A pós-graduação no Brasil : história de uma tradição inventada

Abstract

Given that postgraduate education is the highest level of higher education in Brazil, which has its peculiarities and is yet seldom discussed in the field of educational history, the main objective of this research is to critically understand the history of postgraduate studies, in a historiographical context, within Brazilian universities. Thus, we have refuted existentanalyzes in the literature that affirm the anomaly of educational research in relation to postgraduate studies and established a concrete framework of its institutionalization in the 1960s, during the period of Military Dictatorship. Taking historical materialism as a theoretical framework, we deduce that the historical process of institutionalization of postgraduate education was effected in relation to the conditions of production and reproduction of the capitalist mode of production in the Brazilian society at a time when the conjunctural reconfiguration of our role in response to hegemonic relations necessitated modernization of the Brazilian society and, therefore, of its own university. Therefore, we defend the thesis that post-graduate education was instituted as an Invented Tradition in accordance with Hobsbawm´s perspective, which is considered a turning point in the 1960s in the history of Brazilian universities. The methodological procedures comprised a bibliographic research, a literature review and a documentary research. The main sources from which data was elicited for this research were legal texts, programs, projects, reports, interviews and newspapers articles. In addition, bibliographic productions were sourced given their relevance to the subject that was critically analyzed through the processes of problematization, analysis and synthesis.