Introduction

This paper discusses the contributions of teachers’ collective work in the context of basic education, understanding it as an instance of teacher’s education, participation, and collegiate responsibility for pedagogical work.

We assume, supported by ^{Oliveira (2006}), that it is through collective work that teachers, as parts of a group, decide about life at school, that is, they reflect, plan, act, and evaluate the work process. However, according to the author, "[...] the premise of collective work is not only the process of reflection on pedagogical issues, but the pedagogical action itself, the practical implementation of what is discussed, questioned, and planned" (^{Oliveira, 2006}, p. 86). The collective work meetings of teachers are also characterized as privileged moments for studies, reflections and discussions that contribute to teacher’s continuing education, promoting the exchange of knowledge and experiences among peers.

Many studies have already addressed the contributions of collective work to teacher’s education and to the organization of pedagogical actions (^{Damiani, 2004}; ^{Bozzini & Oliveira, 2006}; ^{Sadalla & Sá-Chaves, 2008}; among others), as well as they have pointed out the limitations and difficulties for the construction of this place for reflection, dialogue, and collaboration (^{Dias-da-Silva & Fernandes, 2006}; ^{Cunha, 2015}).

Within the limits of this paper, we share the results of a study that questioned the importance of teachers’ meetings for the collective construction of work, choosing the interaction process as the focus of analysis to highlight the dynamics of interlocution and negotiation of meanings for the process of organizing the school pedagogical work.

The study was carried out in the context of the collective pedagogical work meetings (aulas de trabalho pedagógico coletivo - ATPC) throughout 2018, in a state school located in a city of São Paulo State. The meetings were audio-recorded and transcribed, and the analyzes of the teachers’ interlocutions are based on the enunciative-discursive perspective (^{Bakhtin, 2006}, ²⁰¹⁰; ^{Volóshinov, 2017}).

Collective work, political-pedagogical project, and organization of teachers’ actions

The collective work of teacher’s valorization in the fields of pedagogical actions and research is closely related to the principle of democratic management. According to ^{Oliveira (2004}) and ^{Dourado (2012}), the demands of various segments of society in favor of the democratization of public education contributed to the inclusion, in the art. 206 of the Federal Constitution of the Republic (^{Brazil, 1988}), of the principle of the democratic management of public education.

The Law of Guidelines and Bases for National Education - Law nº 9,394 (^{Brazil, 1996}) reaffirms this principle, establishing that

Art. 14. The education systems will define the rules for the democratic management of public education in basic education, according to their peculiarities and according to the following principles:

I - participation of the education professionals in the elaboration of the school’s pedagogical project;

II - participation of the school and local communities in school councils or equivalent.

From then on, the education systems “[...] were faced with the challenge of devising more effective instruments and channels of participation in the school’s management [...]” (^{Oliveira, 2004}, p. 1134), that is, they had to establish organizational dynamics that favored collective participation in school decision-making and the construction of the political-pedagogical project (PPP).

We understand democratic management as

[...] a political process in which people who work in and about the school identify problems, discuss, deliberate, and plan, direct, monitor, control and evaluate the set of actions aimed at the development of the school itself in the search for a solution to those problems. This process, based on dialogue, alterity and on the recognition of the technical specificities of the various functions present in the school, is based on the effective participation of all the segments of the school community, respect for collectively constructed norms for the decision-making processes and on the assurance of wide access to information to the school individuals (^{Souza, 2009}, p. 125-126).

It is this discussion process that guides the reflections and actions that seek to respond to the challenges and problems of the school that define its uniqueness, its proposal, its pedagogical organization, its PPP. The PPP, according to ^{Dourado (2012}, p. 63), is one of the main instruments for the “[...] organization of the school work and activities, and particularly for the definition of its own pedagogical organization. Its construction must be collective to meet the needs of the school and the community in which it is inserted”. ^{Veiga (2004}, p. 15) claims that “[...] the project seeks a course, a direction. It is an intentional action with an explicit meaning, with a collectively defined commitment”. The collective work meetings of teachers are the privileged participation way to discuss the PPP and organize the pedagogical work.

