The teaching participation in curricular elaboration processes: Paulo Freire's democratic experience in São Paulo

Background: The Curriculum Reorientation Movement proposed by educator Paulo Freire and carried out in the city of São Paulo, from 1989 to 1992, when he was secretary of education, was an educational management experience that, by developing a public policy for the production of curriculum documents for primary schools, recognized the key position of the teacher's work at school and moved it to the center of the discussion process, inaugurating a dynamic of dialogue and reflection that had not been experienced so far. Objective: To think and discuss about which has been the place for teaching work in the curricular policies, as well as its effects on the teaching profession and identity. Design: a part of a research already completed, for which documents, interviews and the analysis of the relevant bibliography were taken as the basis for taking and analyzing data from the investigated process. The documents are all those prepared by the management to conduct the curriculum policy in question; Among the interviewees, a small group composed of different actors involved in the curriculum reorientation process (manager, specialist technician, pedagogical advisor and teacher) was used to compose a panel of points of view of the different subjects responsible for the formulation, mediation and execution curriculum policies in schools; and by the bibliographical research. Setting and participants: Although the interviews do not explicitly constitute the cut that originated this text, some of the curricular policy makers and also mathematics teachers who worked in public schools in São Paulo at the time were interviewed. Data collection and analysis: The documents analyzed were obtained from the Memory Center of the Municipal Education Department of São Paulo. The analysis allowed us to identify a set of documents that led to curriculum reorganization. We identified, in documents, interviews and bibliographical research, how teachers participated in the curriculum development process. Results: The “non-place” given to teaching work in the prescriptive curricular policies, such as the BNCC, actively produces the teaching work as fragile, inconsistent, ineffective, and inefficient, weakening it and favoring its deprofessionalization. This weakening of the teaching work, actively produced, is used, as in a cycle, to justify more centralized, more prescriptive, and more authoritarian curricular policies. Conclusion: a democratic experience in curriculum policy can reaffirm the autonomy, authority and otherness of teachers. Freire's curriculum policy, despite its limits and obstacles, presented itself as capable of promoting and expanding the spaces for its collective and authorial participation and construction.

Passing the Baton: Building Student Autonomy and Democracy in the Large Ensemble Setting

The purpose of this study was to explore the phenomena of participation in a democratic large ensemble experience in a secondary public school setting. Specific research questions included (a) Do high school band students feel capable of performing a music work without teacher intervention? (b) In what ways do high school band students describe the experience of performing in a student-led large ensemble? (c) What music decisions were most often made by high school band students in a student-led large ensemble? and (d) Were there any changes in high school students’ perceptions of autonomy following a student-led large ensemble music rehearsal and performance experience? Findings illustrated that the democratic experience increased student autonomy and music discrimination across larger distances in the classroom as students listened to other nonsimilar sections. Furthermore, student voice, self-efficacy, and personal affect also increased as a result of the experience. Students felt empowered to offer their rehearsal critiques; however, a lingering concern is that participants continued to feel that their peers would not listen to their opinions on rehearsal issues or strategy usage.

Vote Trading and Electoral Success in Nigerian Democracy

Democracy is based on the principle of the majority able to choose who leads them in a free and fair context devoid of external interference and political influence. The right to elect a wrong candidate is even part of democracy. The law cannot regulate the legitimate choices that the democratic free will is entitled to make. It chooses what it will. It rejects what it will not choose, or else the democratic free will ceases to be what it fundamentally ought to be, namely “free”. Vote trading is a concept in the Nigerian democratic experience. The issue of vote-trading has been in Nigeria's democracy since its inception but became prominent during the present democratic dispensation. Vote buying has been serving as a clog in the wheel of free choice which is the hallmark of a democracy. Unfortunately, not all people that being influenced by vote-buying know what is going on. Some people indulge in the act of vote-trading unknowing. This study which is mainly based on literature and conceptually looked at the influence of vote trading on voter’s free choice, the factors that influenced both vote buying and selling, and how it can be curbed. Consequently, past literature, like journals, books, and other publications on vote-trading were considered in this study.

Is the constitution the problem in front of the democratic transition in Iraq?

