Intensive recovery in the State of São Paulo

an experience with female teachers of a public school

Abstract

This article is the result of a study that investigated the meanings given by female teachers of a public school in the countryside of the State of São Paulo regarding the so-called intensive recovery policy. The proposal, created in 2012 in the São Paulo state school system, consists in opening classes to work on students with learning difficulties and school gaps. This article reports how the policy was implemented: the pedagogical work, the challenges that were found, and the actions taken to overcome them. Based on the historical-cultural theory, a case study was carried out using participant observation, field diaries, and interviews. The results obtained showed that the intensive recovery was perceived positively in terms of its objective, but there were criticisms especially in relation to the need of implementing it as soon as learning difficulties are detected and not in later years. The challenges found involved aspects such as heterogeneity of learning difficulties students have, conflicts with the management team, dis-continuity in the educational support provided by assistant teachers due to the high turnover. Forms of resistance and individual and group actions, aimed to devise strategies to deal with the problems appearing in the process, were highlighted. We concluded that the intensive recovery policy, as it is conceived, fails to achieve its purposes, which leads to the need to critically analyze the multiple factors involved in producing and perpetuating non-learning in schools and the way the learning recovery systems are operated.