A escola como sistema auto-organizativo : desafios e possibilidades.

Abstract

This study is part of the Learning, Technology and Languages in Education research line, belonging to the master program at the University of Santa Cruz do Sul. It presents as its theme: the school as a self-organizing system and the challenges of a new conception of education. The study aims to discuss the understandings that teachers have about the school, and the challenges of thinking the school as a selforganizing system and its working autonomy as an autopoietic process. By the research actions I tried to answer the following questions: How educators understand the school where they act and what the implications of this understanding in their learning conceptions and in their practices? How to challenge the teachers to understand the school as a self-organizing system and what implications they imagine this would have on the structure and school functioning as well as in their conceptions of education and pedagogical practices? For that, I try to articulate the systemic approach, the complex thinking and the understandings that teachers have about the school. In that way I produced the theoretical foundation by making a connection among the theorists: Fritjof Capra, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Edgar Morin and Maturana and Varela. I took as a principle the complexity theory by Morin, especially regarding the concept of self-organization. The people who participated in the research were twelve teachers of Escola do Seminário São José, located in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul state. As the research falls within the field of subjectivity, the methodological approach was a non-standardized questionnaire, problematized with the participants on two talk meetings. So, it is a study in qualitative perspective with the construction and recording of the reflections in my field journal. The results point to the fact that the school is still strongly influenced by the Cartesian-Newtonian conception, predominating the principle of knowledge fragmentation and thereby, it has also configured the way of being and thinking of the individuals. As for the challenges for educators transform their conception, I realized that there are several, whose root is in the traditional belief in the certainties and order, to overcome these limits its necessary a longer time of studies, so that they can perceive the education and learning as inseparable processes of living. Keywords: Systemic thinking. System. Self-organization. School.