Revista Brasileira de Educação do Campo

The Brazilian Scientific Journal of Rural Education

ARTIGO/ARTICLE/ARTÍCULO

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e7178

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e7178

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Este conteúdo utiliza a Licença Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Rural Education in a Decolonial Turn: the Community -

Time Experience at the Fluminense Federal University

(UFF)

Francisca Marli Rodrigues de Andrade

, Letícia Pereira Mendes Nogueira

, Lucas do Couto Neves

, Marcela Pereira Mendes

Rodrigues

1, 2, 3, 4

Fluminense Federal University (UFF, acronym in Portuguese). Human Sciences Department. Avenida João Jasbick,

s/nº, Bairro Aeroporto. Santo Antônio de Pádua. Rio de Janeiro - RJ. Brazil.

Author for correspondence: marli_andrade@id.uff.br

ABSTRACT. Rural Education in Brazil, in five decades, has

been constructing an educational practice that values and

includes the subjects, the lores and the social experiences of the

countryside; that is, the Pedagogy of Alternation. In the

university context, Alternance reorganizes the spaces of learning

in Community-Time (CT) and School-Time (ST) and, therefore,

proposes questions to the logics of colonization/modernity of

knowledge, imposed on Latin America. In this reorganization,

the present research has as objective: to know the process of

construction of Community-Time, implemented in the

Interdisciplinary Degree in Rural Education (UFF), to identify

decolonial pedagogical elements that potentiate the formation of

educators in the rural zone. Methodologically, we adopted a

qualitative-oriented research, which is inscribed in the

interpretative approach. To collect data, we performed semi-

structured interviews with 5 teachers and 12 students;

documentary analysis of the 12 projects of the Thematic Fields

of Community-Time. The main results point to the importance

of Community-Time in of rural educators’ formation as well as

in the processes of transformation of reality. Likewise, the

power of action-reflection of the Community-Time in

encouraging actions to strengthen citizenship and the

organization of emancipatory struggles.

Keywords: Rural Education, Pedagogy of Alternation, Training

of Rural Educators, Community-Time, Decolonization.

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

Turn: the Community-Time Experience at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF)...

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Educação do Campo em giro decolonial: a experiência do

Tempo Comunidade na Universidade Federal Fluminense

(UFF)

RESUMO. A Educação do Campo no Brasil, em cinco décadas,

vem construindo uma prática educativa que valoriza e inclui os

sujeitos, os saberes e as experiências sociais do campo; ou seja,

a Pedagogia da Alternância. Em âmbito universitário, a

Alternância reorganiza os espaços/tempos de aprendizagens em

Tempo Universidade e Tempo Comunidade e, portanto, propõe

questionamentos à lógica da colonialidade/modernidade do

saber, imposta à América Latina. Nessa reorganização, a

presente pesquisa tem por objetivo: conhecer o processo de

construção do Tempo Comunidade, implementado na

Licenciatura Interdisciplinar em Educação do Campo (UFF)

para, então, identificar os elementos pedagógicos decoloniais

que potencializam a formação de educadores do campo.

Metodologicamente, adotamos uma proposta de pesquisa

qualitativa inscrita no enfoque interpretativo. Para coletar as

informações realizamos entrevistas semiestruturadas com 5

docentes e 12 estudantes do curso; análise documental dos 12

projetos dos eixos temáticos do Tempo Comunidade. Os

principais resultados sinalizam a importância do Tempo

Comunidade na formação de educadores do campo, bem como

nos processos de transformação da realidade. Igualmente, o

poder da ação-reflexão do Tempo Comunidade em desencadear

ações de fortalecimento da cidadania e da organização de lutas

emancipatórias.

Palavras-chave: Educação do Campo, Pedagogia da

Alternância, Formação de Educadores do Campo, Tempo

Comunidade, Decolonialidade.

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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Educación del Campo en giro decolonial: la experiencia del

Tiempo Comunidad en la Universidad Federal Fluminense

(UFF)

RESUMEN. La Educación del Campo en Brasil, en cinco

décadas, ha estado construyendo una práctica educativa que

valora e incluye los sujetos, el conocimiento y las experiencias

sociales del campo; es decir, la Pedagogía de la Alternancia. En

el contexto universitario, la Alternancia reorganiza los

espacios/tiempos de aprendizaje en Tiempo Universidad y

Tiempo Comunidad y, por lo tanto, propone cuestionamientos a

la lógica de la colonialidad/modernidad del saber impuesta a la

América Latina. En esta reorganización, la presente

investigación tiene como objetivo: conocer el proceso de

construcción del Tiempo Comunitario, implementado en la

Licenciatura Interdisciplinar en Educación del Campo (UFF)

para, entonces, identificar los elementos pedagógicos

decoloniales que potencializan la formación de educadores del

campo. Metodológicamente, adoptamos una propuesta de

investigación cualitativa inscrita en el enfoque interpretativo.

Para recopilar la información realizamos entrevistas

semiestructurada con 5 profesores y 12 estudiantes del curso;

análisis documental de los 12 proyectos de los ejes temáticos del

Tiempo Comunidad. Los principales resultados indican la

importancia del Tiempo Comunidad en la formación de los

educadores del campo, así como en los procesos de

transformación de la realidad. Igualmente, el poder de la acción-

reflexión del Tiempo Comunidad en la activación de acciones

para fortalecer la ciudadanía y la organización de luchas

emancipatorias.

Palabras clave: Educación del Campo, Pedagogía de la

Alternancia, Formación de Educadores del Campo, Tiempo

Comunidad, Decolonialidad.

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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Introduction

As part of their struggle for land,

rural social movements are calling for the

right to education that encompasses their

sociohistorical demands. These movements

understand that rural education is a

powerful tool for understanding the

political, economic, social, and

environmental relations that cut across

rural areas. Hence, the type of education

demanded by popular movements “does

not apply to the classes that hold economic

and political power”. (Ribeiro, 2010, p.

47). Instead, it helps social actors to

organize the class consciousness to which

they belong and, therefore, their demands

for an education that reflects their specific

needs and circumstances. Within this

context, the construction of rural education

takes place in a space of struggle and

political dispute played out by social

movements in defense of school education

plans that address the specificities of rural

peoples. These specificities include

“Pedagogy of Alternation”, which can be

understood as an element that disarticulates

colonial educational practices that promote

the uprooting of identities and territories.

When it comes to the training of

rural educators, in many aspects, Pedagogy

of Alternation may be regarded as a

decolonial practice, above all because it

“enables young people in rural areas to

continue their studies and have access to

scientific and technical knowledge, not as

given by someone else, but as knowledge

conquered and built upon the

problematization of their reality”.

(Cordeiro, Reis & Hage, 2011, p. 116).

