Abstract:
This work analyzes the elaboration of rural education policies in Brazil and the activism as an essential element of that process. By bringing out the debate on research production about rural schools, we incorporate the discussion in the Rural Education Movement, which has been collectively organized for more than 20 years in Brazil in search of education access. This Movement claimed the formulation of public policies for in-service teacher training, which resulted in initial and continuous training programs for teachers, besides bringing schools to the leading role in the struggle for land rights. The discussions on that work reflect the academic production of the Laboratory of Studies and Research of Rural Education in the last ten years. These productions, created on the Faculdade de Educação at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (School of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais), Brazil, have played an essential role in implementing and developing rural education research groups and teacher training degrees in Brazil. The data analysis presented was built from the literature review on academic libraries from the Brazilian system of thesis and dissertations (Catálogo de Dissertações e Teses- CAPES) that gave us all production in the last decade. It helps us create a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the research trajectories and emerging topics each year, considering the connections of the challenges in rural education policies in Brazil. The academic production about rural education in Brazil carries the historicity and resistance as a pedagogical mechanism embedded in the struggle of social movements of rural education. This debate in this context is challenged to incorporate such discussion and add the meanings of the struggle for land rights and resistance to preserving cultural values, such as the struggle to protect traditional folk practices. The translation of these tensions into rural educators' practice occurs from the challenge of dealing with those dichotomies in a committed approach to changing schools, rural territory, and society.