3.1 The class council in the school PPP

The researched school's work proposal, systematized in its PPP, announces that its preparation took place collectively and involved the participation of representatives from all segments of the school community. From the proposed point of view, the school assumes the principle of democratic management, conjecturing a pedagogical practice “[...] centered on dialogue, collective decisions and the promotion of the autonomy of this school” (^{Seedf, 2021}, p. 3).

The pedagogical work executed in the classroom cannot be dissociated from the pedagogical work of the school, and this, in turn, is consonant with society. Likewise, educational assessment has levels that are articulated large-scale assessment, institutional assessment, and learning assessment (^{Freitas et al., 2009}), which must be considered based on the results of the school itself, without worrying about ranking students and the institution.

Large-scale evaluation evaluates education systems in the macro context. Also called “external evaluations”, these are instruments that aim to monitor education networks globally, predominantly carried out in the context of the federation, states, and DF. This type of evaluation aims to provide a history of the development of education systems and analyze them to develop public policies (^{Freitas et al., 2009}).

Institutional assessment can be placed at an intermediate level of comprehensiveness. While the external evaluation aims to analyze education networks as a whole, the institutional evaluation focuses on the school's PPP. It is an assessment carried out by the school itself with all its actors involved and seeks to analyze and negotiate problems experienced by the school itself (^{Freitas et al., 2009}). Therefore, the institutional evaluation is a self-evaluation of the school and it aims at a collective reflection on the pedagogical work developed. Thus, self-reflection constitutes a practice that contributes to the formation of subjects: teachers, students, managers, and families, in short, who participate.

At a micro level, generally centered on the teacher, classroom evaluation must reflect the success of the organization of the school's pedagogical work in student learning. Thus, the process analyzes the development of students based on the learning objectives set out in the teaching work plan. Although centered on students, it is necessary to consider that the results and reflections produced in and through classroom assessment also influence teaching, as they enable the evaluation of teaching work and the (re)organization of pedagogical work.

In this sense, the school's PPP (^{Seedf, 2019}, ²⁰²¹) points to evaluation as an indispensable process for the continuity of the school's work and directs the practice of the participatory class council as a central component in the process of collective reflection of everyone involved in the do pedagogy, therefore:

Every two months, this school holds class assemblies with all classes in which students participate in institutional evaluation as well as self-evaluation of the actions carried out throughout the entire academic two-month period. We then meet for a week in participatory class councils where parents, teachers, students, the Management Team, Educational Guidance Service, analyze the evaluation of students' learning, institutional evaluation, and class self-evaluation. Through pedagogical debate, strategies are proposed to solve weaknesses and reaffirm potential (^{Seedf, 2021}, p. 38).

The class council was created in schools in the Federal District to identify learning problems and, subsequently, underwent significant modifications that transformed it into a committee for evaluating pedagogical action and learning to search new paths for teaching-learning. The changes in the School Regulations, from the years 1990, 1994, 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2006, highlighted aspects related to the evaluation and composition of the class council caused by high rates of dropout, holdbacks and school failure (^{Santos, 2006}).

Subsequently, in 2009, the Rules of Educational Institutions of the Public Education System of DF standardized the class council as a collegiate of teachers to evaluate the education, teaching, and learning process, which can be participatory with the presence of students, parents, and/or guardians (Distrito Federal, 2009). Therefore, this collegial and participatory nature is relevant, as it can offer theoretical and practical elements that reverberate in teacher training and pedagogical work in the classroom and school as a whole.

At the federal level, the Plano Nacional de Educação (PNE), Law No. 13,005, of 2014, considers democratic management in Goal 19, foreseeing its implementation by the year 2016 and including broad community participation in school councils to promote participation and supervision in school and educational management (Brazil, 2014). In the DF, with the approval of Law No. 4,751/2012 - which establishes democratic management in the public education system - the class council is presented, in its article 9, as a collegial body for democratic administration (^{Distrito Federal, 2012}).