Problematization potentiates social

dialogue and practices across different

space-times of learning and of the

construction and transformation of reality:

the time of the university and the time of

the community. It therefore evokes the

inseparability “of systematized knowledge

in university settings and the knowledge

historically constructed by rural people’s in

the process of work and organizing the

conditions for the reproduction of life and

in processes of class organization”.

(Santos, 2012, p. 632). Thus, both

conditions for the reproduction of rural life

and processes of class organization are

powerful tools for destabilizing the

violence perpetrated against rural peoples

by the logic of coloniality/modernity.

Educational processes in the decolonial

turn have therefore been proposed in an

attempt to emphasize:

(a) The original narrative that revives

and inscribes Latin America as the

foundational continent for

colonialism and, therefore,

modernity; (b) the importance of

Latin America as the first test

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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laboratory for racism at the service of

colonialism; (c) the recognition of

colonial difference, a difference that

is more difficult to identify

empirically today, but nonetheless

forms the basis of some of the origins

of other differences; (d) the

verification of the oppressive

structure of the triad coloniality of

power, knowledge, and being as a

way of denouncing and reframing the

continuity of colonization and

imperialism, despite the fact that the

historical milestones of both process

have come to an end; (e) the

decolonial perspective, which

provides fresh utopian and radical

horizons for thinking about human

liberation in dialogue with

knowledge production. (Ballestrin,

2013, p. 110).

The decolonial turn is being

constructed by different scholars,

environmentalists, trade union members,

leaders of social movements, and other

actors who, since the twentieth century,

have set in motion utopian and analytical

renewal and tensions, particularly in the

social sciences in Latin America. As part

of this dispute, in the last 500 years,

Amerindian epistemologies have

constructed different forms of decolonial

struggle against processes of invasion,

appropriation, and violence (Andrade,

2018; 2019). Territory – as an expression

of all forms of life, culture, ancestry, and

identity – is an extremely important part of

this struggle (Andrade, 2019). Based on

more than two decades of research, Walter

Mignolo (2007, p. 27) developed the

following thesis about the contributions of

Amerindians to decolonial struggles:

“decolonial thinking emerged at the very

foundation of modernity/coloniality as its

contraposition. And this occurred in the

Americas, as part of indigenous and Afro-

Caribbean thinking”. This thesis alludes to

the traditional peoples and rural

communities who, among other forms of

violence, have been/and continue to be

reviled by the logic of colonization.

As regards the construction of the

decolonial turn in Latin America, “the

emergence of the concept of ‘coloniality of

being’ responds to the need to clarify the

question of the effects of coloniality not

only on the mind of subaltern subjects, but

also on the lived experience”. (Maldonado-

Torres, 2007, p. 130). These effects

include epistemic racism, which, intrinsic

to Western abstract universalism,

decharacterizes and delegitimizes

traditional peoples, their discourses, spaces

of speech, and identities (Grosfoguel,

2007). In this sense, the political and

epistemological proposal of rural education

provides a way of confronting this

delegitimization, because one of the

meanings of rural education is “to reverse

the views and a history of brutal treatment

of these groups as inferior, at the margin of

cultural, social, and pedagogical history”.

(Arroyo, 2012, p. 363). In the struggle for

this project, the disputes of rural social

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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movements in defense of an education that

promotes access to and permanence in

territories are not detached from the

elements that destabilize coloniality of

power, knowledge, and being, since:

Rural education was born as

mobilization/pressure from social

movements for an education policy for

rural communities: it was born out of a

combination of the struggles of the

landless for the implementation of

public schools in agricultural reform

settlements with the struggles and

resistance of numerous rural

organizations and communities against

the loss of their schools, experiences

with education, communities, territory,

and identity. (Caldart, 2008, p. 71).

Within this process of ideological

construction of rural education, particularly

at a time when we are celebrating a decade

of expansion of rural education courses in

public universities, we highlight the

struggle of rural people’s against the

hegemonic project that seeks to colonize

schools. Some subtleties are incorporated

into this project with a view to demarcating

ideological positions that converge towards

the subalternization of rural peoples and,

therefore, the denial of access to and

permanence in their territories. Within this

context, rural education, as a decolonial

political and pedagogical element, is not

detached from the conceptual disputes that

translate the opposite meanings of

colonization. The resignification of the

concept of rural education in the law that

outlines the guidelines and bases of

education in Brazil (Lei de Diretrizes e

Bases da Educação - LDB) (Brasil, 1996),

reveals the advances and achievements

made by emancipatory social struggles.

These advances are made especially when

rural social movements understand that, as

Caldart puts it (2002, p. 18), education in

rural areas means that “the people have the

right to be educated in the place where

they live”. In turn, education from rural

areas emphasizes that “the people have a

right to an education thought from their

place and with their participation, bound to

their culture and their human and social

needs”. (Caldart, 2002, p. 18).

Despite contradictory ideological

positions, the discussion of curriculum

content and methodologies that reflect the

specific needs and circumstances of rural

peoples proposed by the 1996 LDB has

gained force nationally. In this respect, the

I National Meeting of Agrarian Reform

Educators in 1997 (I ENERA) is seen as an

initial milestone for the national rural

education movement (Molina, 2015).

Further down the line in 2010, the rural

people’s struggle commemorated the

introduction of the National Rural

Education Policy created by Decree 7352

(November 4, 2010). Article 4 of the

Decree stress that the policy is directed at

both basic and higher education (Brasil,

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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2010). One of the outcomes of Decree

7352 was the Licentiate in Rural Education

Support Program (Procampo)

. Created in

2012, the program’s primary aim is to

support the incorporation of licentiate

degrees in rural education into public

universities throughout the country.

The creation of Procampo has

broadened the debate surrounding issues in

rural education. The initial training of rural

educators is bound to the construction of

an education policy that addresses the

concerns and demands of rural populations

and, in particular, emancipation and the

recovery of identity (Santos, 2012). In this

respect, one of aspects addressed by

Procampo is the theoretical and

methodological framework of the course

curriculum: the refoundation of rural

education based on counter-hegemonic

emancipatory logic. In other words, a

powerful educational project capable of

destabilizing processes of domination

imposed by colonial thinking – which

seeks to uproot rural peoples from their

identities and territories – to the detriment

of the advance of capital (Andrade,

Nogueira & Rodrigues, 2019). This project

materializes in articulation with other

political components and theoretical and

methodological principles of rural

education geared towards the emancipation

of social actors. These principles include

Pedagogy of Alternation, which envisages

two distinct learning space-times: the time

of the school and the time of the

community.

