The Lessons of the Citizen School Project in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to Building Democracy and Curricular Justice in Education

media release: Please join UW Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program. The events are free and open to the public.

Room 206 Ingraham Hall - 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706

Presented by Tinker Visiting Professor of Education, Luis Armando Gandin

About the presentation: This presentation examines the structural and cultural changes that were put in place in Porto Alegre’s municipal education system during the 16-year tenure of the Popular Administration (a coalition of Left-wing parties). Among the questions the presentation addresses are: How did these changes come about? What were the components of the Porto Alegre experience? What did it achieve? What is its legacy? What has lasted? What does this tell us about the prospects for socially committed critical reforms? To answer these questions, I first situate Porto Alegre in its context. I then examine why Porto Alegre’s educational system deserves to be studied and what it achieved. I also present some challenges that the experience faced and finally address both some of what has lasted and what has changed.

About the presenter: Luis Armando Gandin holds a degree in Social Sciences from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) (1987), a Master’s in Sociology from UFRGS (1993) and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin – Madison (2002). He is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Education and the Graduate Program in Education at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Educação & Realidade and Editor of the scientific journal Currículo sem Fronteiras. He is a Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPq (National Council of Scientific and Technological Development) Researcher, with a Research Productivity Scholarship (an award given to the most distinguished and productive scholar in Brazil). He was an elected member, for three terms, of the governing board of the Graduate Program in Education at UFRGS, elected Chair of the Teacher Education Program at UFRGS for four terms and Editor for the Portuguese Language of the Educational Policy Analysis Archives from 2011 to 2015. Professor Gandin served, in the 2006/2007 academic year, as a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Researcher at Oakland University, in the Spring Semester of the 2016/2017 academic year as a Visiting Professor and Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, from January to March 2018 as a Visiting Researcher at Stanford University, and from January to July 2020 as a Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. He has served as vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Curriculum (ABdC) and is an Honorary Fellow of the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of dozens of chapters, academic articles and books such as Educação Libertadora: Avanços, Limites e Contradições (Liberating Education: advances, limits and contradictions), Educação em Tempos de Incertezas (Education in Uncertain Times) (organized with Álvaro Hypolito – with editions in Brazil and Portugal), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education (organized with Michael Apple and Wayne Au, with editions and translations in many countries), The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education (edited with Stephen Ball and Michael Apple, with editions and translations in many countries). Professor Gandin works in the field of Education, with an emphasis in Sociology of Education, with research mainly in the following topics: educational policy, curriculum, educational reform, and the Citizen School project.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Education Policy Studies, UW-Madison School of Education.