ARTICLE IN PRESS

Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966

www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Democratizing school authority: Brazilian teachers’ perceptions

of the election of principals
John P. Myers
University of Pittsburgh, 5108 Posvar Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
Received 12 November 2006; received in revised form 17 September 2007; accepted 28 September 2007

Abstract

The idea of collective decision making in schools has been a popular democratic educational reform model. One of its
claims is that participation in school decision making empowers teachers and improves teaching. This research investigates
this claim by exploring seven teachers’ experiences with a unique democratic school reform in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the
election of principals by teachers, students, parents, and staff. Results showed that the elections reshaped the school
authority relations, resulting in greater freedom for teachers to introduce democratic teaching methods, while articulating
the school as a democratic institution and teachers as citizens.
r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: School democratization; Collective decision making; Teacher empowerment; Brazilian education

1. Introduction in schools between teachers and principals (Muijs &

The idea of collective decision making in schools,
in which teachers, students, and community mem-
bers collaborate with administrators to set school
policy and to determine the curriculum, has been a
popular democratic reform model in North America
since the 1980s. One of the central claims is that
participation in school decision making empowers
and professionalizes teachers (and students), which
in turn produces better teaching and learning
(Lipman, 1997; Reed, 2000; Wan, 2005; Weiss,
1993; Zeichner, 1991). This type of empowerment
recognizes teachers as key actors in the process of
educational change by giving them more intellectual
freedom, thereby changing the power relationships
Tel.: +1 412 648 7317 (office).
E-mail address: myersjp@pitt.edu
Harris, 2006). Much of the literature on collective
decision making in schools, however, is from the
field of school administration and has accordingly
focused on the beliefs, practices, and experiences of
principals.
Teachers’ experiences with educational reform
have often been overlooked but are now recognized
as critical to their implementation and success
(Lieberman & Miller, 2004; Smyth, 2003; Villegas
Reimers & Reimers, 1996). To date, the research
literature on teachers’ experiences with reforms has
emphasized teachers’ perspectives on and emotions
about reform (e.g., Van Veen & Sleegers, 2006)
or the negative consequences of reforms on teachers
and teaching, particularly with high-stakes
testing and the No Child Left Behind policy (e.g.,
Sunderman et al., 2004), typically paying little
attention to the effect on teaching. Here, I focus

0742-051X/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2007.09.012
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
on teacher empowerment specific to the literature
on participation in school decision making as a key
part of democratic schooling.1
My approach to this research was also informed
by critical perspectives on the notion of teacher
participation and agency in schools. A critical
approach sees empowerment as against, or in spite
of, the administration and school structure, drawing
on sociological concepts such as resistance and
agency. One strand of this literature focuses on
teacher agency and bottom-up efforts to change
schools independent of, and sometimes in conflict
with, the administration (Garcia, 2002; McLaren &
Farahmandpur, 2001). They portray the school
system as oppressive and position teachers as the
key actors in the democratization of schooling,
arguing that they should be activists working for
social change. Teacher empowerment is also part of
the debate over the teachers’ role spurred by
market-oriented reforms, which have been criticized
for portraying teachers as part of the problem and
for reducing their work to the technical preparation
of students for standardized testing (Majhanovich,
2002).
Electing the school principal is a particularly
interesting case of participation in school decision
making because it provides teachers with direct
decision-making power with significant implications
for teachers’ professional practices. This reform also
adds an alternative perspective to the portrayal of
school authority in developing countries as pre-
dominantly authoritarian and rarely allowing tea-
chers to participate in decision making (Oplatka,
2004). The elections have the potential to realize two
dimensions of teacher empowerment: (1) more equal
relations of power by re-forming the relationship of
power between teachers and principals and modifies
teachers’ role within the school structure and (2)
personal qualities, in the sense that empowerment
can also work as an individual quality or attribute
that provides teachers with greater intellectual
freedom (see Marks & Louis, 1999). As with other
democratic school reforms, however, it is unclear
whether, and to what extent, these elections improve
1
There are, however, a range of meanings for empowerment.
The World Bank in working with empowerment for poor
populations defines it as ‘‘self determined change’’ through ‘‘the
process of enhancing the capacity of individuals or groups to
make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions
and outcomes.’’ See Narayan-Parker (2005) for conceptual and
evaluative approaches to empowerment from a range of
disciplines.
953
the quality of education and positively affect
teachers’ professional work. While there is evidence
that the elections have improved student perfor-
mance to some extent (Barros & Mendonc- a, 1998;
Grindle, 2004), there is less understanding of why
this happens, particularly in terms of the teachers’
own voices.
In light of the aforementioned issues, in this study
I aim to address two primary research questions:
(1) Do teachers feel more empowered in their
professional practices due to the elections?
(2) What are teachers’ perceptions of the effect of
the elections on their own teaching practice and
efforts to improve their schools?
In order to answer these questions, this research
investigates teachers in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in
schools that elect the principal. Porto Alegre is
located in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost
state of Brazil along the border with Argentina. I
examined a case study of seven teachers who had
participated in these elections.2 I chose to study
activist social studies teachers who were interested
in democratic teaching methods because I expected
that these teachers would more likely take advan-
tage of empowerment opportunities to work for
pedagogical and curricular change in their schools.
