A museum of great novelties? Accommodation and containment in the curricular integration of extension at Unicamp

Abstract

This article analyzes the implementation of CNE/CES Resolution 07/2018 — which mandates the curricular integration of extension activities in Brazilian higher education — at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). Drawing on Ball's Policy Cycle framework, it examines how recontextualization of this policy at a research university with a historically business-linked extension tradition produced accommodation and containment processes. The study combined documentary analysis — statutes, management reports, internal deliberations, and pedagogical course plans — with interviews involving four segments of the academic community (central administration, faculty, technical staff, and students), as well as Forproex and CNE representatives. Findings indicate that the enactment of CEPE-A-22/2021 constituted a conservative advance: it institutionalized pre-existing extensionist practices — predominantly health-oriented service provision and business-linked outreach — while simultaneously opening institutional fissures that actors committed to dialogical extension may exploit. The article concludes that the transformative potential of curricular extension integration depends largely on the capacity of a defense coalition — extension-oriented faculty and organized student movements — to appropriate the political momentum generated by the national policy to rebalance the extensionist field within the institution.