Democratic governance and school community participation: tensions between the normative framework and participatory implementation in brazilian public schools

Abstract

This article examines the tensions between the constitutional principle of democratic governance in public education and the actual conditions for school community participation in Brazilian basic education. It is based on the observation that, although democratic governance has been established as a constitutional principle since 1988 and has subsequently been regulated by the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law, the National Education Plan, and, more recently, by Law No. 14,644/2023, its translation into substantive participatory practices remains uneven and incomplete. The main objective is to examine, through a bibliographic and documentary review, the historical and conceptual foundations of democratic governance, the legal framework governing it, and the principal mechanisms for school community participation, engaging critically with the literature that discusses the tensions between the democratic-participatory paradigm and the managerial paradigm in public educational administration. This qualitative study, based on bibliographic and documentary research, draws upon classical authors in the field of educational governance as well as contemporary scholarly literature indexed in peer-reviewed journals. The findings indicate that the institutional establishment of school councils, student councils, and school principal selection processes is not, by itself, sufficient to ensure effective participation, which depends on power relations, institutional culture, and the political education of the school community. The study concludes that democratic governance remains a contested horizon, challenged by the managerial rationality increasingly embedded in contemporary educational policies.