NEW MODELS OF HIGHER EDUCATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF ABC

Author(s)

Abstract
In the formerly so-called third world countries, now called emerging countries and or peripheral and semi-peripheral countries, there are innovative counter-hegemonic experiences whose higher education projects are situated in a perspective of social equity and justice including historically marginalized social groups and away from the right to higher education. The present text intends to reveal and reflect on the institutional structure that underpins a new model of higher education in Brazil, particularly at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). The democratization processes of the countries, accompanied by policies aimed at investing in new institutions of higher education, allowed a considerable diversity with regard to the new student publics. Universities, traditionally reserved for elites, have opened up to new students, both in terms of gender, ethnicity, social class, and even of different generations. This opening created challenges and expectations regarding the democratization of higher education, the inclusion of cultural and epistemological diversity, the promotion of interculturality and the decolonization of power and knowledge relations. Some institutional experimentation policies merit particular reference. In Brazil, the actions of the post-neoliberal governments of Lula and Dilma also focused on the creation of popular universities, presenting different profiles and responding to specific objectives of political action. The first one was the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), whose institutional matrix is the object of our study. We will focus first on qualitative documentary research using discourse analysis from N. Fairclough's perspective (2001) in order to infer the structuring lines of the new model of higher education with a specific focus on the conceptual foundations, in the pedagogical model and in the principles governing pedagogical practice. As a new model of higher education that promotes interdisciplinarity, the social inclusion, cultural and epistemological diversity in view of the promotion of cognitive justice, we intend to know the epistemological foundations that support the institutional matrix of the Federal University of ABC and that regulate all the academic activity of the institution and its relations with society. One of the conclusions of the study points to the existence of some contradictions between discourses and practices.

Keywords
Conceptual fundamentals; Pedagogical model; university education; Counter-hegemonic higher education

Cite this paper
Manuel Tavares, Sandra Gomes, NEW MODELS OF HIGHER EDUCATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF ABC , SCIREA Journal of Education. Volume 4, Issue 1, February 2019 | PP. 1-17.

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