Also, in the past, teachers’ lack of experience with
democratic practices in schooling and teachers’
authoritarian dispositions were found to be barriers
to participatory reforms in Brazil (Xavier, Sobrin-
ho, & Marra, 1994), suggesting that experience with
democracy would contribute positively to such
efforts.
As several researchers (Leech et al., 2003; Lip-
man, 1997) have pointed out, diverse contexts of
teacher participation produce different outcomes,
suggesting a need to study a range of practices that
purport to create teacher empowerment. I argue
that these teachers did take advantage of the
intellectual freedom provided to them via the
elections to adapt democratic principles to the en-
acted curriculum, which was supported by close
communication and association among the teachers
of like educational and political visions (see Durst,
2005). I further argue that the elections reshaped the
relations of authority in these schools with these
teachers. Lastly, I make the case that the elections
2
The names of teachers, administrators, and schools have been
changed to protect their anonymity.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
954 J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
built a closer connection between democratic
politics and schooling, which articulated the school
as a democratic institution and teachers as citizens.
2. Framework and review of literature
2.1. Participation in school decision making
A key principle of democratic education for some
scholars is the belief that democracy is learned most
completely by practising it in all areas of life (e.g.,
Gutmann, 1987). In terms of the educational
system, educators have argued that the school, as
a microcosm of society, should have some of the
characteristics of a democratic community (Dewey,
1915; Parker, 2003; Paro, 2000) although they have
diverse beliefs about which characteristics are
appropriate for schools. Teacher empowerment
and participation decision making have prevailed
within democratic education circles as an antidote
to the current neoliberal paradigm of schooling as a
market and of education as preparation for employ-
ment (Gandin & Apple, 2002). However, these
approaches have different rationales, some of
which make teacher professionalization and im-
proving school performance their main purposes,
rather than the democratization of schooling
(Weiss, 1993).
There are diverse areas of school decision making
in which teachers participate (Leech et al., 2003).
The most common of these areas are in curriculum
and instruction decision making (e.g., Durst, 2005;
Westheimer, 1998), in school governance (Bauch &
Goldring, 1998), and in school restructuring (e.g.,
Lipman, 1997; McCowan, 2003). In her founda-
tional work, Weiss (1995) outlined a variety of
reasons to support the claim that teacher empower-
ment through participation in school decision-
making will improve classroom practices:
a. that teachers’ participation leads to better
decisions because teachers know the students
better than the administrators do;
b. that teachers have more interest in students and
student achievement because they have daily
contact in the classroom;
c. that teachers have less interest than principals in
bureaucratic controls or personal reputation;
d. that having a voice unleashes teachers’ creativity;
and
e. that taking part in decisions enhances teachers’
professional status.
The suggestion in several of these reasons is
that teachers’ proximity to students and to their
learning provides them with better insights. This
position assumes that teachers are being held back
by administrative routines and that they hold
untapped pedagogical and curricular knowledge
that they cannot currently implement in their
classrooms.
The terms empowerment and participation, how-
ever, have been appropriated and used for such a
variety of purposes that it has begun to lose its
meaning. One reason has been the exaggerated
claims to empowerment made by organizations and
the frequent use of claims to empowerment through
participatory practices to legitimate hegemonic and
market-oriented management practices (Wendt,
2001). In particular, the overuse of the term has
obscured its meaning from the emancipatory sense
that educators such as Paulo Freire (1973) have
developed. The discourse of participation has been
criticized as tokenism and as a tool for cooptation
that gives the appearance and sound of empower-
ment but in practice falls short (Abers, 2000;
Anderson, 1998; Arnstein, 1969; Cooke & Kothari,
2001). Some participatory approaches are designed
to create consensus on government policies and to
please constituencies, referred to as ‘‘pseudo’’ or
‘‘partial’’ participation (Pateman, 1970). Indeed,
teacher participation in school decision making is
viewed skeptically by some researchers because
teachers are part of a ‘‘culture of isolation’’ and
assumed to be uninterested in collective political
activities (Gratch, 2001, p. 133; Griffin, 1995). Thus,
my goal is to examine the claims of empowerment
by re-focusing the term back to this original
meaning.
As this review has pointed out, democratic school
reforms may appear to change relations of power
between administration and teachers, but in practice
this is not always the case. Now I turn to the specific
context of democratic education reform in Brazil to
see how the educational system has been democra-
tized and to examine previous findings on the
election of school principals.
2.2. Democratic educational reform in Brazil
Efforts to democratize schooling in Brazil
took place in step with political democratization
during the 1980s and 1990s following the return to
democracy in Brazil in 1985 after two decades
of military rule (Gorostiaga Derqui, 2001; Silva,
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
2006).3 The first election for principals in Brazil
occurred in 1982 (Silva, 2006) and were followed by
a variety of school projects based on democratic
participation (e.g., Lima, 2000). The decentraliza-
tion of school authority was implemented to combat
the existing authoritarian policies, for which the
election of principals marked the ‘‘specificity of the
Brazilian experience of decentralization’’ (Borges,
2004, p. 84; Marques, 2006). Public education
reform has been heavily scrutinized because it is
one of the key arenas in Brazil in which the
inclusion of marginalized populations can be
addressed (Gentili & McCowan, 2003; O’Cadiz,
Wong, & Torres, 1998), although some scholars
consider references to democracy in the Brazilian
educational reforms to be superficial, instead
claiming that competitive, economic reforms are
the actual aims (Wong & Balestino, 2003). Men-
donc- a (2001) explained this in terms of a tension
between Brazil’s recent democratic reforms and its
authoritarian structures:
The reaction of the Brazilian education systems
to the imperative of the Federal Constitution of
1988 to implement democratic administration as
a principle of public education highlights the
permanent tension in which the Brazilian state
exists, between modernization and the archaism
of its structures. The tension reveals itself in the
struggle between the direction of the State
toward bureaucratization, imposed by legal-
rational norms, and the permanence of patrimo-
nial values, imposed by the tradition rooted in
politics and customs. It reveals the separation
between the intention and the gesture [of the
policies]y
This observation points out the difficulty of achiev-
ing the aims of democratic education reform in
practice within a patronage context. In relation to
this research, this insight questions the extent to
which the election of principals as a democratic
reform can have a truly democratizing effect rather
than act as tokenism or cooptation.
The Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 began
the reform process by establishing a legal basis for
3 experience that includes all aspects of life in
Although Brazilian democracy has been described as un-
consolidated in terms of its partial implementation of democratic
ideals (Kingstone & Power, 2000), its democratic system has not
collapsed as some scholars predicted. Democracy was restored in
1985 after the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Before this
restoration, however, there had been only 21 years of democracy
in Brazil’s history (1934–1937 and 1946–1964).
955
public participation in educational policies. Another
key legislation was the 1996 National Educational
Law (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educac- ão
Nacional, no. 9.394/96, or LDB), a sweeping
measure authorized by the 1988 Constitution that
was created through a process involving the
participation of educators and civil society organi-
zations (Hall, 2003; Minister of Education and
Culture, 1996). The LDB can be seen in the context
of educational reform across Latin America during
the 1990s that aimed to increase the accountability
of educational systems and to promote school
autonomy through decentralization (Fischman &
Gvirtz, 2001). This legislation had several significant
effects on secondary education (Minister of Educa-
tion and Culture, 1996): (a) the re-articulation of the
educational jurisdictions of the federal, state, and
municipal levels; (b) the creation of national
curricular standards and of a national evaluation
system that includes the National Secondary Edu-
cation Exam; (c) the separation of vocational
training from secondary education; and, most
relevant to this research, (d) the democratization
of school governance.
Reform efforts were also made to democratize the
curriculum. Two mechanisms under the mandate of
the LDB guided the reform of the secondary
curriculum: (a) the 1999 National Curricular Guide-
lines for Secondary Education4 (Parâmetros Curri-
culares Nacionais Ensino Médio) and (b) the
National Curricular Directives (Diretrizes Curricu-
lares Nacionais). The themes of citizenship and
preparation for work, which are outlined in the
LDB (Article 2), are the foundation of the curricular
guidelines for the human sciences. The document
refers specifically to citizenship:
Secondary Education, as the final stage of Basic
Education, must count the exercise of citizenship
among its indispensable elements and not just in
the political sense of formal citizenship, but also
in the perspective of social citizenship, extending
to work relations, among other social rela-
tionsy. One should not lose sight that citizen-
ship must not be faced in Secondary Education
just as an abstract concept but as a lived
society. (Minister of Education and Culture,
1999)
4
The National Curriculum Guidelines for Secondary Educa-
tion followed the National Curricular Guidelines for Primary
Education published in 1996.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
956 J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
However, because the guidelines are not legally
mandated, states, municipalities, and teachers are
able to adapt or ignore them.
2.3. The election of principals
The principal in Brazil has traditionally been a
source of patronage for politicians to distribute to
their supporters for electoral gain and this remained
widespread even after the transition to democracy in
the 1980s (Plank, 1996). Principals were indebted to
the politicians that awarded them their positions,
which put schools under the influence of the
bargaining and competition of partisan politics.
With politically appointed principals, school admin-
istration was typically authoritarian and elitist
(Borges, 2007) that centralized control and re-
stricted teacher participation in decision making
and their ability to organize in groups (Silva, 2006).
The election of principals was designed to reduce
the influence of politicians on the management
and running of schools although some elected
principals have also used authoritarian management
(Paro, 2001).
The election of school principals is provided for
in the Federal Constitution of 1988, which in Article
206 provided for ‘‘democratic participation in the
public school.’’ Government and social movement
efforts to implement the democratic governance of
schools have emphasized participation as a major
approach (McCowan, 2006; Mendonc- a, 2001; Paro,
1996). This law was later reinforced in Articles 3
and 14 of the LDB as a fundamental principle of
public education. The elections, it should be noted,
are only one aspect of what is seen as the process of
the democratization of school authority, which also
includes the construction of a political–pedagogical
project (or mission), School Councils, and partici-
patory planning (Borges, 2004; Minister of Educa-
tion and Culture, 1998). However, this clause has
been interpreted in various ways and presently each
municipality has the right to decide how to select
principals (see Ferreira, 2000). For example, in 1998
elections were the predominant form of selecting
principals in nine of the 27 Brazilian states
(including the Federal District) while five states
used selective elections (Dourado & Costa, 1998). In
1999, 70% of municipal school principals in Brazil
were politically appointed, while only 7% were
elected by the community (Waiselfisz & Silva, 2000).
Similar to the North American literature on
collective school decision-making, research on the
election of principals in Brazil has primarily
focused on school improvement and reform
(Grindle, 2004), the experiences of the principal
(Castro, 1992), or student achievement (Barros &
Mendonc- a, 1998), while paying little attention
to its effect on teaching practices. One of the
major research findings on the election of prin-
cipals in Brazil is that they have made principals
more independent from party politicians and
the tradition of patronage practices although
without eliminating these practices (Grindle, 2004).