In this sense, in its most recent version, the School Regulations (Distrito Federal, 2019, p. 30) states that “[...] the class council is a collegiate body that is part of Democratic Administration and is intended to monitor and evaluate the process of education, teaching and learning”, being composed of:

I - all teachers from each class and representatives of the management team, as natural advisors; II - Pedagogue - Educational Advisor; III - representative of the Career advisor; IV - representative of families and/or legal guardians; V - representative of students from the year 6 or the first segment of Youth and Adult Education, chosen by their peers, guaranteeing the representation of students from each of the classes; VI - representatives of specialized support services (Distrito Federal, 2019, p. 30).

In this sense, the composition of the class council indicates the representation of the entire school community, enabling an environment conducive to collective work and teacher and student training. In practice, the school complies with the Regulation's proposal (article 30), also adopting the optional criterion of holding a participatory class council which allows all students and teachers of the same class to participate (Distrito Federal, 2019).

3.2 Teachers' perceptions about class council and teacher training

The interviews with the teachers showed similarities between their perceptions regarding the work in the class council and the organization of the pedagogical work in the classroom, pointing to it as a space-time for evaluating and replanning their pedagogical actions. Integration and collectivity are latent characteristics in their speeches.

For me, class council is the opportunity for teachers to share their perspectives from the classroom. As it is divided by class, we can discuss the problems in a particular classroom, the students' problems in particular, see how we can help from a collective perspective, and try to find a way to work on this so as not to end up individualized work centered on a single teacher. On the council, we have the opportunity to try to find a way that will direct us to solve a given problem. In the same way, we can also uplift the qualities that we find in students and see what the student is like in all subjects (Teacher João Pedro - our emphasis).

For me, it will be a moment of transformation, because it will bring this characteristic of unifying work among the entire team, and it will also understand the other teacher's vision and will build this interdisciplinarity (Teacher Lucas - our emphasis).

Sharing perspectives regarding a specific student or class makes the class council a place of collaborative work, but it is also configured as a place for disciplinary evaluation in a militarized school. The role of the disciplinary manager on the class council intensifies the disciplinary and attitudinal focus of the assessment regarding the student. The military's observations carried out outside the classroom influenced the grade discussed in the class council regarding the student's performance throughout the two months. This practice points to an auction of grades attributed to student behavior by teachers, considering observations made by military monitors.

In the pre-council meetings held with teachers, the participation of the military was identified, specifically, informing the list of suspensions and warnings for each class. This list was delivered to the coordinator on the first day of meetings of each two months, and the punishments recorded for each student were verified, from which the negative score attributed to each disciplinary sanction applied to “offending” students would be deducted from the “formative assessment” grade.

In this sense, it was possible to identify that the monitors' evaluations about the discipline of the students are part of the student's grades, which, for these students, is unfair, considering that the punishment criteria used by the military are relative.

There is a student, for example, who is not the first year he has been here. Even though he messed up a lot and disrespected everyone, he only left because of the representatives' complaints. I see that, when it's a big thing, it's just a warning, and, when it's a small thing, suspension. It's impossible to understand. It is not possible to know what criteria they use (Student Cleiton - researcher’s emphasis).

The worst thing is that one student's complaint is the same as another's. He did much worse than the other guy who was already expelled and is still here. It's completely unfair (Student Isabela - researcher's emphasis).

The problem is that, if anything happens to another person, they get a warning, they leave school, and it doesn't even come close to what the other person does, what the one we are talking about specifically does (Student Júlia).

It is in this aspect that students draw attention to the need for prominent attendance at the meeting called “Council of representatives”⁵, so that they could position themselves on the criteria used by the military and teachers to define the grades they assign to students. In other words, students who have historically been excluded from evaluation processes at school are in militarized schools subjected to a double trial - pedagogical, carried out by teachers - and disciplinary, carried out by military personnel.