The time of the school (TS) is

understood as a stage of the course

corresponding to an academic

semester, in a period of

approximately 50 eight-hour

instructional days. The time of the

community (TC) is devoted to the

period in which students are in their

communities of origin, when they

carry out their studies and research,

prompting theoretical and practical

reflection on issues concerning rural

education, teaching and learning

processes, school and community

management, and the concrete reality

in which the school is embedded.

These activities are guided and

monitored by the course’s teacher-

trainers in the TS. (Ferreira &

Molina, 2016, p. 1710).

With regard to these two elements, it

is important to stress that “the time of the

community potentiates rural educator

training process, because through the

dialogue between theory and practice it is

possible to learn with traditional values and

with traditional knowledge to think new

forms of teaching and learning”. (Andrade

et al. 2019, p. 162). With reference to this

dialogue, Ribeiro (2010) elucidates that the

term Pedagogy of Alternation has several

meanings, which vary according to certain

conditions, such as: the subjects who take

ownership of this approach; the region

where this approach is adopted; and local

conditions, which can facilitate or hinder

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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the practice of alternation. A common

thread runs through the varying concepts

of alternation: “productive labor as the

principle of a humanistic education that

articulates dialectically formal teaching

and productive labor”. (Ribeiro, 2010, p.

293). From this perspective, the key focus

of rural educator training is autonomy,

self-determination, and freedom, enabling

educators to destabilize the oppressive

colonial logic that has subjected rural

people’s to epistemological

subalternization over centuries.

Research with rural education: the

construction of the university’s social

experience with the decolonial turn

The Interdisciplinary Licentiate in

Rural Education (ILRE) offered by

Fluminense Federal University (UFF,

acronym in Portuguese) was created in

2015. The course project is one of the

outcomes of the National Rural Education

Program (Pronacampo) launched in 2012.

One of the main aims of the program was

to provide technical and financial support

“for the implementation of the National

Rural Education Policy, providing

assistance to rural and Quilombola schools

in four core areas: 1. Management and

Pedagogical Practices; 2. Educator

Training; 3. Professional and

Technological Education; and 4.

Infrastructure”. (Molina, 2015, p. 147).

Area 2 is specifically concerned with

“State action responsible for supporting

and making happen the implementation of

42 new licentiate courses in rural education

(Licenciatura em Educação do Campo –

LEDOC), via a subprogram called the

‘Licentiate in Rural Education Support

Program – Procampo’”. (Molina, 2015, p.

147).

It was within this context that the

conquest of the social movement for rural

education materialized, responding to

historic calls for rural educator training

that addresses the specific educational

rights of rural people’s. It is in this space-

time of political gains in terms of racial

and epistemological diversity that the

Brazilian government started to integrate

different social and cultural actors into

public universities, strengthening the

capacity of counter-hegemonic struggles to

question, among other elements: the myth

of racial democracy; colonial educational

practices; processes that uproot rural

populations from their identity and

territories; and environmental injustice and

the violation of the rights of rural

populations and nature. All of these

elements are part of the ILRE, articulating

possibilities for the destabilization of the

modernity/coloniality imposed on Latin

America. In this respect, powerful aspects

of the course enable the construction of

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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“bridges of convergence between

intellectual projects, between interpretive

communities, between the disciplines that

study the social and cultural (spheres), and

also between these and local knowledge”.

(Walsh, 2013, p. 14). Among these

bridges, we highlight the proposals of the

12 core themes of the ILRE developed in

the time of the community.

Box 1 – Core themes of the ILRE in the time of the community.

Themes

Objectives

Bioethics as a philosophical-

pedagogical tool

- To think rural education from the perspective of bioethics, identifying,

problematizing, and intersecting markers of exclusion.

- To encourage reflection on the prejudice, discrimination, violence, and

oppression in the field of bioethics that cut across relations in rural areas,

rural schools, and rural social movements with a view to identifying

voices that remain subalternized and unseen bodies who seek to resist

along the paths imposed by existing rules.

Citizenship in rural areas:

associations, rural unions, and

organization in rural areas in

the Santo Antônio de Padua

region

- To map associations (existing and no longer existing) and search

archives and historic sources to study rural unions and associations.

- To understand support networks, the struggle for rights, and issues

related to agrarian reform in the region and the process of construction of

citizenship among these historical subjects.

Everyday life, memories,

narratives, and oral history

- Focusing on the daily lived experiences of rural communities, to

research the memories of individual and collective subjects and their

struggles to improve their livelihoods; using oral history and images,

emphasizing the valorization of people in their multiple educational

networks, in their engagement with a broad array of knowledge and tasks

bound to nature, the environment, agroecology, education, different

cultures, and new ways of thinking the relationship between urban and

rural areas, among others.

Education and environmental

justice in the Vale do Rio

Pomba

- To investigate conflict situations, environmental injustice, and

resistance movements in rural areas linked to rural populations, with

special focus on the Vale do Rio Pomba.

- To promote discussions with rural populations on the role of education

as a tool of resistance and empowerment to combat environmental

injustice.

Education and sustainability:

pedagogical and community

practices

- To discuss and signify the concept of and educational practices for

sustainability inside and outside schools.

- To adopt pedagogical and community practices that dialogue with

concepts of sustainability associated with social experiences constructed

in different historical and geographical contexts, focusing on rural

populations and bringing together academic knowledge and rural

people's knowledge and practices.

Popular health education:

emphasis on women and

children

- With an emphasis on women and children from rural areas, forests, and

riverine communities, to recognize the importance of shared health

knowledge and experiences, focusing on: participation and participatory

management; knowledge formation, communication, and production;

healthcare; and intersectorality and multicultural dialogue.

Mapping rural schools in Rio

de Janeiro

- To map rural schools in the State of Rio of Janeiro to identify the

regions with the largest number of schools.

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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Black people in universities:

blackness, education, and

social movements

- To provide students with the opportunity to study themes related to

education in its widest possible sense, discussing the relationship

between blackness and education and focusing on topics such as: access

to higher education; construction of the black student movement;

teaching techniques and the application of Law 10639/03 in schools,

emphasizing Indigenous and Quilombola Education; and studies of the

history of black people in Brazil.

Rural Experience Internship

Program: interdisciplinary

practices in rural education

- To develop actions directed at the analysis of agrarian, rural, and

agricultural socio-territorial processes, focusing on phenomena that

encompass the development of sustainable rural territories and drawing

on references from geographical sciences, agroecology, and other related

sciences.

Health and illness among

remnant populations:

production of material on

treatment for sickle cell

anemia

- To develop an intervention proposal together with the remnant

population aimed at reducing the negative impacts of sickle cell disease

in the Queimados and Cruzeirinho de Cima regions.