For example, in his analysis of the research on
the election of school principals in the states of
Bahia, Ceará, and Minas Gerais, Borges (2007)
found that the elections led to greater accountability
of the principals to their constituencies and the
empowerment of parents and teachers through
participation in decision making. The elections have
also been found to support greater participation
from the school and local communities in the
running of schools (Paro, 2001). In this respect,
the reform has been successful at an institutional
level in changing the ways that state education
bureaucracies operate.
There are also several concerns associated with
the election of principals. Some research (e.g., Paro,
1996) has found that the election of principals can
lead to the corporatism of teachers who promote
their own interests over the interests of other
groups, such as parents. Second, the election of
principals has been criticized because of concerns
that they do not ensure the competency of the
principal (Mendonc- a, 2001), which occurred in the
state of São Paulo where merit-based public
competitions have been used (see ‘‘Diretores podem
ser eleitos por pais e alunos’’, 2007). Another
possibility is that the teachers who vote for the
unsuccessful candidate for principal may be dis-
empowered after the election, although there is little
research addressing such a situation.
Presently in Brazil, there are four primary
methods for the selection of principals: appoint-
ment, public competition, election, and selective
election (Mendonc- a, 2001). The appointment meth-
od is made by the government, typically according
to political interests. Public competitions are usually
decided by written exams open to any eligible
candidate. Candidates for selective elections are first
chosen through competitive written exams and then
voted on. The candidates for elections are chosen by
the school community and voted on by the school
community.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, of which Porto
Alegre is the capital, Article 206 was formally put
into practice through the enactment of the 1995
Law of Democratic Administration of Public
Education although elections for principals were
held in the state since the late 1980s (Castro, 1992).
This law interpreted the provision for democratic
participation as the election of principals and
outlined the process for such a reform although
other forms are used in the state (Dourado & Costa,
1998). As Castro (1992) noted, teachers and their
unions, rather than central policy makers, were the
impetus for the enactment of elections for principals
in Rio Grande do Sul, which was the result of a
major teachers’ strike in 1985. There have also been
parallel, municipal reforms in Porto Alegre that
emphasize the democratic governance of schools,
most notably the Citizen School (see Azevedo &
Schugurensky, 2005). The Participatory Budget, a
devolved mechanism that allows citizens to partici-
pate in decision making for the city budget for
infrastructure projects such as schools, also pro-
motes democratic participation (Nylen, 2003).
The duration of the term of the principal in Rio
Grande do Sul is for 3 years and there is no limit to
the number of re-elections. The requirements for
running in the election are as follows: (1) holds a
higher degree in education; (2) has substantial
experience in state public service; (3) is willing to
run for the position; (4) has a minimum of 3 years of
experience as a public school teacher; (5) is willing
to take professional development courses regarding
the job duties if elected; and (6) presents a plan of
action to implement in conjunction with the
community (Article 20 of the Law of Democratic
Administration of Public Education).
The entire school community is eligible to
participate in the election, according to the follow-
ing regulations: students in the fourth grade or who
are older than 12 years of age, parents of students
younger than 18, all teachers, and other school staff.
The teachers and staff count for one half of the total
vote while the students’ and parents’ combined vote
counts for the other half. Each school has two
separate ballet-boxes, one for the parents and
students and the other for teachers and school staff.
The purpose of the two boxes is to determine the
validity of the elections because there is a minimum
required participation of 30% of the parents/
students and 50% of the teachers/staff. If these
levels of participation are not met then a re-vote is
called for 8 days after the election.
957
Elections are generally held in October, shortly
before the end of the school year (the Brazilian
summer break runs from the middle of December
through February). The voting occurs during a
single day from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm. For each
election, there are tickets comprised of a principal
and vice-principal who announce their candidacy
and campaign together. Leading up to the elections,
each of the candidates present their proposals and
discuss their goals with the entire school commu-
nity. Identical to the Brazilian presidential election,
if one of the tickets does not receive a majority
(i.e., one vote over 50%) of the votes then a runoff
election is held between the top two candidates 15
days after the election. The winner takes office by
the end of the calendar year.
3. Methods
In this research, I utilized a collective case study
approach in order to capture the experiences of a
particular group of teachers. Following Stake (1995)
and Yin (2002), I considered this research a case
study that was bounded in terms of the research
participants (secondary, social studies teachers) and
by the three schools in which they worked. It is a
collective case study (Stake, 1995) in the sense that I
considered each of the teachers as individual cases
that together provide a broader and richer picture of
the influence of the elections of principals on
teachers, although without claims to generalization
for all Brazilian teachers or all schools.
3.1. Participating teachers and schools
Seven teachers were selected to participate in this
study. Four of the teachers were female and three
male (see Table 1 below). All of the teachers were
experienced in the classroom, averaging 17 years of
teaching experience. Five of the teachers were
Caucasian, one was Asian, and one was African-
Brazilian. All of them taught History and/or
Geography with the exception of Marcelo, who
taught English language and Portuguese language
and Literature.