Although the reality shown in this research presented an auction of grades and behaviors, the development of the class council also proved to be significant in the evaluation of teachers regarding their pedagogical strategies and their development as a teaching professional.

Furthermore, teachers perceive the class council as a space-time to articulate their pedagogical proposals concerning the same objective, student learning, as can be seen when they state that: it is possible to debate the problems in the classroom and from there, find a path that will enable the solution of particular problems in a collective committed to the education of everyone, including the teachers themselves. An example of this is Professor Lucas' speech: that it is a moment of transformation possible through collective work, through different views on the same problem/situation, even moving towards interdisciplinary work.

The posture of searching for alternatives to know more and better; waiting attitude towards unconsummated acts; the posture of reciprocity that encourages exchange, that encourages dialogue, with identical peers, with anonymous peers, or with oneself; the posture of humility in the face of the limitations of one's own knowledge; the posture of perplexity towards the possibility of discovering new knowledge; the posture of challenge, the challenge in the face of the new, challenge in resizing the old; the posture of involvement and commitment to projects and the people involved in them; a posture, therefore, of commitment to always building in the best way possible, a posture of responsibility, but, above all, of joy, of revelation, of encounter, in short, of life (^{Fazenda, 1991}, p. 14).

These are requirements for interdisciplinarity to expand the barriers of limited knowledge and, without giving up the specificities of each unique curricular component, understand what comes closer or further away to promote effectively collective and collaborative work among peers. This space should provide exchanges in which objectives cease to be individual and start to be achieved collectively, in addition to enabling access to a totality and allowing the mediation of successful pedagogical proposals.

One of the specific objectives in the Action Plan of the Organization of the Pedagogical Work proposed in the school's PPP is to “[...] overcome the fragmentation of school work through interdisciplinarity” (^{Seedf, 2021}, p. 41); this is also one of the meanings that the pedagogical coordinator and teachers attribute to the class council.

Interdisciplinarity presupposes the rupture of the fragmentation of knowledge, developing the teaching-learning process in a critical and dialogic way, mediating approximations and contradictions of the program content. The Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação Básica (DCN) point out that:

[...] through the interdisciplinary approach, the transversality of the constitutive knowledge of different courses can take place through didactic-pedagogical action mediated by the pedagogy of thematic projects. These facilitate the collective and cooperative organization of pedagogical work (Brazil, 2013, p. 28).

Organization that favors the global vision of the student and the teaching-learning process as a whole, as addressed by the pedagogical coordinator and teachers, emphasizing that the class council is a space for collective replanning based on the evaluation carried out collaboratively between professionals in the education. In this direction, the Guidelines for Civic-Military Schools (Ecim) point out as one of the pedagogical coordinator's competencies: “[...] promote interdisciplinarity; encourage joint projects between teachers; adopt preventive measures related to teaching and learning problems and adapt evaluation methodologies and practices” (Brazil, 2021, p. 59). The Ecim Manual directs the organization of space-time coordination by school year, considering that this must develop “[...] in the same space that allows interdisciplinarity and the exchange of information about students, placing them at the center of the teaching and learning process” (Brazil, 2019, p. 52).

It is possible to verify that these actions by the pedagogical coordinator are present in the space-time of the class council every two months. There are actions at school that aim to bring together the different curricular components, but the collective planning of actions that reorganize pedagogical work is connected to the class council. Therefore, to avoid conducting a plan based on a rigid and decontextualized curriculum, which aims to homogenize and reproduce by fragmenting knowledge and excluding possibilities for these students, the school could promote interdisciplinary planning in the pedagogical coordination in addition to improving the work that is made possible at the class council. This practice may contribute to the democratization of teaching and the construction of a critical worldview mediated by conflicts in the world of work in capitalist society.