Territories as places of

dwelling and work:

community organization of

working families

- To articulate and develop research on demands for spaces of

sociocultural reproduction, resistance, and the knowledge of working

families in rural and urban territories, involving actions and policies

directed at community mobilization and organization and establishing

specific relationships of dependence and autonomy between groups,

associations, social movements, government agencies, and non-

government organizations.

Symbolic Spatial Trenches:

space, culture, identity, and

social memory

- To develop research, interventions, and experiences in Pádua and other

towns aimed at recording, recovering, and/or unveiling the lived space,

popular culture, and social memories constructed in everyday life, and

considering the historical impacts of the land occupation process and

other elements that influence the symbolic and economic valorization

urban places.

Source: Authors’ elaboration. Data provided by the course secretary (June 2019).

Against the current backdrop of

democratic erosion, these core themes

bring together decolonial elements that aim

to promote social, political, ontological,

and epistemic struggles for freedom. The

aim of the course is to train students to

become rural educators. With emphasis on

human and social sciences, it is building a

system of alternation according to the

students' specific needs and characteristics.

In the time of the university the students

experience an interdisciplinary curriculum

with discussions and epistemic

constructions that address the plurality of

the reality in rural areas in Brazil. In the

time of the community, the students

potentiate their political-pedagogical

practices, enabling them to understand,

among other topics: the reality of rural

schools and populations; ecocide and other

processes involving the appropriation and

voracious commercialization of nature; and

genocide in the struggle for land; and the

ethnocide of aboriginal and traditional

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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peoples, their ancestral knowledge, and

their otherness. Armed with this

understanding, these future teachers will be

equipped to make a significant contribution

to constructing and strengthening

emancipatory struggles and decolonial

educational practices.

The course currently has 13

permanent professors. All professors have

a doctorate awarded in varying fields:

Anthropology (2); Education (2);

Philosophy (3); Geography (1); History of

Sciences and Health (3); Social

Psychology (1); and Public Health (1).

Other professors from the Human Sciences

Department also collaborate with the

course, teaching mainly optional modules.

The course has 90 enrolled and active

students, which includes regularly enrolled

students registered in modules and those

who have requested a temporary

suspension and are still able to return to

their studies

[3]

. Five professors and 12

students participated in this study. The

primary objective of the study was to

understand the process of construction of

the time of the community in the ILRE in

order to identify decolonial pedagogical

elements that potentiate rural educator

training.

Box 2 - academic characteristics of the study participants and their relationship with the time of the community.

Core themes on the time of the community

Professors

Core Theme Coordination

Students

Academic

area

Admission

Study period

Bioethics as a philosophical-pedagogical tool

Philosophy

(P2

)

March 2016

Period 3 (E7

; E8)

Citizenship in rural areas: associations, rural

unions, and organization in rural areas in the

Santo Antônio de Padua region

---

Period 5 (E12)

Everyday life, memories, narratives, and oral

history

---

Period 8 (E3)

Education and Sustainability: pedagogical and

community practices

---

Period 5 (E10)

Period 8 (E1; E9)

Mapping rural schools in Rio de Janeiro

Anthropology

(P1)

July 2014

Period 1 (E11)

Black people at University: blackness,

education, and social movements

History

(P3)

December

2013

Period 3 (E4; E5)

Rural Experience Internship Program:

interdisciplinary practices in rural education

Geography

(P5)

February

2016

Period 8 (E3)

Health and illness among remnant populations:

production of material on treatment for sickle

cell anemia

History

(P4)

August 2015

Period 3 (E6)

Source: Authors’ elaboration. Study data (June 2019).

*Professor interview identification code.

**Student interview identification code.

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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#Professors involved in the course implementation process in March 2015.

The collaboration of the study

participants with the study took the form of

semi-structured interviews administered in

June 2019. The interviews were conducted

randomly, whereby eight of the longest-

serving staff and 14 students were asked to

participate in the study and those who

answered positively were interviewed. In

addition to the interviews, we performed a

document analysis of the course plans for

each of the 12 core themes on the time of

the community, concentrating on the

objectives outlined in box 1. Data

processing and analysis was conducted

using the free software R, followed by the

creation of word cloud graph. Based on the

word cloud and the theoretical framework,

we established the following categories of

analysis: a) the importance attached to the

time of the community; b) the most

significant learning experiences through

the eyes of the professors and students; c)

knowledge potentiated during training.

The theoretical framework consisted

of the following concepts: coloniality of

power, which determines economic and

political processes; coloniality of

knowledge, which gives rise to epistemic,

linguistic, and cultural violences; and

coloniality of being, which perpetuates the

oppression and control of the desires,

sexuality, and social functions attributed to

genders (Mignolo, 2007). Each of these

colonialities determine the life of rural

populations; hence, the emphasis on the

coloniality of knowledge in this study,

viewed as colonial educational practices

and, therefore, oppressors of cultural

racial, and gender diversities and drivers of

epistemic violences and the uprooting of

rural peoples from their identities and

territories. To think in terms of the

destabilization of this coloniality,

particularly in rural educator training

processes, is a victory in the struggle for

educational rights that differ from those

produced by Eurocentric thinking. This is

because, “the coloniality of knowledge

reveals ... the epistemological legacy of

Eurocentrism, which prevents us from

understanding the world from the very

world we live in and its own epistemes”.

(Porto-Gonçalves, 2005, p. 3).

With these arguments, for various

reasons discussed below, thinking about

educational processes from the perspective

of one's own world and epistemes

embodies the time of the community as an

educational practice into the decolonial

turn. The epistemological position adopted

in this study therefore reiterates Mignolo’s

thinking (2007, p. 29) when he defends

that “The decolonial turn is the opening

and the freedom from the thinking and the

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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forms of living (economies-other, political

theories-other), the cleansing of the

coloniality of being and of knowledge”.

And especially when he highlights that the

decolonial turn represents “the de-linking

from the spell of the rhetoric of modernity,

from its imperial imaginary articulated in

the rhetoric of democracy ... (it) has as its

reason of being and its objective the

decoloniality of power (that is to say, of

the matrix of colonial power)”. (Mignolo,

2007, p. 29-30). This matrix constitutes the

structural element that shapes Brazilian

society, operated primarily by a colonial

educational logic.

As one of the counter-hegemonic

responses to the coloniality of knowledge,

Pedagogy of Alternation demarcates the

theoretical-methodological and

epistemological field of rural education,

drawing on other perspectives and forms of

understanding of the world and reality. It

does this especially through the lens of

subalternized social subjects, silenced and

reviled by coloniality/modernity. These

subjects include social actors from rural

areas, who over the last decade, through

their social and political struggles, have

managed to materialize rural educator

training processes that reflect their

demands. They also include the students

and professors from the ILRE, who are

rewriting their history from the perspective

of the time of the community. As part of

this rewriting process, we articulated an

interpretive qualitative research proposal,

which, by adopting a decolonial theoretical

and methodological approach, becomes a

critical tool for unveiling social reality.