The teachers taught at three schools in Porto
Alegre (see Table 1 below). Four teachers worked
only at Colégio das Américas, one was only at
Colégio Integrado do Sul, one was at Colégio da
Perı́feria, and one teacher worked at Colégio das
Américas and Colégio da Perı́feria. Colégio das
Américas is an urban high school that is well-known
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
958 J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966

Table 1
Profiles of teachers

Teacher Gender Age Years of Ethnicity Teaching subjects School

teaching

Célia Female 40 5 Caucasian History Colégio das Américas

Henrique Male 56 28 Caucasian History Colégio das Américas
Isabel Female 37 18 Caucasian History, Geography Colégio das Américas
and Literacy
Milton Male 40 15 Asian Geography Colégio das Américas
Marcelo Male 37 10 Caucasian English and Colégio das Américas and
Portuguese language Colégio da Perı́feria
Sérgio Male 40 18 Caucasian History Colégio da Perı́feria
Cintia Female 46 25 African-Brazilian Geography and Colégio Integrado do Sul
History

in Porto Alegre for its prominent alumni as well as
for its politically active teachers and students, some
of whom were abducted during the military
government (Vier Loss, 2001). The school has
morning, afternoon, and night shifts. Colégitho
Integrado do Sul is a small, urban middle and high
school with only an afternoon shift. Colégitho da
Perı́feria is a high school in a poor, suburban district
of the city with only a night shift.
3.2. Case identification
The teachers were identified through snowball
sampling (Patton, 2002), in which municipal educa-
tional officials recommended an initial set of two
‘‘contact’’ teachers. These teachers then recom-
mended other teachers. The criteria that I used to
identify the teachers were: (1) expressed interest in
democratic teaching and (2) participated in educa-
tional and political activities. The rationale for these
criteria is that I wanted to identify teachers who
would recognize, and see as an opportunity, their
empowerment for changing their teaching. I ex-
pected that these teachers would hold the deepest
insights into their empowerment within their
schools and its effect on their teaching.
3.3. Data collection and analysis
The sources of data that I collected for this
research were interviews with teachers and admin-
istrators, classroom observations, and field notes.
The interviews with teachers comprised the primary
source for answering the research questions because
my focus was on the teachers’ experiences with the
elections rather than with the elections themselves. I
then used the other data sources, especially the
interviews with administrators and observations, to
corroborate, challenge, and revise my representa-
tions of the teachers’ statements.
I conducted all of the interviews in Portuguese
directly with the teachers. The interview process
consisted of two stages of semi-structured interviews
that encouraged the teachers to openly discuss
their experiences. The interviews lasted from 60 to
120 min and included questions about the influence
of the elections on their teaching practices and
relations with colleagues. The second interviews,
which lasted 30–60 min, took place 10 months later
on a second visit to Porto Alegre to follow up on the
original analysis and to check my translations and
analysis with the teachers. A professional tran-
scribed the interviews into Portuguese while I was in
Brazil, after which I translated the transcriptions
into English and checked them for accuracy with
native Portuguese speakers.
For the observations, I attended between two and
five classes for each of the teachers. I used an
observation form to take notes, paying particular
attention to the way that they related to the
teachers’ assertions about the ways that the
elections influenced their teaching. The field notes
were collected during the time that I spent with the
teachers in and outside of the schools, such as at
teachers union meetings and in the school cafeteria.
My coding of the interviews was guided by the
constant comparative method, which involves care-
fully reading the transcripts to identify themes
across the data (Strauss, 1987). Once I identified
themes by highlighting specific passages, I then
re-read the transcripts in their entirety to look
for discrepancies, contradictions, or confirmations.
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J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
This process led to several revisions of the codes.
Once completed, I then organized the codes into
relevant categories that described the general focus
of the codes, for example the codes that related
specifically to their teaching. I completed the
analysis by calculating and recording the frequen-
cies of each coded theme according to the partici-
pating teachers.
3.4. Limitations of this research
There are several limitations to this research that
need to be mentioned. First, there were no teachers
in the sample who were strongly opposed to the
school administrations. My assumption here is that
teachers and administrators who share beliefs about
politics and education would be more likely to
cooperate and to have better relations. In other
words, this research does not provide evidence
about teachers whose candidate lost the election,
such as whether they would feel as empowered and
act in the same ways as teachers who supported the
winning candidate. Indeed, it is plausible that
teachers who did not vote for the winning candidate
would receive different treatment. Another limita-
tion is that the democratic-oriented teachers in this
sample are uncommon in Brazil and the rest of
Latin America (Avalos, 1990; Bartlett, 2005; Portela
et al., 1998; Villegas Reimers, 1994) and therefore
are not typical of teachers’ experiences with elected
administration. The use of a bounded, case study
research design, however, attempts to address this
issue by not making generalization a goal of the
study and by focusing it on the experiences of a
specific group of teachers.
4. Research findings
I present three ways that the teachers’ experiences
with democratic school administration shaped their
instructional practices. In Sections 4.1 and 4.2, I
focus on the role of the elections for empowering
teachers to have greater autonomy with the
curriculum and their teaching practices and to work
collaboratively to develop education goals for their
schools. This situation allowed them to implement
democratic teaching practices, such as critical
discussion and dialog, consciousness raising about
social inequalities, sharing power with students by
allowing their participation in the co-construction
of curriculum, and engaging parents in school and
classroom activities (for a more extensive frame-
959
work of democratic teaching practices, see Smyth,
2000). In Section 4.3, I broaden the scope of my
analysis to the ways that the school elections
connect teaching and schools with local democratic
politics.