It [the meeting] can be the beginning, when planning a project, an event, or a strategy of uprising against an antagonism; it can be the means when it accompanies a process; or it can be the end when it evaluates the result, or the product of something accomplished. In this way, it emerges as a propeller and supporter of the construction of the school’s collective project (^{Bozzini & Oliveira, 2006}, p. 44-45).

^{Cunha (2015}) reinforces that, in addition to being considered important places for socialization and articulation of knowledge, know-how and actions of teachers, the collective work meetings are opportunities to emphasize an education process guided by the reflection on the PPP. If we admit that teacher’s education in collective work meetings demands the identification of problems, definition of projects, negotiation of perspectives, construction of action plans, etc., it is the PPP as an agenda and permanent reference for collective work that can mobilize the construction of a plan of action supported by the dialogue between theory and experience. In this movement we can admit that

[...] the group tends to be more critical of each other’s work, and as a result, can seek shared solutions to the problems that have been encountered. It is, therefore, in the process of exposing educational issues and their discussion in the group that constitutes the school community that the elements of fragility of the work developed can be established, and from the discussion established plan new ways for the work to continue or be all reformulated (^{Oliveira, 2006}, p. 85-86).

^{Sadalla and Sá-Chaves (2008}, p. 190) reinforce that collective education and work contexts allow to respond in a more adjusted way to the demands of the school community through “[...] facing problems in a collective way, the discussion of knowledge, the problematization of actions, and the construction of learning processes related to knowing how to work collectively”.

This is fundamental because the teacher’s work is crossed by many dilemmas, that is, problematic situations that constitute an object of constant concern and reflection (^{Pacheco, 1995}). We can say that one of the dilemmas that teachers face in the organization of their pedagogical actions is to make school contents meaningful to students.

^{Vieira and Almeida (2017}), supported by ^{Snyders (1988}), recall that the relationship established with formal contents, so that they interest and are perceived as elucidation and help to understand life and the world, supposes the student’s participation and the continuity with their own experience. The joy of learning, specifically, cultural joy, according to the authors, comes from learning linked to reality, "[...] provided by systematized knowledge, that is, by the contents, which moves towards the apprehension of the real and therefore increases the power to act and to exist, giving more satisfaction than remaining in incoherence, in the approximate and in the undecided" (^{Vieira & Almeida, 2017}, p. 506). Providing this qualitative leap that integrates the aspirations of students and the knowledge taught by teachers is not an easy task. It implies, in fact, collective work of collaborative nature.

According to ^{Damiani (2008}), collaborative work between teachers enriches the alternatives of thinking, acting, and solving problems. Referring to ^{Lave and Wenger (1991}), the author reinforces that “[...] it is through the engagement in daily activities, developed in the work group, that occurs the production, transformation, and change in people’s identity, in their knowledge and in their practical skills” (^{Damiani, 2008}, p. 217). Therefore, the willingness to agree on common working principles and the sharing of responsibilities are necessary for the collective work around teachers’ dilemmas to become collaborative (^{Cunha & Barbosa, 2017}).

The idea of ‘collectivity’, according to ^{Chaluh (2010}), supported by ^{Bakhtin (1999}), suggests that the members of a given community are supported by bonds that sustain a ‘mental activity of us’. This means, according to the author, that individuals are aware of their problems, assume their differences, but the feeling of co-responsibility in the search for solutions to problems enables collective production.

Interaction and production of meanings: elements for the interlocution dynamics analysis

The enunciative-discursive analysis that we propose to carry out in this study is based on the concepts of Bakhtin’s Circle theory, which conceives the subject as eminently social, constituted in the discursive dynamics, in a concrete social context, in correlation with alterity.

