Mariano, A. and Tarlau, R. 2019. The Landless Workers Movement’s itinerant schools: occupying and transforming public education in Brazil. British Journal of Sociology of Education 2019, Vol. 40, NO. 4, 538–559
This article explores how social movement co-governance of public education
offers an alternative to neoliberal educational models. The Brazilian
Landless Workers Movement (MST) is one of the largest social movements
in Latin America. We describe one of the many schools that the MST
co-governs, the Itinerant School Paths of Knowledge (Caminhos do Saber),
located in an occupied encampment in the state of Paraná. We analyze
three of the most unique pedagogical innovations in the school: the
teacher’s incorporation of ‘portions of reality’ into classroom teaching,
the student work collectives, and the participatory student evaluation
process. Although these pedagogies are seemingly mundane changes
to everyday school practice, we argue that they represent a challenge to
the neoliberal educational model being implemented globally. These
movement pedagogies are likely to continue, despite recent conservative
attacks, and they offer several concrete lessons for how to effectively
contest neoliberal educational practices in other global contexts.