4.1. Democratic school culture
All of the teachers in this research asserted that
the election of principals supported a climate that
gave teachers more autonomy, respect, and free-
dom. The teachers claimed that they were listened to
more often in school decision making and felt that
they could more openly express their viewpoint on
school issues as well as in their classrooms without
fear of being reprimanded. The teachers and
administrators explained this effect in terms of a
change in the school culture.5 The concept of school
culture has been especially important for practices
of democratic schooling, which advocate for a
school culture and administration that model
democratic values and practices, and promote
democratic relationships between teachers, admin-
istrators, and students (e.g., Apple & Beane, 1999).
Luı́za, the principal of the morning shift at
Colégio das Américas, commented on the cultural
change at the school since elections were estab-
lished, comparing it to the past when administrators
were political appointees of the Ministry of Educa-
tion. She described this change:
The past administrators never went into the
teachers’ lounge. They had a different school
culture and this was often criticized because a
school that was supposed to be democratic, how
could it do this?... We implemented a total
change. The administration offices are now open
to teachers, to any teacher, and also to the
students.
Luı́za described democratic administration in terms
of increased transparency of, and access to, the
administration for teachers and students.
Milton, a geography teacher at Colégio das
Américas, also suggested that the elections signaled
a break from the past. He described the effect that
5
With its attention to interpreting values and beliefs, norms
and patterns of behavior, and systems of relationships, school
culture mediates teachers’ autonomy as actors within schools and
the personal and interpersonal meanings that they make of their
school experiences (Prosser, 1999).
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
960 J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
elections had on teachers’ relationships with admin-
istrators:
Here in Rio Grande do Sul, in the state school
and the municipal school, this [the teachers’
relationship with the administration] has changed
a lot because there is an election for the principal.
So the administrators are much more liberal, you
know, much more democratic, more open, and
more receptive to change. But in the past it was
difficult in the time of Neuza Canabarro,6 in the
time of Jair Soares,7 there were many principals
that were very conservative, very difficult to get
along with.
Milton associated appointed principals with
authoritarian and undemocratic administrative
practices and change with democratization. Célia,
a history teacher at Colégio das Américas, sup-
ported Milton’s claim, pointing out that elected
principals are more likely to support teachers. While
discussing her efforts to make changes in her school,
Célia commented on the relations teachers have
with elected principals:
Sometimes, certainly we are called by the
administration and we can get a warning. Today,
with the election of principals, this is less likely
because they are elected by the teachers. So it’s
more difficult. But when the principals are
appointed by the Secretary of Education, they
arrive as outsiders and then it depends on the
political moment.
Several teachers remarked that the election of
administrators created a more collegial relationship
between teachers and administrators in contrast to
the adversarial one that existed before the elections.
Célia made this point:
With the elected administration, it [the school
culture] improved because now we feel more
freedom to make demands because we chose
these people. So the administrators have a
greater obligation because they know that this
group [of teachers] chose them. And this provides
more freedom to speak, to ask for change, and to
make things function in a way that considers the
majority. It doesn’t mean that it happens exactly
6
Former State Secretary of Education of Rio Grande do Sul.
7
Former State Governor of Rio Grande do Sul.
how we wish. It’s not perfect. But it is a road for
improvement.
All of the teachers believed that they were able to
express their views more openly on school issues
and to work for change within their schools.
While the election of principals did not include
mechanisms for teacher participation in school
decision making, it did allow teachers to move
freely express their views and to more actively
influence school policies by making requests, voi-
cing their opinions, and bringing attention to
problems in the school.
4.2. Empowered teaching
By creating a democratic school culture, the
elections also gave teachers greater autonomy and
freedom over the curriculum and their teaching.
There was a strong consensus among the teachers
that the elections contributed to their control over
the curriculum and teaching, which is considered a
key to empowering teachers as intellectuals (Smyth,
2000). At Colégio Integrado do Sul, teachers
interested in improving the school worked together
and with the school administration, which Cintia
attributed to the elections’ improvement of relations
between teachers and the administration. Cintia
described the way that she and a few other teachers
pushed for the inclusion of an anti-racist program in
the school:
In my school, some teachers are now looking for
this type of work [anti-racist] that I told you
about. Still not everybody but there is a group
that is trying to do this type of work that I am
doing. So we come and ask the school adminis-
tration to discuss these issues. We are trying to
find space to make changes in those areas that we
think are not functioning. We don’t succeed in
everything that we want. But we are looking for
this space slowly and patiently so that we can
evaluate what is wrong and change it.
The school, in Cintia’s view, did not sufficiently
address issues of inequality as a part of its
curriculum. She believed that organizing with a
group of teachers at her school could influence the
administration to address this issue.
The teachers believed that they were more
autonomous and could also choose the curricular
materials and textbooks that they used in their
classrooms. Milton described the influence that
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
the teachers in Colégio das Américas had on the
curriculum:
We have a great deal of liberty to choose
organize the content, themes, issues, strategies,
and classes. I have complete liberty to organize
[my class]. In reality, the freedom is not in the
curriculum, you know, but in the manner in
which you understand the curriculum, how you
interpret theoretically what you are going to
teach.
