic exchange, exchange of information or any other things that form the basis of a relationship” (Nohria & Eccles, 1992, p.
32).
The discussion and reflection on the dimensions and functions of the pedagogic musical knowledge are based on the principle that these are aspects of the own phenomenon/object, without taking them separately. This view of epistemological field of music education seeks to contribute to define the boundaries and intersections of the area considering the specific knowledge, crossed by other fields of knowledge.
Thus, the analysis incorporates the interconnection of different dimensions and the meaning of
“music pedagogical process as total social fact” (Kleber, 2006; Kleber & Souza, 2013) is not only related to the processes of learning and teaching music, but also seen as a connected multidimensional field. This view of epistemological field of music education seeks to contribute to define the boundaries and intersections of the area considering the specific knowledge, crossed by other fields of knowledge. From this perspective the follow dimensions can be viewed as four categories of context:
1. Institutional – involving the bureaucratic, juridical, disciplinary and morphological (the way of working, the physical space and its organization) dimensions;
2. Historical – dimension of historical process of the NGO constitution from histories, reports, interviews and talks with the research participants who are the protagonists of this material and symbolic construction;
3. Socio-cultural – dimension of the circulation spaces of: symbolic values, meetings, intersubjective and interinstitutional relations, conflict, and negotiation and
4. The music learning and teaching process – focusing on how, where, why and what for music was learning and teaching in those spaces. (Kleber & Souza, 2013, p. 149)
This perspective is associated with concepts of social networks and social capital, which depend on cultural, political and social factors. This assumption is supported by the fact that the multi contexts used in the analysis cannot be exist in isolation, as a field of knowledge production that can only be thought systematically.
It means that the production of knowledge should be understood from the dialectical perspective within both the academic world and everyday life. The theoretical framework is based on the principles of music as a product of social practices and that the production of socio-musical knowledge is strongly linked to the construction of individual and group identities. The proposal has a socio-educational nature and its knowledge production targets social change, taking into account symbolic and material values that come from the beneficiary groups.