The theoretical postulates of ^{Bakhtin (2006}, ²⁰¹⁰) and Volóshinov (2017) allow us to discuss the social, dialogical, and ideological language in the discursive constitution of the individual. From the authors’ perspective, consciousness is constituted in the process of social interaction, and it is built through the appropriation of signs. According to ^{Volóshinov (2017}, p. 97), consciousness “[...] takes shape and being in the material of signs created by an organized group in the process of its social intercourse”. And in this organized collectivity, consciousness is nourished by ideological signs, thus, individual consciousness is social and ideological.

In this scope, through the word shared in society during the discursive/dialogical practice the individual is constituted, shapes and changes his way of being in the world. The word considered the “[...] ideological phenomenon par excellence [...]” (^{Volóshinov, 2017}, p. 98) participates in every act of understanding and interpretation, every cultural sign is verbally apprehended by consciousness.

From the above, we can consider as the foundation of this theory that through the other/through the word we constitute ourselves, in the process of apprehending the words of others, with their expression and their values, in verbal interaction. For ^{Bakhtin (2010}), language is not a neutral means of passive appropriation by the speaker, that is, it presents itself full of the intentions of others, and “[...] to dominate it and submit it to one’s own intentions and accents is a difficult and complex process” (^{Bakhtin, 2010}, p. 100).

^{Faraco (2009}), regarding the constitution of the dialogic subject, infers that the individual, immersed in the multiple relationships and dimensions of socio-ideological interaction, is constituted as he/she assimilates concomitantly the social voices and their dialogic interrelations. The author metaphorizes: “[...] the inner world is an arena populated with social voices and their multiple relations of consonances and dissonances; and in permanent movement, since the socio-ideological interaction is a continuous becoming” (^{Faraco, 2009}, p. 84).

Thus, every speech is full of the words of others, because, in the uninterrupted and dialogical process of constitution of the subject, via language, in the social environment, every speech that emerges from the inner speech is a product of social interaction and determined by the immediate situation or by the broader social context of a given community.

Therefore, speeches are linked to each other, they respond to other statements from the same discursive sphere, since the statements referring to certain objects are not indifferent to each other. “[...] Because the utterance occupies a defined position in each sphere of communication, in each issue, in each subject, etc. It is impossible for someone to define his/her position without correlating it with other positions” (^{Bakhtin, 2006}, p. 297).

^{Bakhtin (2006}) leads to the understanding that the concrete conditions of speech production guide the subjects’ speech, every word evokes a context or contexts: a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, etc., and the listener, to whom the speech is addressed, is also part of its constitution. In other words, the speeches analyzed here dialogue with other speeches that make up the discursive sphere in which the subjects are inserted. In this study we refer to public school teachers inserted within a bureaucratic structure, and when positioning themselves, they do so in dialogue with other speeches, from their concrete and immediate context (peers, students, school environment) and those of the context of their sphere of communication (from the scope of the prescriptions, the social and political environment, for example).

From this perspective, it is important to understand that the speakers use the language for their concrete enunciative needs, therefore, the linguistic form is not taken by them as invariable, but flexible, which they use to express themselves in each context. This aspect is quite important in the enunciative-discursive analysis that we intend to carry out, which is not premised on the form of the language as a fixed and context-independent sign, but language as a variable and flexible sign, which reflects and refracts something that is external to it (^{Bakhtin, 2006}).

^{Fiorin (2010}), when discussing the enunciative analysis based on Bakhtin’s theory, emphasizes that since the word of the other is necessary for the elaboration of speeches, there is always a speech under another speech. These different voices “[...] do not need to be marked in the thread of speeches, they are apprehended by our knowledge of the different speeches that circulate at a given time in a given social group” (^{Fiorin, 2010}, p. 40). For this author, in the dialogic conception of speech, history is inherent to the composition of it and is understood in the perception of the relations with the other’s speech. Only by understanding the inherent historicity of the speech is it possible to grasp the movement of the construction of meanings. ^{Fiorin (2010}, p. 41) completes: “[...] History is not exterior to meaning, but it is interior to it, because it is historical, since it is fundamentally constituted in confrontation, contradiction, opposition of the voices that clash in the arena of reality”.

