This article discusses the role of educators in the process of establishing and implementing learning cycles and continued progression in the city and state public school networks of São Paulo in four different moments: in the 1967/1968 Reform, in the implementation of the Literacy Basic Cycle in 1983/1984, in the creation of the regime of continued progression in 1998 (state public network), and in the adoption of the learning cycles and continued progression in 1992 (city of São Paulo public network). It is assumed that the realization of public policies in education depends to a large extent upon the participation of their main protagonists - the educators. It is thus important to know how certain factors influence the conceptions and the actions of educators with respect to learning cycles and continued progression. We seek to understand how these factors interact to determine the conception, very common among educators, that learning cycles and continued progression are important for the democratization of schooling and learning, but that the material and institutional/pedagogical conditions to implement them are lacking. In that way, they contribute to deteriorate even further the quality of teaching. The goal here is to help clarifying one of the controversies surrounding learning cycles and continued progression: the resistance of educators in accepting and implementing this educational proposal.
Learning cycles; Continued progression; Educators; Factors