Nearly 17 years after the US invasion, Iraq ranks first in the list of the most corrupt and least stable countries in the world. The state of instability and rampant corruption in Iraqi society since 2003 made some critics blame the constitution itself as the main obstacle to the country's democratic transition. For them, the hasty method of drafting the constitution, the absence of Iraqi constitutional expertise, and the lateral representation of Sunni Arabs are among the factors that have contributed to the precarious situation in Iraq over the past years. Likewise, critics argue that the ambiguity and ambiguity in some constitutional articles hindered its application. Amid these readings, the October revolution erupted on October 1, 2019 in Baghdad and the rest of the southern governorates of Iraq in protest against the deteriorating economic conditions of the country, unemployment, and the spread of administrative corruption. The demands of the demonstrators reached to change the constitution and amend the electoral law. Thus, the question posed in this paper is to what extent can the constitution really be an obstacle to the democratization process in Iraq? This paper discusses that the nature of Iraqi society as a deeply divided society, the absence of the previous democratic experience among the citizens, the weakness of the political culture of cooperation and tolerance among the political elites, and external interference are among the main obstacles to the democratic transformation in the country. Finally, the conclusion of the study is that despite all the criticisms and criticisms about the democratic experience in Iraq, the process of democratic transformation is slow in itself, and therefore it can be said that the process is still ongoing and has not failed yet.

MODERN DEMOCRACY AND EXPANDING THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIENCE

The article examines some political and socio-economic asumptions for the establishment of modern democracy in its classical version and its defining elements. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of topics on the expansion of the democratic experience in several European states and on the American continent (England, France and the USA) from the XVII-XVIII centuries, during which the birth of modern liberal democracy takes place. It is concluded that modern democracy is based on three historical (political) models from the XVII-XIX centuries (English, French and American), closely related to the form of government (monarchy, republic), state structure (centralized or federal), political regime of government (democratic and undemocratic) or various historical and geopolitical conjunctures.

EVOLUÇÕES DO CONSTITUCIONALISMO CONTEMPORÂNEO: A EXPERIÊNCIA DE ELABORAÇÃO DO PROJETO DE CONSTITUIÇÃO ISLANDESA DE 2011

RESUMOA crise econômica mundial de 2008, que atingiu diretamente a Islândia, impulsionou o aprofundamento da experiência democrática naquele país através da elaboração de um novo projeto de Constituição. Esta experiência contém duas inovações fundamentais: o projeto de Constituição foi escrito mediante crowdsourcing, além da Assembleia Constituinte ter operado em paralelo com a legislatura regular. Tomando isso em consideração, este artigo objetiva analisar descritivamente, partindo da teoria da constituição e da teoria política e utilizando o método dialógico na observação do direito constitucional como uma ciência de textos e contextos, o contexto de elaboração deste projeto, destacando suas peculiaridades, e dimensionando os motivos do seu insucesso de aprovação. Como conclusão são propostas algumas reflexões críticas sobre as potencialidades e os limites da singular experiência islandesa que, contudo, se relacionam com grandes questões que se colocam para o constitucionalismo hodierno, especialmente no que tange à relação entre constitucionalismo e democracia.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Projeto de Constituição Islandesa de 2011; Constitucionalismo contemporâneo; Crowdsourcing; Democracia; Crise econômica mundial.ABSTRACT The 2008 global economic crisis, which directly hit Iceland, improved the deepening of the democratic experience in that country through the elaboration of a new constitution project. This experience brings up two fundamental innovations: the Constitution project was written through crowdsourcing, and also the Constituent Assembly operated in parallel with the regular legislature. Taking this in consideration, this article aims to analyze descriptively, starting from constitutional and political theory and using the dialogical method in the observation of constitutional law as a science of texts and contexts, the context of elaboration of this project, highlighting its peculiarities, and dimensioning the reasons for its failure of approval. As a conclusion, some critical reflections are proposed on the potential and limits of this unique experience, which, however, are related to major issues that arise for today's constitutionalism, especially regarding to the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy.KEY WORDS: 2011 Iceland’s constitutional project; Contemporary constitutionalism; crowdsourcing; Democracy; World’s financial crisis.

I Do it My Way: Understanding Policy Variation in Pandemic Response Across Europe

To contain the spread of the COVID-19, governments have designed and implemented a large range of exceptional measures. Yet, the restrictive nature of the policy options chosen and the severity of their enforcement mechanisms considerably vary across countries. Focusing on the case of the European Union—a group of closely connected nations which develop some forms of supranational policy coordination to manage the pandemic—, we first map the diversity of policy responses taken using two original indicators: the stringency and scope of freedom limitations and the depth of control used in their enforcement. Second, we elaborate three theoretical scenarios to explain cross-national variation in pandemic policy-making. Our exploratory results—based on bivariate statistical associations—reveal that structural determinants (the level of political and interpersonal trust, a country’s overall resources, democratic experience and, to a lesser extent, political check and balances) shape crisis policy-making more than crisis-related factors such as the magnitude of the crisis at stake. These results call for further research into the determinants of crisis policy-making that we propose to address with a new research project focusing on the modalities, determinants and impacts of exceptional decision making in times of COVID-19.