Thus, in this theoretical scope, any idea or expression of the subject emerges and is shaped in the constant process of interaction and struggle with the thought of others, because of its dialogical orientation: “[...] in all its paths to the object, in all directions the speech meets the other’s speech and cannot fail to participate with it in a lively and tense interaction” (^{Bakhtin, 2010}, p. 88). Based on this, we turn to the production of meanings of the subjects, who are respondents, because in the concrete contexts they understand the speeches, position themselves in relation to them, and elaborate meanings in response to the utterances that are not indifferent to them, responding to them with their counterwords.

Methodological approach

The study was carried out in the context of the collective pedagogical work meetings in a state school located in a city of São Paulo State that serves approximately 700 students in Elementary School II and High School. The school’s teaching staff is composed of 40 teachers, of which 25 are permanent and the others occupy activity functions.

The meetings that are the object of this study included 11 high school teachers and the teaching coordinator. Among the participants, 10 were permanent teachers and most of them had worked at the school for more than 3 years. Only one of them was a teacher hired on a temporary basis by the State Department of Education and that was her first year of work at that school. The collective pedagogical work meetings are part of the teaching journey and must be carried out at school with the aim of gathering teachers, studying, and preparing pedagogical activities, assisting students’ parents, and dealing with school matters in general, according to art. 13 of the Complementary Law no. 836, of December 1997 (^{São Paulo, 1997}).

More than a mandatory routine, the meetings are characterized as a favorable moment for studies, reflections, and discussions that contribute to the continuing education of the teachers, promoting privileged moments for the exchange of knowledge and experience among peers.

The school has a staff team and teachers engaged in the development of the meetings, which have been presented as educational and research contexts since 2011, when the first partnerships with professors from public and private universities in the city and region took place. There are also frequent partnerships with projects aimed at students for initiation into scientific research, such as the Institutional Program for Scientific Initiation Scholarships - High School, which provides public school students with the opportunity to develop research initiation activities, under the guidance of university professors and researchers.

^{Nacarato, Grando, and Mascia (2013}), when discussing collaborative university-school partnerships, highlight that

[...] the relationships established in these partnerships constitute sources of new knowledge. This perspective represents a new conception of continuing education, closer to the concept of professional development, which allows both reflections and education of the teachers involved as well as institutional transformations (^{Nacarato et al., 2013}, p. 26).

The analysis data of this study compose the empirical material of a master’s research interested in the experiences and practices with Environmental Education in the school routine.

Four meetings were held, biweekly, between October and December 2017, lasting 1 hour and 30 minutes each. The meetings, with the agreement of the group of teachers, were audio-recorded and transcribed for analysis. The transcripts can be read, understood, and discussed from multiple perspectives and we chose, for this text, to analyze the dynamics of interlocution and negotiation of meanings for the process of organizing pedagogical work.

Within the scope of the paper, the transcripts of the meetings were taken back and read repeatedly. The excerpts for analysis were selected from these readings, guided by the objective and the principles of an enunciative analysis, which understands each speech as a link in the discursive chain, whose meanings are apprehended in the dialogic movement of discourse construction, “[...] with its contradictions, its convergences, its divergences, its slips, its deletions, its resignifications, its retakes, its affirmations, its denials, its hybridizations” (^{Fiorin, 2010}, p. 47).

The analyzes show the process of discussion and negotiation of the group to coordinate the needs of the school and the specificities of the PPP with the official prescriptions and highlight the relations of alterity for the promotion of reflection in the collective work and for the organization of the pedagogical work in view to the expansion of students’ knowledge and their emancipation.

Analysis: dialogue and organization of collective pedagogical work

The meetings become formative places of dialogue, negotiations, and knowledge sharing, where the instances of micro, ‘school ground’, and macro, the scope of public policies and prescriptions that come from outside to the school, ‘from top to bottom’, confront each other.