Milton made the point that he is free to interpret the
curriculum from a perspective that he chooses, a far
cry from the ‘‘teacher-proof’’ curricula proposed in
neoliberal education reforms (Darling-Hammond,
1997). Célia also made this point, explaining that
teachers in her department paid attention to the
theoretical perspective of the textbooks when
making their selections. She commented: ‘‘For
example, a teacher can adapt a type of textbook
that uses one focus on history and another [teacher]
can use a different focus.’’ Célia then described how
she and other history teachers at Colégio das
Américas chose a textbook with a Marxist inter-
pretation of history that focused on class conflict
and modes of production but that each teacher
could choose whether to use the textbook.
The effect of the elections worked in conjunction
with the National Curricular Guidelines to support
greater freedom for teachers in choosing the
curriculum and teaching methods. For example,
the teachers’ discussion of controversial political
issues with their students, which they believed to be
a needed, and uncommon, dimension in social
studies education, was supported by the adminis-
tration of Colégio das Américas, as Célia pointed
out:
The administrators like it here [teachers speaking
about political issues]y There exists a great lack
of interest by teachers for their profession.
Principally in this period of political openness
in Brazil, whoever talks about political themes
that are also being covered by the National
Curricular Guidelines, this is good for the school.
Presently, the administrators like it if you to
speak about these themes because many teachers
are uninterested in teaching. They are there only
for employment, and they are leaving the
profession.
961
Célia made the connection between reform efforts
and a political context supportive of progressive,
democratic ideals.
The democratic culture in their schools also made it
easier for the teachers to use new pedagogical
approaches that they were already interested in. The
elections empowered the teachers in the sense that
they had the liberty to teach ‘‘against the grain’’
(Cochran-Smith, 1991). This freedom to teach and
acceptance of democratic methods is significant in
Brazil where there is an authoritarian tradition of
teaching (e.g., Villegas Reimers, 1994). Isabel, how-
ever, noted that the majority of teachers in Colégio
das Américas remained traditional: ‘‘Now we have a
group of colleagues that have a very traditional
pedagogical posture and so it is very difficult to
discuss [new pedagogical methods] with them.’’ This
situation suggests that the elections freed the teachers
to teach as they wished but did not lead them toward
using any specific teaching methods.
The teachers used a range of democratic teaching
methods in the classroom that they did not use as
often before the elections, which I have analyzed in
depth elsewhere (Myers, 2007). One example is their
emphasis on discussion in the classroom. All of the
teachers used some form of discussion in their
teaching, an approach that would have raised
suspicion with the politically appointed schools
administrators. For example, Milton described his
approach:
It’s good to have a contrary position, you know,
I like to have some students debate the points I
make and affirm. And I to the extent possible
react trying to explore, trying to find the right
question, to see if it possible to bring new
questions and new problems for us to contem-
plate. It depends a lot on the moment and on the
issue that we are studying at the moment.
The school culture facilitated these teachers to use
teaching methods that are otherwise uncommon in
secondary schools in Brazil and that several of these
teachers noted were uncommon in their schools. In
fact, several of the teachers in this research
commented on the traditional approaches of their
colleagues.
The democratic school culture also facilitated
teachers’ collective by to influence educational
practices in their schools. Cintia, a geography
teacher at Colégio Integrado do Sul, and a few of
her colleagues advocated for making the curriculum
more responsive to the students’ experiences and for
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
962 J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
involving the parents in school activities. She
described their efforts:
It [the teachers’ relationship with the school
administration] is a very peaceful relationship.
Nevertheless, there is a group that I am a part of
in which we try to make the administration alert
to what is not functioning in the school in order
to make changes. It is primarily in this way that
the group that I am a part of tries to get the
student to be heard and to bring the family inside
of the school. We haven’t succeeded yet in
everything that we are thinking about but we
try to present this to the administration.
The election of the principal allowed teachers to be
heard and made them more confident that their
proposals would be heard. The support of the
administration also had an effect on the teachers’
perception that they were free to discuss controver-
sial issues in their classrooms, which they considered
an important democratic teaching practice (see
Parker & Hess, 2001).
Another example is that Célia, Marcelo, and
Milton organized an assembly at Colégio das
Américas with speakers about the Free Trade
Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) in anticipation
of a national plebiscite on the issue. Attendance at
the forum was voluntary for students and those who
chose to attend were released from their classes. For
these teachers, who believed that the school was a
place for discussing political issues and to build an
informed and participatory citizenry, the elections
provided an opening for their efforts. They com-
mented that such an event would have been
impossible under an appointed principal because
teachers would not be permitted to organize events
of a political nature or that were perceived as
controversial in any respect.
4.3. Linkages with partisan politics
The election of principals brought democratic
politics into the schools and teachers into demo-
cratic politics. Being a teacher became, on a daily or
at least weekly basis, consciously political for these
teachers as they were aware of the ways that the
elections shaped their experiences at school. As a
result, the school operated less as an isolated
institution and became more closely linked with
their communities. This happened primarily due to
the mobilization for elections around candidates for
the principal, which in these schools reflected
political party divisions. For example, all of the
teachers in this research supported principals with
similar political views, which has been found in
other studies to be one of the major criteria teachers
use in the elections for principals (Castro, 1992). In
this sense, the principals were also politicians who
worked to please their constituents in order to
maintain their position. Marcelo, a language and
literature teacher at Colégio das Américas and
Colégio da Perı́feria, noted that the principal in
Colégio da Perı́feria supported efforts by teachers
that would help to re-elect her. He described how
the principal supported his efforts to get the
municipal government to fund school building
improvements:
As the principals here are elected, my principal
depends on the support of the community. We
were awarded new construction worth 930 thou-
sand reais [approximately $450,000]. We had a
school made of wood and it was constructed in
brick. The principal that achieves this, certainly,
has a good chance to perpetuate herself in power
because they can be re-elected more than once.
