Sobredotação: o caso da governança municipal da educação brasileira e portuguesa

Abstract

Giftedness (Portugal), or high abilities/superdotação (Brazil), is a multifaceted phenomenon that presents several conceptual models, explanations, approaches in social practice and public policy. The highly gifted are people who, due to natural and/or social conditions, possess a high potential for their actions to have an impact (either positive or negative) on the culture, the socioeconomic system, or the environment in general. Although there is an invisibility of these children, together the absence of unanimity in the literature, it can be stated that, quantitatively, between 3% and 20% of people are gifted and, moreover, the phenomenon occurs in any social class, race or ethnicity. Governance (Brazil), or governação (Portugal), refers to processes of social organization and coordination whose empirical use refers to changes in organizational practices within the global order, corporations, or the public sector. In the view of the Tribunal de Contas da União (Brazil) governance presupposes leadership, strategy and control practices and has a distinction from management. Thus, the study conducts an analysis of the governance of public policies aimed at the education of the gifted through three axes: giftedness, education, and governance of public policies. To this end, the main objective of the study is to identify the mechanisms of municipal governance of education in Brazil and Portugal aimed at mobilizing and harnessing the potential of gifted children and youth. Based on the interpretativist paradigm, the methodological process is developed through a qualitative, exploratory and explanatory study, whose means of scientific investigation are (i) case studies of the municipalities of Matinhos (Brazil) and Vila Nova de Gaia (Portugal), (ii) semi-structured interviews using the snowball system and (iii) content analysis. The results suggest that practical solutions were adopted in each case, a greater approximation and combination of scientific and empirical knowledge, contributing socially to the governance of gifted education; in addition to the identification of actors, the respective policies, the structure and governance processes, which, observed the local sócio-institutional characteristics, have intertwined with gifted education and the effectiveness of public policies.