Representações epistemológicas sobre o Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Superior - SINAES: o que revelam os estudos no Brasil (2008-2018)

Abstract

This study is situated on the border of the tensions between regulation and emancipation understood in the general debate of higher education policies. It aims to analyze the existing epistemological representations in the production of knowledge about SINAES. We opted for the dialectical historical materialist research approach, as we understand that there is a need to correlate empirical knowledge with epistemic structures in order to give consistency to the meanings found in the development of the investigation. It is a qualitative research, fulfilled through documentary research, the intellectual productions arising from postgraduate programs (theses and dissertations) of universities located in the Midwest (UnB), North (UFPA), Northeast (UFC), Southeast (UNICAMP) and South (UFRGS), in a time setting from 2008 to 2018. The methodological perspective was based on the meta-research. As a main result, we highlig: The analyzed works give notes and contextualization of the evaluation in the global plot, however the epistemological representations of the analyzed productions reveal the directive uncertainties that characterized and still characterize the Brazilian higher education and the current contemporary educational crisis in the global context; although it is noticeable in the productions a real knowledge about the mechanisms of regulation and emancipation in the context of SINAES, we were not able to perceive, beyond that, an interaction for new representations and perspectives about SINAES.