Desafios da Complexidade: Novas tendências de reconceptualização curricular

Abstract

At the background of presented text there is a prospective dimension as it intends to be a contribution to the reflection about the questions of change in education, namely in what concerns the mismatches between the social expectations and the educational answer. This latter is understood in terms of social and human formation and development within a perspective of redefinition of the subject’s citizenship profile at the end of the Basic Education.

Bearing in mind the complexity of such reflection, its more specific purpose is to bring to this debate some essential questions of the changing and curricular regulation processes, which emerge mostly from the social changes and developments that are at the core of contemporaneity. We sustain that such pretension can only make sense if the professionals implied in the different social systems (formal and informal), and that interfere in the educational processes, are able to develop a critical consciousness about the impact of their actions at short and medium terms, as well as to reconsider their own conceptions about what is meant (or should be meant) by education and personal, professional, social and human development. Also important for that purpose is the professionals’ reconsideration of their educational intervention practices at all levels of the educational systems. This would make possible the development of a coherent, systematic and persistent regulation of the change and improvement processes, both in their intrinsic and immediate quality, and at their broader response to the world.

The reflection about the curricular tendencies, which are rooted in the geographic, demographic and cultural changes that characterise the contemporaneous societies, draws from an international study under the supervision of the National Board of Education. Due to this study it was possible to identify some indicators through which the curricular reconceptualization pro-cesses could be enhanced, such as transculturality, flexibility, differentiation, mobility and internationalization. Such ideas are also to be understood as the rationale of an education policy in process of emergence.