In addition to collaborative work and interdisciplinarity, the teacher's work must also be evaluated by peers and by the teachers themselves to develop actions that favor learning. Although the time frame for holding the class council is reduced to one week within the academic two-month period, affecting the collective evaluation of the pedagogical work and directing it towards the specific evaluation of student performance, it was possible to observe that the management team and the pedagogical coordination intend to direct this moment towards a broader evaluation, including the work of the teachers in the classroom, the performance of the pedagogical support teams and educational guidance. It was also observed that the performance of the military personnel comes into the discussion in the class council, even when it is not part of the planning, and this means that the work of all school subjects is evaluated, even if limited.

From the perspective of teachers, the class council makes it possible to evaluate their own work and replan it. In this sense, teacher Lucas points out that, in the class council, “We can evaluate both the teachers and the students themselves”; Teacher Larissa reflects on “What am I doing wrong?” and indicates the renewal of their pedagogical practices based on discussions of this space-time. Teacher Lucas's note demonstrates an evaluation of his own work that reflects on the possibility of changes in planning and attitudes toward his teaching training, based on replanning and redirecting work along new paths.

It is clear from the interviews with the teachers that they both observe their colleagues' points of view to evaluate their own work and develop strategies that contribute to the daily organization of the classroom. All interviewed teachers state that the class council is an environment for sharing ideas and didactic-pedagogical strategies, which indicates that it is a space for teacher training, thus fulfilling one of the objectives of the pedagogical space-time proposed by the coordination in which the pre-class council is developed.

For me, it's interesting because you start out with a certain didactic perspective. For example, I hate showing things on the whiteboard, so I always use the television in the classes for slides, so on the board, you can understand and intersperse certain didactic interventions, and certain strategies that are useful for a given class. So, you can do that in a class. Sometimes, when you are in the classroom, you realize that that class doesn't do very well with slides, and then the class council will notice that it doesn't work just during your class. And then in the class council you can see this, and you can also what style each teacher has, what style of class, and what intervention strategies they are using that are working. So, it's not copying your colleague's work, but you can see what work is working and how you can enhance your class and know how to use all the resources that are available to you (Teacher João Pedro - highlighted by the researcher).

The contributions yield the class council direct the discussion of didactic intervention strategies that promote the learning of students who have difficulties with certain subjects. Teachers have the opportunity to assess whether the difficulty presented refers to the class model used, the subject taught or the student's need to be accompanied by a specialized professional.

Class council, for me, is the opportunity for teachers to share their perspectives from the classroom. As it is one class at a time, we can discuss the problems of the classroom in particular, see the problems of the students in particular, see how we can help from a collective perspective, and try to find a way to work on this so as not to remain individualized and centralized work in a single teacher (Teacher João Pedro - highlighted by the researcher).

In this sense, teachers recognize the class council as an opportunity to express their difficulties and anxieties so that another teacher or the pedagogical support team can intervene and help them in the development of their pedagogical work. The referrals given at the class council can resolve the pending difficulties and enable the teacher to learn about new resources and strategies that can be added to their teaching and lesson plans. Beyond that, it provides information on possible medical investigations regarding a given student, so that the work of the educational counselor and the educational psychologist also contributes to plan actions to be developed in the classroom. This allows the teacher to understand the students in their entirety and direct their pedagogical practices mediated by instruments and procedures that help the student, confronting limiting aspects that intend to standardize the subjects and exclude their possibilities for advancement.

Students also demand space to speak in the assessment in order to reorganize pedagogical work. When highlighting that they would change the frequency with which the class representative council is held, they point out that these meetings would be fundamental so that they could evaluate the teachers, the students, and the pedagogical work “In terms of the teaching in a way that we learn the right way and evaluate students too” (Student Ysabelli). As an example, they mention the case of a teacher whose teaching practices were not in line with what was proposed, who had to be removed from the school, this situation was dealt with in the council of representatives held between students and the school director.

