The Public Discourse on Brazilian Education in the midst of Covid-19
This presentation seeks to characterize and analyze ongoing public debates about Brazilian education in the midst of Covid-19. To do so, it draws upon a qualitative and interpretive method of analyzing texts that is broadly referred to as discourse analysis – a form of textual analysis that takes into account the purposes and effects of different types of language, how beliefs and values are communicated, and how these beliefs are generated in ways that reflect or connect to the broader social and political context in which they are espoused. In particular, this report develops a discourse analysis of the communicative landscape surrounding Brazilian education and attempts to link what has recently been debated in Brazilian education to the broader landscape of Covid-19 and to a society that is struggling to recover the function of its most basic social institution – the educational system.
About
Melina Sherman is a research consultant at the Lemann Center and a postdoctoral researcher at New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge. She received her Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. Melina's research interests revolve around science, technology, health, and communication. At NYU she is currently working on a project examining the social life of Covid-19 in the United States and Brazil.