A escola de tempo integral como política de proteção social em Fortaleza-CE: avaliação do Documento Curricular Referencial de Fortaleza (DCRFOR) em interface com os marcos legais da educação nacional

Abstract

The general objective of this Master’s Dissertation was to evaluate, based on official documents and legislation, how the Full-Time School (ETI) has been configured as an educational policy of social protection for adolescents attending the final years of elementary school, especially in contexts of social vulnerability. As for the specific objectives, the study aimed to understand the concept of social protection in adolescence and its articulation with the right to education, grounded in legal documents and specialized literature; and to investigate how the Full-Time School policy was described in national, state, and municipal legislation and official documents — elements of the legal-educational corpus that relate to the conception of the Full-Time School as a space for social protection. With a qualitative approach, of bibliographical and documentary nature, the study was based on authors such as Saviani, Arroyo, Paro, Castel, and Polanyi. The thematic content analysis of the bibliographical-documentary corpus, organized around the categories ETI, social protection, and final years of elementary education, focused on federal and municipal official documents addressing the foundation, purpose, and pedagogical, administrative, and financial management of the ETI. Based on Historical-Critical Pedagogy and a counter-hegemonic perspective as analytical lenses, the research identified the intentions, gaps, limitations, and potentialities of this educational policy as a strategy to confront social inequalities. The results demonstrated that the ETI is configured as an educational policy capable of articulating time, space, and curriculum in favor of integral education, promoting cognitive, social, and civic development among students. However, the analysis revealed tensions between its formative conception and the structural, financial, and training limitations that hindered its full consolidation as a public policy. Regarding social protection, this dimension was recognized as a guiding principle of integral education, although its effectiveness depended on intersectoral articulation among education, social assistance, and health, which still occurred in a fragmented way. As for the category concerning the final years of elementary education, this stage remained the most vulnerable within basic education, marked by challenges of permanence, belonging, and meaning, especially among adolescents living in contexts of social vulnerability. Thus, it was concluded that the ETI represents a strategic space for social protection and resistance to austerity policies within the neoliberal State, whose consolidation runs counter to this perspective — that is, it requires concrete conditions of professional valorization, continuous funding, and political commitment to an emancipatory and socially just education.