Social reality in Latin America is

submerged in historical, economic,

political, social, and environmental

elements that carry the marks of five

centuries of invasion, appropriation, and

violence (Andrade, 2018; 2019). This

interpretive approach therefore helps

understand this reality and, more

specifically, the processes of colonization

of educational institutions and of their

privileged knowledge. At the same time, it

helps analyze data and construct narratives,

thought with the subjects of the course. In

this respect, the interpretive approach “is

always the production of a new meaning of

events, which, in their relationship, do not

have meanings a priori. The interpretation

of information occurs throughout the study

and fuels new constructions in the

process”. (Rossato & Martínez, 2017, p.

344). In the present study, the interpretive

approach entails reading the world from

the researcher’s own perspective,

constructing the interpretation in terms of

meanings to which we assign symbolic

value.

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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Thought with rural education, with

Pedagogy of Alternation, and thus

reflected in the time of the community,

symbolic interpretive constructions

translate forms in the way “each researcher

constructs and reconstructs the research

problem woven by his/her social,

historical, cultural, and – primarily –

epistemological experiences and

perceptions, which is what makes it

possible to recognize the existence of a

research problem”. (Rossato & Martínez,

2017, p. 344). Thus, our epistemological

interpretations in this study build on the

contributions made with/by interlocutors

such as Aníbal Quijano, Carlos Walter

Porto-Gonçalves, Catherine Walsh,

Edgardo Lander, Marlene Ribeiro, Miguel

Arroyo, Mônica Molina, Nelson

Maldonado-Torres, Ramón Grosfoguel,

Roseli Caldart, and Santiago Castro-

Gómez. With respect to the research

problem, we turned to the recognition of

the historic debt of epistemic racism

against rural populations. For this reason,

we remained true to the discourses

obtained from the interviews of just some

of the political actors involved in

developing the proposal for rural education

at the UFF.

Other ways of understanding the world:

the experience of rural education at the

UFF

Within the proposal of the time of

the university and the time of the

community, Pedagogy of Alternation is a

decolonial political endeavor that enables

dialogue between the wide range of

epistemes that exist in Latin America. In

its essence, it promotes new pluralist

perspectives on knowledge production that

aim to “integrate the actions of students in

constructing the knowledge necessary for

their training”. (Molina & Freitas, 2011, p.

28). Pedagogy of Alternation is therefore

an important tool for promoting

epistemological breaks and destabilizing

the hegemonic logic of knowledge

production. Hence, it creates pedagogical

opportunities for liberation from colonial

education models, particularly: when it

underscores the importance of the time of

the community in bridging the chasm

between theory and practice; and when it

defends the principle of freedom of rural

peoples, who, as historical subjects,

organize and articulate emancipatory social

struggles in defense of their territory,

identity, and ancestry. These questions

were presented in the interviews conducted

with the professors and students from the

ILRE as shown in the following word

cloud.

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a Decolonial

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Word cloud: students’ and professors’ perceptions of the time of the community.

Source: Authors’ elaboration. Study data (2019).

The word cloud illustrates the

importance attached to the time of the

community in rural educator training by

the study participants. The construction of

the word cloud served two purposes: a) it

provides a summarized visual

representation of the responses to the

interview questions; b) it helped define the

categories of analysis based on recurring

words in the respondents’ discourses.

Based on a total of 553 words obtained

after processing the data from two

interview questions, the following words

and their respective frequencies were

defined as the object of analysis: time of

the community (6.5%); important (4.2%);

learning experiences (3.8%); students

(3.4%); training (2.7%); knowledges

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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(2.3%). Based on the repetition of these

words, we established the three categories

of analysis described above. The results

related to these categories are presented

below by way of a dialectical construction

focusing on the discourses from the

interviews.

Bridges and social and epistemic

struggles: the importance of the time of

the community in rural educator

training

Growing literature on decolonial

theories and methodologies has highlighted

the relevance and potential of Pedagogy of

Alternation for building the capacities of

rural peoples over half a century of

constitution and consolidation in Brazil

(Cordeiro et al., 2011). This relevance is

illustrated in the discourses of the students

and professors, whose responses

complement each other, while at the same

revealing the diversity of ideas that

characterize the importance attached to the

time of the community. This diversity

strengthens the structural bases of

Pedagogy of Alternation, opening new

counter-hegemonic educational horizons

that differentiate decolonial educational

movements, since “living precedes

learning”. (Arroyo, 2014, p. 254). On the

ILRE, these movements are consolidated

in the perception of the protagonists of the

time of the community and its respective

core themes. These areas are tailored to the

students’ demands, designed to (re)create

and potentiate academic knowledge,

building from shared realities and

communities. On this question, the study

participants highlight that:

The time of the community enables

involvement in the theme not only

through books, texts, and films,

which we evidently need to use as a

tool for understanding the world. It

also broadens (understanding) and

“repositions” us in the world. The

time of the community invites us to

“protagonize” the texts, struggles,

and causes that we get involved in

within each module in the classroom.

It breaks with the very

comprehension of a module, of a

course, of university, understanding

that knowledge production takes

place (not only) in the classroom,

within formal educational settings,

but also outside these settings (P2).

The findings highlight that the social,

political, and epistemic importance of the

time of the community becomes even more

evident when it repositions students in

their own community, not only as a

student, but also as a future educator, a

fruit of this reality. This argument is

strengthened in the discourse of one of the

interviewees, who emphasizes that “it was

in the time of the community that I

reconnected with rural schools, not as a

student, but as an educator, someone

willing to change political and social

reality; with a leaning towards freedom,

through the emancipatory education that

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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the course and the time of the community

provide” (E9). This reconnection with the

community to which she belongs

resignifies the critical perception of her

reality, producing decolonial pedagogies

and movements that converge towards the

transformation of emancipatory social

structures. It is possible that these

movements are strengthened by the fact

that “critically reading the world political-

pedagogical doing; it is inseparable from

the pedagogical-political doing, that is,

from political action that involves the

organization of groups and of the popular

classes to intervene in the reinvention of

society”. (Freire, 2000, p. 21). Within this

reinvention:

The role of alternation in this

pedagogy is to make the connection

between knowledges. Between

knowledges that you gain in your

everyday life and knowledge that you

learn at university; and, more than

that, the interconnection between

these knowledges, between the

practical knowledge that you build

every day and university knowledge.

So alternation plays a critical role in

the interactive construction of this

knowledge and provides rural

education students a very critical

view of the world around them and

of knowledge; it enables practical

interaction between knowledges and

I think that is fundamental (P4).

