The ​​knowledge area ADMINISTRATION AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT aims at developing the training and specific skills of a changing-centered management. This implies that this ​​concentration area  is built upon two lines of research, both focusing on the main business skills required for top professional management. Teaching and research activities of MADE are directed by the concentration area according to the course design guidelines.

Presentation

The research lines of the Postgraduate Program Course are articulated according to the concentration area pursuant to two fundamental aspects: (a) They constitute thematic lineups that unequivocally represent challenges posed to the education system by contemporary culture; (b) The role of cultural aspects is valued in the approaches to educational problems. Therefore, this is related to the emphasis stressed between relations and culture in the multiple manifestations, and education, from the problematization of the current moment, purporting in this sense, a direction to the reflection on central issues that contemporary culture presents us.

Research Line: Social Representations and Educational Practices

The SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES research lines addresses the processes of production of meanings of objects of educational interest, their relations with culture, their implications in the practices of educational agents and their contribution to the construction of identities. The articulation of this line with the concentration area stems from the fact that the deep changes that mark the contemporary culture brings with it new values, social senses and models of behavior that configure other forms of living and of relationship, which requires us to position ourselves, constructing or modifying our representations and identities.

Representations, as senses attributed to social objects, integrate and reconstruct information and experiences related to the object, filtering them in the labyrinth of values, beliefs, models and norms that characterize the accouterments of individuals and their references. Social memory is a constitutive part of the genesis of representations, since the new is always appropriate based on historically constructed and socially shared senses, in other words, it is forged by the values that shapes that culture. By constructing their representations, the subject (individual or group) expresses, ratifies or rectifies values, beliefs, ideals, sociocultural codes, affective experiences, and constructs and expresses both relationships and affections as well as a contextually situated historical identity.

Representations are necessarily related to daily practices and to personal and group identities. The construction of a common repertoire of representations contributes to the configuration of the group’s identity, since these representations reinforce feelings of closeness and belonging and at the same time distinguish those who do not share that same set of values. This repertoire will streamline daily communications and practices.

:: Research Projects

Research Line: Information and Communication Technologies in Educational Processes

The research line of INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATION PROCESSES deepens the discussion regarding the appearance and dissemination of these technologies in contemporary society, analyzing their impacts on educational and evaluative processes, especially in distance education. The discussions on this line stems from the tensions between, on the one hand, technological changes and the globalization phenomenon which reshapes contemporary culture and, on the other hand, the education field.  They focus on the impact of information and communication technologies on the contemporary scene and their implications regarding perceptions, living and coexisting in the world, which on the other hand, are reflected in the school, requiring a redefinition of its functions and academic practices, as well as a new profile of the educator, capable of understanding and dealing adequately with these changes, in order to use them to promote inclusion.

Intellectual production (teacher and student research, articles and dissertations) focuses on the impact of cyberculture and new information and communication technologies on educational processes, analyzing the new demands made on the participants and the teaching-learning environments, as well as on the possibilities that open to an inclusive education as a result of this new scenario.

:: Research Projects

Research Line: Policies, management and teacher's education

The Policies, Management and Training of Educators (PGFE) line deals with the educational viewpoint and educational management practices and the processes of the training of educators engaged in school spaces, at various levels and modalities, and in non-school spaces, on studies based on global and local contexts. The researches developed take as reference the tense intersection between the action of the State and the performance of the subjects that, directly or indirectly, mediate the educational policies and the formative processes. Conceived and treated as a process that is reliant on the correlation of strengths between classes, groups and social actors, and not only as a product of government actions, the thematization of teacher management and training, in this line, it also includes meso and micropolitics and all subjects that play the role of space-time in human formation.

Intellectual production (teacher and student research, articles and dissertations)

focuses on the thematic core related to the constitutive frameworks of public policies, the management and financing of education, initial and continuing training of basic education, training of educators working in non-formal educational spaces and the quality of basic and higher education.

:: Research Projects