A curriculum for the expression and appropriation of subjectivity: an analysis of the practices for schooling improvement among factory workers

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the implications of curricula of courses for schooling improvement of workers which have been developed by companies while specific production units or in association with the government, universities and other companies, regarding the formation of "flexible" workers. Such courses seek to align the workers' formation with the need for new technologies of production, breaking with the taylorist-rooted education received by those workers in their few schooling years. As an empirical basis for our research is a survey where we have investigated the pedagogical practices for schooling improvement carried out by ten companies in the Vale do Rio Pardo and Greater Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The study reveals that these practices' curricula, especially the one herein focused, work as a tool for the appropriation of the workers' subjective capacities. We have also sought to demonstrate that these pedagogical practices contribute for the dislocation of the prescribed work into the realm of the company's mission.