Citizenship education and curriculum policy in Brazil: facing challenges and prefiguring changes

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the category citizenship and its connections with culture and Brazilian curriculum policy. First, we investigate citizenship as a signifier, highlighting some features that became attached to it throughout history. We refer to authors such as T.H. Marshall (1967), Santos (1997), Candau (2008), Alvarenga (2010) e Hall (2009) to understand how the conception of citizenship historically evolved, as well as its relationship to human rights, with focus on current meanings. In sequence, we look at the relationship between citizenship and culture, with special attention to the articulation between citizenship and multiculturalism. Afterwards, we analyze the views of citizenship found in Brazilian curriculum policy these days, taking as an analytical sample the Complementary Document to the National Guidelines for the teaching of Sociology in secondary school (PCN +) and we consider our findings in the light of critical insights about features of contemporary educational policy. As an alternative to current approaches of citizenship in the curriculum, we suggest an understanding of citizenship as an everyday practice (Biesta, 2011), with the aim of bringing to light some aspects of the concept that seem to be relevant for its re-signification within the field of contemporary curriculum studies.