An analysis of educational policies of curriculum and teacher training for religious education in Brazil after LDB 1996

Abstract

The current study started from two problematizations: (1) what interests/contents are making up the curriculum of Religious Education? (2) How do these contents relate to the training policies of these teachers? Sources used in this study were: Brazilian educational legislation relevant to the subject and a survey in the official database of courses and Higher Education Institutions in Brazil. The objective was to analyze the changes and continuities in the scope of legal and pedagogical interpretations concerning the selection of contents and to map the offer and configuration of teacher training courses for religious education. The methodology counted on the contribution of the bibliographic review in the scientific literature on the subject, and culminated in the elaboration of a mapping of the offer of initial training courses in the national territory with the use of four descriptors for the search: (I) ‘Science of Religion’, (II) ‘Sciences of Religion’, (III) ‘Sciences of Religions’, and (IV) ‘Religious Teaching’. The research results are twofold: (1) It is necessary to recognize and reflect on the dialogue and mobilization of religious institutions in the process of dispute over the definition of the contents of Religious Education in public schools. The other result (2) refers to the possible impacts of the current political scenario of regulation for teacher training (abbreviated, without the emphasis on the research and teaching relationship, based on the nonpresential modality) as a market niche, and not as a omnilateral training view. It is concluded that even though we can currently experience an apparent victory in the regulations for the control of content and teacher training along the lines proposed by the market-oriented model, it must be agreed that there is a distance between what the official curricula propose and what is effectively appropriate in the different learning situations in school reality.