Curriculum Studies in Brazil: Marxism, Postmodernism, and Multiculturalism

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the field of curriculum studies in Brazil. It chronicles the development of Brazilian curriculum over three main periods: pre-Marxist (1950s–1970s), Marxist (1980s–mid-1990s), and post-Marxist (mid-1990s–present). The pre-Marxist era was largely dominated by Tylerian instrumentalism and Bruner and Ausubel’s cognitivism. In the Marxist era, curriculum studies were particularly concerned with the relations between education and social development. Scholarship from critical theory and sociology of education had theoretically informed much of the debate during this period, bringing under the limelight concepts of power, ideology, and hegemony, as well as how these are implicated in the dissemination and organization of school knowledge. The third period, the post-Marxist witnessed the rise of the post-discourses (i.e. postmodern, poststructural, and postcolonial perspectives) which emphasize a different set of curricular concepts, including subjectivity, hybridity, everyday school life, race, gender, and identity.