According to the discourses, the time

of the community has shown itself to be an

important theoretical and methodological

principle that helps to break with colonial

logic, based on the modernity of

power/knowledge standard. The

construction and foundations of this logic

are historically rooted in “a specific

rationality or perspective of knowledge

that was made globally hegemonic,

colonizing and overriding all others,

previous or different, and their respective

concrete knowledges”. (Quijano, 2005, p.

115). In contrast, dialectically and

politically, the time of the community is a

decolonial proposal that characterizes the

historical struggles of different social

actors reflected in the present time. Among

these struggles, it is worth highlighting a

discourse that points to the core theme that

encompasses ecofeminism: “... the

importance of the struggle of women for

land. We are trying to show a feminist

strand that supports these women’s

struggles and says that, for there to be

women's emancipation, feminism and

agroecology must walk hand in hand”

(E8). Besides the political and dialectical

gains for educator training, the findings

also reveal the importance of the time of

the community for communities, as

illustrated by the following discourse:

I’m at the end of period 5. I’m doing

the core theme Education and

Sustainability. The theme has

broadened my way of understanding

rural education tools and how to use

them. I’ve been working with two

friends on the closure of rural

schools... we are studying and

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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applying the knowledge we have

gained in the theme in the field. We

are recording the fight for education

in Noroeste Fluminense and

comparing rural schools that are

being closed and others that are

receiving investment and being

refurbished. We are recording on

video in the form of documentaries.

We intend to publish various articles

and works, making material available

to strengthen the struggles (E10).

This account highlights in different

ways the importance students and

professors attach to the time of the

community. The interviews also show that

the strengthening of professor-student-

community ties has resulted in a more

humanized university that recognizes the

importance of life trajectories and,

therefore, seeks to produce educators

willing to think in terms of the plurality of

schools, subjects, and learning experiences.

In this respect, the time of the community

has taken on a central role in the ILRE,

because it builds bridges to bring

historically separated subjects and

knowledges closer together. This account

of one of the professors justifies the use of

the bridge metaphor: “(the time of the

community) is really a bridge between

spaces that – unfortunately, with the way

society has organized itself and continues

to organize itself – are placed as if

separated by walls, borders; …often

invisible walls and borders” (P2).

The bridge is a recurring idea in the

discourses of the other study participants,

illustrated by the following response “the

time of the community ends up, in effect,

promoting a bridge between these two

moments, which are often detached from

training. Training only materializes when

there is this dialectic, this integration

between the two parts” (P1). The

discourses indicate that the time of the

community plays a critical role in the

destabilization of coloniality/modernity

rooted in the logic of power/knowledge,

because it opens up the following

argument for debate: “that any narrative of

modernity that does not take into account

the impact of the colonial experience on

the formation of modern relations of power

is not only incomplete, but also

ideological”. (Castro-Gómez, 2005, p. 80).

On the topic of ideological narrative, we

cannot fail to mention the knowledges that

have been forgotten, marginalized, and lost

over more than five centuries of invasion,

appropriation, and violence in Latin

America. Nevertheless, rural education is

building bridges to confront the reality.

The time of the community and the

decolonial proposal: relearning with

territories and with rural peoples

The decolonial nature of Pedagogy

of Alternation makes the rural education

teaching and learning process more

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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meaningful for students. Resignification

takes place in the time of the community,

in a real attempt to get closer to the context

in which the students are embedded; as

well as through the social and political use

of the knowledges gained in the time of the

university, applying them to practical

actions geared towards the students’

communities. In this sense, we also

analyzed what professors and students

consider their most significant learning

experiences constructed in the time of the

community. One of these experiences was

the having the opportunity to engage in and

contribute to communities’ causes and

social struggles. Another was bringing

academia closer to society; that is, the

strengthening of ties, or indeed the

building of bridges, in an attempt to

actively engage in processes of freedom,

autonomy, and defense of specific

educational rights for rural communities.

This experience, geared towards the

construction of social struggle, is

highlighted in the following discourse:

It’s really important to bring the

reality of our communities to the

university; and we have done this

through the time of the community.

The results have been excellent. For

example, after two years of hard

struggle and resistance, Alice do

Amaral Peixoto Municipal School is

still fully functioning

, which is

(particularly) relevant bearing in

mind that 232 rural schools have

been closed in the State of Rio de

Janeiro in little less than a decade

and that three of the five schools here

in Pádua considered to be rural by

the Education Department have been

closed in less than two years. Our

core theme has and is being

developed in every period that we go

through, we are learning in every

community that we interact with,

overcoming and resisting the current

challenges in rural education (E9).

Learning ideas geared to the social

demands of communities are a

representative element in the respondents’

responses, especially those of the students:

“we need to have an education that speaks

from the social reality of each student and,

in this way, achieve educational change in

our society, and really develop closer

relationships and eliminate the distance

between school and society once and for

all” (E9). The findings therefore show that

the time of the community encompasses a

critical nature – which takes distinct forms

– to confront coloniality and, therefore,

promote pedagogical tools that galvanize

contemporary social struggles. The many

elements that reside in this nature translate

reflection-action, one of the salient

characteristics of popular education, which

has played an important reciprocal role in

the organization of the struggles of social

movements: “social struggles are also

pedagogical settings where participants

exercise their pedagogies of learning,

unlearning, relearning, reflection, and

action”. (Walsh, 2013, p. 29). Reflection-

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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action is promoted through interaction,

respecting the differences in the various

ways of thinking and existing, as

highlighted by one of the professors:

... the greatest learning experience is

sharing; sharing and interaction with

the other. It’s fundamental. Also the

question of solidarity in the

construction of ties, the friendship

that is established with the local

community where we work. I think

that’s the greatest learning

experience. It’s the student’s own

experience in the field, in the day-to-

day, in doing, in educating, in

growing together (P4).

The valorization of learning

experiences constructed in interaction is an

extremely powerful aspect of the time of

the community, because it values the social

experience of historically constructed

groups. The study participants understand

that “knowledge is not passed on solely in

the classroom. We have the opportunity to

talk and engage in dialogue with people

who actually live in rural areas, people

who talk from their personal experience”

(E8). Another student also stressed that “it

has been a great learning experience in all

respects, especially the proximity with the

community” (E1). Therefore, the time of

the community becomes a space-time

conducive to the promotion of decolonial

turn; that is, “a shift of perspective and

attitude that is found in the practices and

forms of knowledge, ... a project of

systematic and global transformation of the

presuppositions and implications of

modernity taken up by an array of subjects

in dialogue”. (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p.