Flávia: Yeah, that’s it, I might be wrong, but that's right: the school they want is one and the school we want is another. But, in fact, we’re not doing either one thing or the other. We can’t even do what they want or what we want. School is between one thing and another, everyone is lost, we can’t accomplish all the demands that come, and we also can’t put our ideals into practice, because of pressure and so on.

Flávia refers to the demands that reach schools, supported by official documents, of imposition and large-scale assessment (^{Lima, 2011}; ^{Hypólito & Ivo, 2013}; ^{Sousa, 2014}), that leave a limited gap for actions of local interest, the ideals thought in and for the school.

Fernanda shares this concern, proposing a ‘clever look’ for the proposals that arrive to the school:

Fernanda: That's why I'm having this discussion here, so we can discuss issues like these, because if we look at the official documents like the National Curricular Parameters or other proposals, they are very interesting and beautiful, but we have to be clever, to draw our own conclusions and not get stuck only in the translation that the Teaching Board sends, because I know that much of the information that comes from the Board has its own interest.

In this confrontation, between external demands and the desire to carry out the work that they consider legitimate in the school, teachers respond to what is prescribed in the dialogue with their immediate reality, and they do not find identification with the official directions. Teachers, very attentive to their surroundings, their students, their teaching objects, understand that these external requirements do not meet their internal demands, thus, they are mobilized by the question: ‘which school do we want here’?

Luiz: So, that's the question: which school do we want here? We have to put that in perspective, because there is the school that the system wants, the school that the big companies want, that the banks want, and then we have to align what we want.

The teachers’ confrontation with what is imposed and alien to the specificities of the school is anchored in alterity. The student’s education is the ultimate goal of the teacher’s work, it is to the student that the teachers’ speech turns to justify the inadequacy of the teaching model as it is presented. The students are still the ones who foment the question and the answer to “what school do we want here?”.

Luiz: Not to mention that there is a whole setting created for the student, that they think that many things do not belong to them, even though they are great students, they do not believe that some opportunities are made for them. [...] That’s why it’s always worth thinking about what kind of school I want, not just me, but everyone else, and then we always get into this discussion.

The individuals are constituted in the relationships with others. We exist in the relationship with the other, so the individuals perceive their characteristics and makes judgments about themselves and their practice in alterity, in this relationship (^{Fontana, 2010}).

However, the ways of organizing work at school are still supported by biases of a technical rationality, focusing on the transmission of ready knowledge, in which the teacher is considered a technician, which favors the alienation of the teachers from their work, distancing them of the conception and elaboration of the content of their classes, and ultimately of the students, as pointed out by Luiz.

Luiz: That's why, sometimes, it’s important to promote collective reflection. Sometimes we stop talking about it because we are so caught up in what we’re doing, in fact, we even work on some of the themes, but we don’t even know why, we’re so used to tightening the same nut with the same wrench, that we don’t even know more what we are doing (modern times), that everything becomes so automatic. Then, that question that we talked about the school, the school that we want, remains, because we just stay there always doing the same and the moment we realize it we are swallowed by the routine.

Luiz also reiterates the collective work, as an instance of education, participation, and collective responsibility for the pedagogical work, as conceived in this study. Collective reflection, as a foundation for the organization of the teachers’ work, is a place for meanings, re-significations, and construction of meanings. From a Bakhtinian perspective, meanings are built in the dynamics of history and are defined by the diversity of experiences of human groups, with their numerous contradictions and confrontations of values and social interests (^{Faraco, 2009}) and the re-signification of meanings is intricately linked to the concrete context in which speeches are produced. In the living process of dialogue, there is an interaction with the word of the other, creating possibilities of meaning and re-signification of points of view and judgments, in a process of negotiation of meanings. In the discursive process, made possible by the meetings, teachers recognize the limitations to which they are subject and strengthen themselves in the collectivity.

