Educational procedures guided by emancipatory principles for education on soils in higher education: A proposal

The traditional paradigm of education, although outdated, still supports Soil Educational procedures in several Brazilian universities. However, the strategic documents of these institutions (Institutional Development Plan-IDP, Institutional Political Project-IPP and Pedagogical Projects of Courses-PPC's) support a critical vision of education, which converges with the emancipatory paradigm and with the purpose of Soil Education (SE), which is the formation and transformation of subjects for conscious actions in reality. To overcome this problem, we propose educational procedures guided by emancipatory principles for two disciplines related to the subject of soils in Higher Education (HE) in a traditional paradigm structure, with the objective of meeting the conception of education supported in the strategic documents of a Brazilian public university and achieving the purpose of SE. A bibliographical research and documental analysis of the strategic documents were carried out to form a theoretical and methodological base. In addition, emancipatory principles were considered in the elements that made up the educational procedures in SE. The proposal was analyzed and discussed based on the behavior of these principles in the structure of the disciplines. To verify how the proposal articulates with the conception of education defended by the university, the analysis started from the didactic-pedagogical aspects expressed in the IDP, IPP, PPC's and Teaching Plans of the disciplines involved in the research. We emphasize that it was possible to propose and apply educational procedures on soils with emancipatory principles within a traditional paradigm structure. Some principles were considered in essence, while others could not be considered or were only partially considered, showing that the traditional paradigm limits principles that go against its foundations. The proposal responded more to the concept of critical education defended in the strategic documents than the Soil Educational procedures with traditional principles elaborated and used by professors, since the proposal considered the student’s protagonism, the constitution of their autonomy, knowledge as relational, research as an educational principle, interculturality and procedural and continuous evaluation. On the other hand, procedures with traditional principles considered students as passive subjects, knowledge was seen as fragmented and their approach was made in an authoritarian way, disregarding students’ knowledge and the evaluation was quantitative. Furthermore, the convergence of educational intentionality between Education in Soils and education with emancipatory principles allows us to state that the emancipatory paradigm was an alternative to achieve the educational and formative purpose in educational processes on soils.