School sociology among people and actants: associations of resistance in the New High School

Abstract

This paper presents part of the final results of the research I conducted as part of my Master’s degree in the Graduate Program in Sociology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). The research examined pedagogical practices developed by teachers with degrees in Social Sciences or Sociology who, between 2022 and 2024, taught curricular components within the Formative Pathways of the state of Rio Grande do Sul’s High School Gaúcho, with the aim of analyzing how these practices could be understood as strategies of resistance adopted by teachers in response to the reduction in the teaching hours allocated to Sociology within the curricular organization of state schools. The methodological approach was qualitative and was developed in two stages: (a) an analysis of the regulatory instruments that established the first version of the High School Gaúcho between 2022 and 2024; and (b) semi-structured interviews with teachers holding degrees in Social Sciences or Sociology who worked in state schools in the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. The data were analyzed with the aid of NVivo software through the coding of interview accounts. The analysis of the data points to the possibility of mobilizing the characteristic of Sociology’s “intermittent presence” in Brazilian Basic Education and the process of “sociologization” of the curriculum and pedagogical practices involved in the implementation of the New High School. These processes can be understood through the “sociology of associations,” insofar as actants exert agency within teachers’ work routines, while also being inscribed in networks of action and reconfiguration of their practices.