PROEMI AS A PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION IN SECONDARY EDUCATION: EXPERIENCES AND CHALLENGES AT PETRÔNIO PORTELA STATE SCHOOL

Abstract

The Innovative High School Program (ProEMI), implemented by the Brazilian government, aims to reformulate the high school curriculum to make it more dynamic and adapted to contemporary demands, encouraging innovative teaching practices. In this way, this research aims to understand the effectiveness of ProEMI as a proposal for pedagogical innovation, assessing whether its practices manage to break with the traditional paradigm rooted in Brazilian schools and promote more meaningful teaching. Based on theories of pedagogical innovation, such as those proposed by Fino (2008); Christensen, Horn and Johnson (2012), which emphasize the transformation of educational practices to foster contextualized and active learning, the research seeks to verify whether ProEMI actually provides an innovative and transformative teaching environment. The research adopts a qualitative and ethnographic methodology, with participant observation and ethnographic interviews, as well as document analysis. The information was recorded in field diaries, allowing an in-depth understanding of the practices and challenges encountered in implementing the program at the Petrônio Portela State College, located in Bahia. The results show that, although ProEMI brings benefits such as encouraging student protagonism and the use of interdisciplinary workshops, there are significant limitations, such as insufficient infrastructure and a lack of continuing training for teachers, which hinder the full application of the proposed innovations. ProEMI therefore has the potential to promote more innovative and engaging teaching, but faces structural barriers that limit its impact. For the program to be effectively transformative, an approach is needed that includes not only curricular innovation, but also adequate support for education professionals and the integration of families into the educational process.