You can have two mandates as principal, stay one
mandate as vice-principal and then return again [as
school principal]. So there is interest in making
material advances in order to stay in powery it
shows service to the community.
Another explanation for this mutual support is that
the teachers and the administrators in this research
shared beliefs in progressive politics. There was no
sharp professional division between the teachers and
the administrators. While most of their involvement
occurred away from the schools, they still spent some
time on partisan activities near and within the
schools. For example, in the weeks preceding the
national and local elections in October of 2002, Luı́za
often spent her lunch hour with a few teachers and
students campaigning in front of the school. This
scene was recorded in my field notes:
In the afternoon, Luı́za was on the corner by the
school with a few teachers and students waving
Workers’ Party8 flags at the passing cars. This
seems to happen often around the city, especially
8
The Workers’ Party, or Partido dos Trabalhadores, is a social
democratic party founded in 1980 by a coalition of labor unions,
community organizations, and leftist intellectuals (Nylen, 2003).
Its candidates were elected Mayor of the municipal government
in Porto Alegre for 4 consecutive terms, from 1988 to 2004,
including during the field research for this study.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
with the petistas [members of the Workers’
Party], who are the most active party campaign-
ers. I was surprised to see teachers and students
campaigning together, and during the school day
just outside of the school.
Luı́za’s actions highlight the openness of party
politics within the public education system and the
ways that teachers and administrators comprehend
their roles as professionals and political actors as
compatible.
The elections also highlighted the presence of
democratic politics in the schools in terms of the
differences in beliefs and political party allegiances
of teachers by bringing it out into the open. There
were factions among the teachers according to their
political beliefs and parties. In this sense, electoral
politics influenced the relationships between tea-
chers in schools and at times this produced conflict
between teachers. Isabel commented on this situa-
tion at Colégio das Américas:
Here the groups don’t mix with each other very
much. In reality it’s like this. They [conservative
teachers] don’t like to talk a lot with us [the
teachers affiliated with the Workers’ Party]. Of
course in moments like this when there are
assemblies and we are discussing issues here in
the school about the administration, teaching,
the school, then we meet. I’m saying that I won’t
discuss or meet when they are criticizing my
governor or my party. I’m not going to discuss
this issue with themy [because] it is difficult for
them to sit and tranquilly have a discussion.
Yet, she described how they were able to set
aside their party politics in order to work to-
gether in dealing with the administration on school
issues.
5. Conclusions
Empowerment for the teachers in Porto Alegre
was experienced as increased control over their
professional lives in terms of being able to teach in
the ways that they desired. These teachers believed
that the election of principals created a more
democratic school culture, which allowed them to
introduce novel teaching and curricular approaches
in their classrooms.
While the elections did not create specific
mechanisms for teachers to participate in day-to-
day school decision making, they did empower them
963
to influence school practices. The elections provided
an opening for the teachers to express their views
because the principals needed to listen to the
teachers in order to get re-elected. The teachers
thus felt greater confidence in their ability to
interact with principals about problems in their
schools and their desire to make changes. For
example, Cintia at Colégio Integrado do Sul did not
believe that the administration was doing all that it
could to address racial inequalities among the
students, but she did not fear repercussions for
suggesting changes because the administration was
elected. The elections did not manage all types
of conflict but it gave the teachers a sense of
empowerment, efficacy, and agency. At the same
time, teachers were better able to concentrate on
teaching and classroom matters because they were
not in conflict with the administration, as is often
the case in North America.
While the election of principals has the potential
to change and improve the quality of teaching and
learning, its influence is not clear-cut. This research
does not answer the question of how empowerment
works for teachers who are not already motivated to
improve their teaching. In this case, it seems that the
strongest effect of the election of principals is
the creation of a democratic climate that allows
reform and social change-minded teachers to act.
A related question is whether the changes instigated
by teachers would necessarily improve education.
What if, for example, teachers who were empowered
chose to push for more authoritarian teaching? The
seven teachers in this study were already committed
to democratic principles in education, which parti-
cularly in the Brazilian education context would not
be supported by all actors but is generally believed
to be a needed improvement. Thus, it seems that the
impact of empowerment in this case depends on
the pre-existing knowledge, capacities, and beliefs
of the teachers to enact meaningful educational
change.
Furthermore, while this article has focused on the
experience of teachers with school leadership re-
form, other work has pointed out the need to
consider the effect of such reform on students
and their participation in school management. As
Smyth (2006) has convincingly argued, if students’
voices, especially of minority youth, are not also
recognized in school reform then they are likely
to reject formal schooling. The implications are
that further research is needed on the notion
of empowerment in schools that includes the
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
964 J.P. Myers / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 952–966
perspectives and experiences of teachers, students,
parents, and principals.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the
election of principals should also be understood as
an experience of learning democracy for the entire
school community. It is itself a form of citizenship
education because it informally teaches some of the
values and procedures of democracy by taking part
in these activities. This feature follows the belief that
the best way to learn democratic citizenship is
through practising it in all aspects of life. By
becoming political actors within the school, these
Brazilian teachers have the opportunity to trans-
form undemocratic school practices and culture. In
this sense, the elections facilitate teachers’ empow-
erment as professionals and as citizens through a
process that is continuous within and outside of
schools.
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