160). This possibility of dialogues is

another learning experience highlighted by

the respondents, since Pedagogy of

Alternation enables the establishment of

connections between a varied array of

existing epistemologies, as the following

professor highlights:

The most significant learning

experiences linked to the time of the

community are created as we are able

to read and reread our lived space,

our everyday practices in our

communities, with the help of the

theoretical framework and theoretical

tools that we acquire in the time of

the university. So when we manage

to establish this dialogue, this

reflection, that’s where the treasure

of this learning experience lies (P5).

The discourses of the students and

professors feed back into each other and,

consequently, reiterate that the time of the

community criticizes any exclusionary

actions present in the vertical relations

imposed by the coloniality/modernity of

knowledge. This is because in decolonial

thinking “Modernity is an alterity-

generating machine that, in the name of

reason and humanism, excludes from its

imaginary the hybridity, multiplicity,

ambiguity, and contingency of concrete

forms of life”. (Castro-Gómez, 2005, p.

80). Thus, as well as promoting significant

learning experiences, the time of the

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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community proposes a transgression of the

hegemonic model of education in order to

create a new pedagogy. With regard to

concrete forms of life, the time of the

community gives special prominence to

“traditional knowledges, knowledges that

students bring with them from their

experiences in their communities, practices

that they establish in life ... related to their

way of life, their work, and their way of

working” (P5). With regard to

transgression, it is worth highlighting the

following discourse: “the learning

experience that most drew my attention in

my core theme was seeing a bit more of the

educational organization of the MST

(Landless Workers Movement) here in the

State of Rio de Janeiro” (E11).

Concrete forms of life and

transgression form a new decolonial

pedagogical perspective, since the time of

the community in the UFF encompasses

historical subjects, epistemologies, and

territorialities that have been subalternized

by the colonization process. These

subjects, epistemologies, and territorialities

reinvent counter-hegemonic struggles

when communities, students, and

professors share experiences of historic

resistance to the elements that characterize

colonization. Hence, they reinvent other

learning experiences that are made possible

through the construction of experiences in

which “the time of the community is… a

time for understanding and experiencing

rural areas in their diverse categories of

analysis referenced in the classroom, and

also those that aren’t referenced” (E12).

Moreover, the time of the community

allows “students to delight in the infinite

experiences of analysis that rural areas

have to offer, where we may never have

had or would never have had such an

opportunity” (E12). These discourses show

that the time of the community potentiates

unique learning experiences that we cannot

put a label on, since each one represents

singular ways of life and worldviews.

The experience of the time of the

community: potentiated skills and

knowledges

With regard to the third category of

analysis – knowledges that the study

participants believe were potentiated with

the time of the community – the word

cloud shows that some points stand out in

professors’ and students’ response. One of

these points is that the studies conducted

during the time of the community

potentiate the lens through which students

view the world as researchers and place the

students before reality in a process of

reflection-action. The discourses show that

the study participants believe that this

characteristic of the time of the community

is fundamental, because the submersion of

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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students in research from the beginning of

the course means that “the rural education

students end up finding it easier, let’s say,

to wade through the possibilities offered by

academia” (P1). P1 adds that “the time of

the community provides this (sense of)

security for the research moment, the same

security that the researcher, the observer in

the field feels; field work, even if some

groups are not fieldwork”. The professors

also learn during this research process, as

the following account shows:

... the greatest learning experience is

the learning from research, but in the

practice of research. The students

(involved) in the construction of our

time of the community as it is in the

UFF mention this; the “construction”

of the student as a student-researcher.

In the specific case of my time of the

community (the core theme taught by

the professor), I believe the greatest

learning experience was the question

of self, of my role in the academic

world. These students, when they

perceive themselves as black, as

people who face a series of

difficulties and barriers to get into

university, they realize just how

structurally racist Brazilian society

really is. This is one of the learning

experiences that I think is important;

the students realize that there is a

funnel for entry into higher

education. The higher the level of

study, the harder entry is for the

black student, and I think this is the

great learning experience in practice

(P3).

The importance attached to the

potential of training, thought with research,

is revealed in the discourse of another

professor, who stresses that “although we

are a licentiate, from the first period

everyone places themselves in the

condition of a researcher” (P2). Apart from

the skills gained from research, it is

important to highlight the knowledges that,

for the study participants, are related to

rural peoples’ knowledge. These

knowledges occupy a position of

epistemological inferiority imposed by

oppressive colonial logic since the

European invasion of Latin America. In

this sense, as Lander elucidates (2005, p.

10), “the beginning of colonialism in the

Americas saw not only the beginning of

the colonial organization of the world, but

also – simultaneously – the colonial

constitution of knowledges, languages, and

memory”. By taking this into consideration

and assuming a decolonial pedagogical

position, the time of the community

disarticulates the coloniality of knowledge,

bringing the knowledges of traditional and

rural populations into the academic space,

as the following discourse highlights:

The time of the community not only

officializes the process of the

production and realization of the

knowledges of peoples – traditional

knowledges – it also valorizes these

knowledges within a proposal for

dialogue between traditional and

scientific knowledge. And, within

academia, it also helps to “tension”

the perspective of universal

knowledge, which universalizes the

proposals and European-colonial

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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perspectives that subjugate, discredit,

and diminish the knowledges of

aboriginal peoples; thus, the time of

the community is more than essential

(P5).

The emancipatory role played by the

time of the community is a recurring

feature in the discourses, with students

emphasizing that “its pedagogical policy is

differentiated and liberating. It contradicts

the logic of conventional teaching and also,

we could say, the conjuncture that

contemporary society is in” (E1). Equally,

students recognize that “the course is at the

front line in a battle against various forms

of oppression. This position awakens

critical and intolerant thinking in the face

of actions of exclusion, discrimination, and

intolerance (E7)”. These actions are varied,

but have one point of convergence: the

coloniality of knowledge potentiated by

epistemic racism. The latter is one of the

least discussed forms of racism in the

capitalist and Eurocentric system, which

views these knowledges as being produced

outside the Western world and inferior to

Eurocentric knowledges (Grosfoguel,

2007). To destabilize this coloniality “the

time of the community provides this

coming together of knowledges and

histories that often fail to reach the

university” (E9).

The discourses of the students and

professors place the skills and knowledges

potentiated in the time of the community at

the center of the dialogue. These

knowledges overcome the module

objectives and reflect off each other as

inter-epistemic dialogue with different

subjects and territories, which in turn

contribute to enhance student training.

Various knowledges that are potentiated

are placed on the agenda of this dialogue,

including “the relationship between

medicinal plants and ways of life and the

way (this relationship) spans generations”

(E3). This is made possible by the

interdisciplinary nature of the course,

where the core themes on the time of the

community cross-cut and complement each

other. According to the objectives of the

core themes, this dialogue takes place with

a view to potentiating knowledges

primarily within the following

intersectionalities: environment; gender;

race; health; territory; and social

movements.