In this context, the importance of the class council stands out, in which the school segments can act in the evaluation process, detailing aspects that would not be mentioned if the participation of one of the segments was omitted. Thus, ^{Araújo (2020}, p. 70) highlights in his research that, “[...] different from what they [teachers] imagined, student participation was a positive tool to rethink their pedagogical practices”, which reveals that student performance in the evaluation of pedagogical work is underestimated when it could be used very effectively within the scope of the class council. The author also points out the perception of the interviewed teachers that the representation of students who participate on the class council, when returning with feedback on the deliberations of this collegiate to the other students in the class, gives greater credibility to the collegiate, expressing positive perceptions by the teachers regarding student participation in the council. These teachers' perceptions reveal that they are learning from the assessments carried out at the class council, which further qualifies the processes experienced in this collective and the contributions to the constitution of being a teacher, specifically concerning the teacher-student pedagogical relationship. Regarding this, ^{Magnata and Abranches (2018}, p. 756-757) point out:

The results from the evaluation that students make about teachers can serve as reflection and adjustments to teaching practice, but can also serve to maintain the power relationship that already exists in the classroom. This depends on the conceptions that teachers have about education and assessment that underlie their practices.

Therefore, to contribute democratically to the reorganization of the school's pedagogical work, the resource of student participation must be considered with great responsibility by teachers so that the proposed objective can be achieved. This participation can be considered both for the evaluation of the pedagogical work of the teacher and to give a broader view of the work carried out by the students or allow them to be heard, as well as the collective of teachers and other parts of the school community.

In this sense, the students highlighted the records made by the military, mentioned previously, as one of the aspects that influence the teachers' evaluation and emphasized that the militarization of the school limited the space for students to talk. Consequently, the organization of the school's pedagogical work is also influenced by the presence of the military in daily school life, as the school routine is affected by the disciplinary organization, which provides for a monitor responsible for each class, planning of civic training activities and rules that include the class presentation⁶ to each teacher when they enter the classroom.

Furthermore, it was possible to identify that the teacher-student relationship is now mediated by the military personnel working in the school environment. Teachers are activating military monitors to mediate situations that, in the students' view, do not require such action and that are in the purview of the teacher's didactic-pedagogical work. The monitor is being placed between the teacher and the student, and this implies clashes that can directly affect the development of the teaching-learning process, considering that it affects the teacher-student pedagogical relationship. Mediating conflicts within the classroom is part of the teacher's duties, bringing students together so that they feel co-participants in the teaching process, which can favor their development and learning. If the teacher outsources this mediation of the pedagogical relationship, barriers can be created in the relationships necessary for their development.

These elements indicate that there need to be adaptations in the planning of teachers' work that consider the changes generated by the actions of military monitors, as well as the student's own organization, which is affected by the procedures adopted. On the other hand, the position of the pedagogical coordinator shows that some of the routines that make up the disciplinary management at the school already took place before the implementation of Pecim and that the military monitors became part of the number of personnel working in pre-existing school routines.

Other studies, carried out within the scope of militarized schools in the Federal District, indicated that the mediation of the difficulties faced within public schools could be given in different ways: the financial resources used to hire military personnel could be allocated to professionals whose training would contribute pedagogically in the school environment (^{Serafim, 2021}); the pedagogical management of schools that experience shared management with the disciplinary could be strengthened with personnel gains in the elected management team (^{Gomes, 2021}); and the actions of the military would be completely coherent in the surroundings of the school, in the community, and not inside the school walls, since it reflects the violence that exists in society (^{Mendonça, 2019}).

The position of the pedagogical coordinator reinforces the need for investment in education professionals, especially concerning the demand for work that is disproportionate to the number of professionals working in the school environment. Introducing military personnel into schools is not the solution to problems such as crowded classrooms, students' lack of interest in school, and even illness among education professionals.

Teachers agree that “Coordination is more focused on helping teachers” (Teacher João Pedro), while the military takes care of disciplinary issues so that the school functions as the organism it is, in which each part works towards the same end collective. This positioning strengthens the idea that there is an overload of education professionals within schools and that the work could be coordinated more effectively if the school had a sufficient number of pedagogical support professionals.