SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF LEARNING by José Pacheco

‘Escola da Ponte simply showed that utopias can be realised. Ponte is, like any other, a place to arrive, to stay and to leave. A place where you deliberately and intentionally arrive to (with others!) make children happier. A place where some leave to take dream seeds to other places. A place where others leave, discreetly, to let the dream continue.’

‘Why publish another book?

I had decided to stop, I thought I would be practising redundancy, I was in danger of becoming a theorist. But life has taken me back to the school floor. A new generation of educators was inviting me to experiment with proposals that were in every way similar to those I had spent half a century working on.

The school crisis was continuing with no end in sight. More than a century had passed since the first warning signal was given at the beginning of the 20th century by the Scholasticists. Euripides, Anísio, Nise, Nilde, Agostinho, Irene, Freire and other great educators reinterpreted the Scholasanovist movement, but it was only in the 1960s that it took concrete form.’

José Pacheco holds a master’s degree in Educational Sciences from the University of Porto (Portugal).
Founder of Escola da Ponte in Portugal, a world reference in innovation.
He coordinated the ‘Fazer a Ponte’ project from 1976 to 2004, which won 1st prize in the ‘Innovative Experiences in Teaching Competition’ organised by the Ministry of Education.
He was a member of the National Education Council.
For his significant contribution to good quality education, he was awarded the ‘Commendation of the Order of Public Instruction’ by the Presidency of the Republic.
In 2005, with the title of notorious expert, he moved to Brazil. Since then, he has travelled the country, mobilising educators who believe in a transformative and democratic education. He accompanies numerous projects for a new education. Among them: EM Amorim Lima (SP), EE Campos Sales (SP), Projeto Âncora (SP) and CAP (DF).
At IBICT (Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology), as part of the Brasília 2060 Project – Strategic Plan for a Sustainable City, she coordinated research into indicators of good quality education in the Federal District.
At the Ministry of Education (MEC), he was a member of the Basic Education Innovation and Creativity Working Group.
He was a Gaia Brasil facilitator from 2009 to 2016.

He leads, organises and organises several of the assemblies of ‘Arca – Assembly of Networks of Learning Communities’, which has several international centres where parents, educators, teachers and intellectuals share and promote educational practices in a network, in a constant movement of innovation and reflection for an autonomous education that builds curricula. He is the author of numerous books and articles on education and a great promoter of democratic management.