CONQUERING HEARTS AND MINDS: SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL COMPETENCIES AS A REFLECTION OF NEOLIBERAL RATIONALITY IN LIFE PROJECT TEACHING TEXTBOOK

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This text aims at analyzing didactic collection (textbooks) entitled Life Project, in order to study how social-emotional competencies are addressed in such teaching materials and how they reflect the desires of neoliberal rationality. We search for theoretical support in studies developed especially in the reflections initially developed by Foucault (2008), later expanded by Dardot and Laval (2016) about neoliberalism.In what is concerned to methodology, it should be emphasized that this is a descriptive-interpretative study of documentary nature, following mainly a qualitative approach. The corpus is formed by fragments extracted from three teaching book collections entitled Life Project, books approved by the National Book and Teaching Material Program (PNLD), 2021 edition. Through the analysis, it can be considered that there is a direct relationship between social emotional competencies and neoliberal rationality, because young people are guided to regulate their emotions in order to improve their human capital and, as a corollary, they build their life project based on what is desirable at the core of a rationality nuanced by competition, individuality, resilience and autonomy.