Forma escolar e cultura escolar da educação a distância: análise de um curso bacharelado em Administração

Abstract

The theme of this research is the school form and the school culture of the face-to-face and the e-learning models of a Bachelor's degree course in Business, offered by a private Higher Education Institution (HEI) located in the city of São Paulo. The problematization of the theme posed the following question: in relation to the school form and the school culture, which characteristics are maintained and which are not in different modalities of the same higher education course? Aiming at a provisional answer to this question, the following hypothesis was evidenced: there is a fetish in relation to e-learning, considering it as an innovation in education; perhaps, the only effective change it brings is to reach places that do not have faceto-face courses and to be accessible to those who have few resources, but the school form and the school culture of the e-learning model are very similar to those of face-to-face education. In this way, the research has set itself the following objectives: General - To identify the elements of school form and culture that remain and those that diverge in the face-to-face model and e-learning modality of a higher education course; Specific - To analyze the concept of "the new" in higher education due to the expansion of e-learning in Brazil; to identify the constituent elements of school form and school culture in the face-to-face model and e-learning modality of a Bachelor in Business course, and to analyze which constituent elements of school form and school culture remain and which diverge between the face-to-face model and the e-learning modality. This was a documental research, based on the theories of Cellard (2012), in which the following institutional documents of the HEI were analyzed: pedagogical project of the course (PPC), teaching plans and lesson plans of both modalities of the Bachelor's degree in Business. The analysis procedures relied, for the construction of the script and analysis of the data collected, on the studies of Vincent, Lahire, and Thin (2001) about the school form; of Nadal (2007), Nóvoa (1999), and Viñao Frago (1995, 2006), about school culture, and of Saviani (1980), related to innovation in education. The results of the research indicated that the face-to-face model and the e-learning modality share aspects in common as to school form and school culture, differing in some others. The school space and time present in both modalities are rigidly established, even though the PPC of the e-learning modality promotes flexibility and autonomy for the student; the characteristic of a graded, serial school, in which it is assumed that the students have the same level of knowledge and competencies; the pedagogization of relationships, and the learning of forms of power. Aspects that differ between the two modalities are the possibility for e-learning students to develop their own learning methods, as shown in the Teaching Plans and Lesson Plans of this modality, shifting the focus from teaching to the ways of learning, and the break from the culture of writing, allowing students with disabilities to deliver work through videos through the VLE. It is also considered that the institutional documents analyzed do not give clues that the course in e-learning modality elaborates its own school culture, explaining the limits of this research, by the absence of the empirical dimension that would analyze the relations and practices that, perhaps, reorganize the school form and change the school culture. The innovation that e-learning brings to education is in relation to the means of access, complementing the traditional means, that is, the face-to-face model, without changing the institution and the purposes of education. However, it maintens its importance in relation to the democratization and universalization of higher education and contribution to reducing access inequalities