All the knowledges potentiated in the

time of the community reveal themselves

during student training through these

intersectionalities. Moreover, the time of

the community provides students with a

glimpse of their future profession, since

“often, we are getting to know our area of

work, which are rural schools and peoples”

(E10). These aspects reveal some of the

potential of the time of the community,

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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which, as suggested by one of the

professors, can be harnessed to enhance the

training experience on other degree

courses. Hence the perception of P4: “it

couldn’t be more promising. I see big

things for this course. It has major

potential, which is important for our

society and for educators”. She adds: “I

think this model, this essentially innovative

model, could be applied on other courses

as well, because it is very important to

replicate this experience” (P4). This

potential only has meaning due to the

historical struggles of social movements,

which, still under construction, challenge

the colonial logic of the present time,

whether in universities or in the ways of

thinking and designing education.

Some considerations woven with the

time of the community...

With this study we have been able to

highlight that, among other aspects, the

construction of Pedagogy of Alternation in

the ILRE takes place in emancipatory

space-times within the struggle for

liberation from the colonialities imposed

on Latin America. The time of the

community on this course potentiates

knowledges, learning experience, and

skills thought out in social spaces

historically marginalized by the logic of

the modernity of power/knowledge, such

as: agricultural reform settlements,

quilombos, rural workers unions, social

movements, rural schools, and life in rural

areas. It therefore constitutes a laboratory

of social, political, and environmental

experiences that challenge and destabilize

the coloniality/modernity project that

prevails in Brazil. Despite this and other

significant victories attained by the course,

current political tensions are once again

leading to a broadening of the ideology

that denies the right to an education that

reflects the specific needs and

circumstances of rural populations. In this

respect, the federal government has

introduced “contingency measures”,

freezing funding allocated to education and

directly jeopardizing and threatening the

very existence and permanence of rural

education courses in federal universities.

The results of a recent survey show

that students and professors from the ILRE

are facing difficulties on a daily basis in

developing this decolonial approach to

rural education. One of the difficulties is

the lack of adequate facilities – primarily

student accommodation and canteen – on

the Santo Antônio de Pádua Campus for

promoting access to and permanence at the

university among rural students, resulting

in increased dropout rates and meaning

that students from indigenous villages,

Quilombos, and other remote areas become

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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increasingly detached from the university.

Another difficulty faced by the course’s

academic community is the monoculture of

knowledge. The prevailing logic of

knowledge production is colonial, which

has little dialogue with the concept of

production of experience based on non-

Western epistemologies. The monoculture

of knowledge means that the university

itself has trouble fully understanding

Pedagogy of Alternation and,

consequently, the time of the community;

or, in other words, the importance of the

time of the community for rural education

as a decolonial emancipatory proposal to

destabilize colonial epistemological

oppression and subalternization.

Despite the difficulties faced by the

academic community, the study findings

show the importance of the time of the

community as a space for building and

strengthening autonomy, participation, and

collaboration on various social fronts,

including the mobilization of social

movements that has avoided the closure of

rural schools in the region. These elements

reveal the potential of the time of the

community for promoting and committing

to shared responsibilities in defense of

specific educational rights for rural

communities. An example of this potential

is the union between the students and

professors of the UFF, local community,

and school staff, preventing the closure of

Alice do Amaral Peixoto Municipal

School, located in the rural area of Santo

Antônio de Pádua. All the above aspects

may be considered decolonial pedagogical

elements identified during the construction

of the course.

In addition, the findings highlight

that the time of the community is a

“provocateur” of emancipatory political

tensions, since developing a close

relationship, ties of affection and

friendship, and the social experience

constructed with communities inspire other

social actors to rise up against acts of

violences and the denial of rights. The

finding also illustrate the contribution of

the time of the community within

processes of transformation in which the

power of action-reflection in social

practices in the geographical and

epistemological territories of rural

education trigger actions that strengthen

citizenship and the organization of social

struggles. Considering all these elements

that permeate the educational practice of

Pedagogy of Alternation – inscribed and

experienced in the time of the community

– we pay reverence to the social struggles

of rural education movements for having

built an inclusionary educational proposal

that encompasses different knowledges,

subjects, and territorialities. In this

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., & Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Educação do Campo em giro

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inclusion, the symbolic meaning of the

time of the community, thought from the

construction of the experience in this

study, reveals its fundamental feature: the

struggle for rural education in the

decolonial turn.

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[1] Text produced based on a study conducted in

the time of the community – June 2019.

[2] In Brazil, a licentiate degree (or licenciatura) is

distinct from the British or American Bachelor of

Arts or Bachelor of Science, as it requires students

to take more credits to allow them to teach in

primary and secondary education.

[3] Data provided by the Academic Secretary -

IDUFF System (2019).

[4] Further details on community mobilization

against the closure of rural schools can be found in:

Neves, L. C. et al. (2019). Memória social e

resistência: organização comunitária contra o

fechamento da Escola Alice do Amaral Peixoto. In:

Costa, A. D. (Org.), Cultura, cidadania e políticas

públicas 4 (pp. 130-137). Ponta Grossa (PR): Atena

Editora.

Article Information

Received on July 14th, 2019

Accepted on September 30th, 2019

Published on December, 19th, 2019

Author Contributions: The author Francisca Marli

Rodrigues de Andrade led the elaboration and

management of the research project, as well as its

supervision, conceptualization, methodology, validation of

data collection instruments, data analysis, software, writing

of the published version. The authors Letícia Pereira

Mendes Nogueira, Marcela Pereira Mendes and Lucas do

Couto Neves helped as collaborators in the elaboration of

the research project, in the conceptualization,

methodology, data collection and analysis, and in the

writing of the final published version.

Conflict of Interest: None reported.

Orcid

Francisca Marli Rodrigues de Andrade

http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6450-5911

Letícia Pereira Mendes Nogueira

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1393-8327

Lucas do Couto Neves

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1071-8545

Marcela Pereira Mendes Rodrigues

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3104-9555

How to cite this article

APA

Andrade, F. M. R., Nogueira, L. P. M., Neves, L. C., &

Rodrigues, M. P. M. (2019). Rural Education in a

Decolonial Turn: the Community-Time Experience at the

Fluminense Federal University (UFF). Rev. Bras. Educ.

Camp., 4, e7178. DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e7178

ABNT

ANDRADE, F. M. R.; NOGUEIRA, L. P. M.; NEVES, L. C.;

RODRIGUES, M. P. M. Rural Education in a Decolonial

Turn: the Community-Time Experience at the Fluminense

Federal University (UFF). Rev. Bras. Educ. Camp.,

Tocantinópolis, v. 4, e7178, 2019. DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e7178