Permanent Faculty Member

Lattes: https://lattes.cnpq.br/1913716021055272

Adjunct Professor at the Department of Education and Society (DES) and the Graduate Program in Education, Contemporary Contexts, and Popular Demands (PPGEDUC) at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ). Holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Education from the Graduate Program in Education (PPGE) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). Holds a Bachelor’s and Teaching Degree in History from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF). Leader of the Research Group on State, Power, and Education Investigation Laboratory (LIEPE). Member of the International Gramsci Society of Brazil (IGS) and the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Gramscian Studies. Coordinator of the “Tubarões da Educação” column on the Esquerda On Line portal.

CONTACT
E-mail: rodrigo1281@yahoo.com.br

RESEARCH LINE
Line 2: Rodrigo de Azevedo Cruz Lamosa

RESEARCH GROUP
State, Power, and Education Investigation Laboratory (LIEPE)

RESEARCH PROJECTS

• Work and Health of Teachers in the State of Rio de Janeiro
  Period: (2023 – Present)
  Coordinator: Line 2 – Social Inequalities and Educational Policies

Description: This project results from an inter-institutional research initiative conducted in the state of Rio de Janeiro by a group of researchers, faculty members, and graduate and undergraduate students from various public higher education institutions. The project aims to analyze the working conditions and health of teachers working in municipal and state public school networks in Rio de Janeiro. The research will investigate the relationship between working conditions and processes and teachers’ health, identifying the forms and spectrum of illnesses, the ways in which psychological distress is managed within public education systems, and the individual and collective resistance efforts undertaken by teachers, unions, and movements.

The research will also examine differences and similarities within the public education system, considering both persistent elements and particularities of Rio de Janeiro’s school networks. The hypothesis guiding this study is that an ongoing process is altering both the forms of subjugation of teaching labor and the nature of teacher distress. This study employs a qualitative and exploratory approach, based on a literature review and a historiographical analysis of prior research conducted in Brazil on the relationship between work and teacher health.

Data collection will involve a triangulation of sources using three research instruments:
(a) an examination of official data on teachers’ health in public school networks through document analysis and searches in the Transparency Portal database;
(b) an online questionnaire distributed across the state of Rio de Janeiro in partnership with the State Union of Education Professionals (SEPE-RJ);
(c) semi-structured interviews with teachers.

This research is part of the investigations conducted by the State, Power, and Education Investigation Laboratory (LIEPE) since 2017. LIEPE is composed of researchers from multiple public higher education institutions in Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ, UFF, UERJ, IFF, IFRRJ) and has spent the past seven years examining changes in teaching labor within public schools in response to recent educational reforms. These reforms have profoundly impacted the organization and conditions of teaching work, leading to a transformation of the teaching profession that exacerbates teacher distress.

• Education in the Labyrinth of Capital: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Introduction of Behavioral Economics in the Counter-Reform of Brazilian Education
  Period: (2021 – Present)
  Coordinator: Rodrigo de Azevedo Cruz Lamosa

Description: The research project “The Formation of Workers in the Labyrinth of Capital: The Centrality of Behavioral Economics in the Education Counter-Reform Agenda,” initiated in February 2022, is a collective investigation conducted within the framework of the State, Power, and Education Investigation Laboratory (LIEPE). This project brings together undergraduate students from UFRRJ’s teacher education programs, master’s and doctoral students from PPGEDUC/UFRRJ and other institutions, as well as researchers from federal and state public higher education institutions in Rio de Janeiro.

The project aims to analyze the introduction and growing centrality of “behavioral economics” in the agendas formulated by international organizations—particularly the World Bank and the OECD—following the global economic crisis of 2008. It also examines how this agenda has been nationally promoted by organizations such as the “Todos Pela Educação” movement and its affiliates.

The research involves a bibliographic study of key works in this subfield of economics and its intersections with educational research and policy, identifying the “organic intellectuals” of this hegemonic project. The study will also investigate the agents responsible for disseminating this agenda in Brazil, including the Bradesco Foundation, Roberto Marinho Foundation, Itaú Foundation, Lemann Foundation, Instituto Unibanco, Ayrton Senna Institute, Movimento Brasil Competitivo, neo-Pentecostal churches, and others.

This research is grounded in dialectical historical materialism and draws on the theoretical and methodological contributions of Antonio Gramsci, particularly concepts such as historical bloc, Americanism and Fordism, integral state, civil society and politics, hegemony and supremacy, organic and traditional intellectuals, private hegemonic apparatuses, and the party.

The investigation will also examine how this agenda—particularly initiatives such as the “Campanha Pela Base”—has materialized in policies that restructure curricular, training, and organizational frameworks within Brazilian education. These policies redefine the social function of schooling and recalibrate the education of young people and adults to align with the socio-historical conditions of capital reproduction amid a deepening crisis.

Addressing these questions requires a continuous exercise of mediation, a fundamental category in the research methodology, enabling successive approximations to the understanding of the phenomena shaping the profound transformation of Brazilian education. This exercise will be carried out by integrating Gramscian studies with the work of Florestan Fernandes to analyze the specific elements of bourgeois hegemony in Brazil. The research will examine how these elements—such as labor super-exploitation and autocracy—impede any commitment by the dominant class to a national project for universalizing unitary schooling. Instead, it highlights how these forces recalibrate the education of working-class children, youth, and adults to meet the objective and subjective conditions of intensified capital crisis through a psycho-physical conditioning that molds the formation of a “new type” of worker.