Luiz: The thing is, when we talk about the issue of not shutting ourselves away here at school, but looking at our reality, it is an act of resistance to this system that frustrates, and how am I going to do it now that I get frustrated looking at public policies? So, I’m going to do it my way here, that’s what Marcos is trying to say. So, you’re actually agreeing and disagreeing (laughs). That’s it folks, let’s look after ours to resist the system.

The PPP, as we discussed, is a document that must be built collectively in the school, considering in its elaboration the interests of the school population and the community in which the school is located. Teachers find in the opportunity of building the school’s PPP the possibility of being represented, giving the document ‘the face of the school’.

Fernanda: Another thing I think is really cool here at school, which I didn't know exactly what it was, and I learned here, is the PPP issue. Do you know that I never knew that every school had to have a PPP? It’s not just copying a PPP from another school. In this school, the team wrote it, the team that is making our own PPP, and it is always changing. So, if we want to insert a practice that the school has, its characteristic or something, there is an official document that is the face of the school [...].

Within the scope of public policies for education, of the normative documents produced outside the school, teachers do not find identification, while the PPP, built intentionally, defined collectively, is recognized by teachers as an official speech of the school. The official speech is related to authority, although not necessarily to identity, it is a speech that has a status, as it aims at standardization, officializes practices and legitimizes actions. The authoritarian word, the one that is linked to authority, to hierarchy, as well as the internally persuasive, familiar word, open to the lived contexts and circumstances, according to ^{Bakhtin (2010}), define the bases of the ideological attitude and behavior of individuals. In this sense, it is important for teachers to recognize in an official speech, in this case the PPP, their voices, their demands, ‘the face of the school’.

Flávia: I was thinking here, if I’m not mistaken, our PPP, I think it expires this year, or next year. So, it means that next year we already have to raise proposals, because, well, this idea of making the PPP with the school’s face is essential. Of course, there are things that do not change, they are standard and must be included in the PPP. But sometimes there are things, there are topics, that will show the face of our school.

Therefore, we understand that the possibility of making their practice and actions official in the PPP is important for the teachers, as it is a way in which they can, in an official scope, implement the school they want. The PPP is a document of legitimation of the teaching work, it legitimizes the practice of these teachers in this school.

Guided by the concept of knowledge-of-practice (^{Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999}, 2009), based on the critical approach (^{Contreras, 2002}), we understand that teachers have a central and critical role in generating knowledge of practice and that the production of knowledge is a collectively constructed pedagogical act.

Fernanda: Thinking about it, should we make these actions official? Or is it possible to make our proposal to work on these issues [Environmental Education] more actual during the year? It doesn’t matter if it’s during classes, in projects, collectively or even individually, how could we make it an official activity?

Flávia: We can make it when writing the PPP, we make it official by doing the activities and registering them in our PPP.

The implicit idea of knowledge of practice is that through discussion and investigation teachers discuss their own knowledge, as well as the knowledge and practice of others, thus, placing themselves in a different relationship with knowledge. According to ^{Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999}, 2009), teachers learn by challenging their own assumptions; identifying important practice issues; proposing problems; studying their own students, classrooms, and schools; building and rebuilding the curriculum; and assuming leadership roles in seeking to transform the classroom, schools, and society.

Teachers keep thinking on how they can place themselves in the PPP, affirm their practices, and they find the answer in the projects they carry out with students and present at a Cultural Fair, an activity that is already consolidated in the school that is a singular and legitimate object, which encompasses the interests of teachers and students and that has the recognition of their peers, like Sonia, who calls attention to this privileged activity of the school.

Fernanda: In the last meeting, we talked about how we could make these discussions [Environmental Education] more present in our daily lives and the ways we could do that. Today, Sonia, for example, has already taken up the idea of applying this to the projects.

Sonia: You know, those of you who have been here for several years may not realize it, but these projects that you do with the students here and present at the Cultural Fair, have already become an ongoing practice for them. They already know that at the end of the year something will happen, something will be presented, at some point they know that it will happen.

As already established, the teachers’ meetings constitute a place to share practices, to foster ideas, to think about interdisciplinarity, involving everyone in the construction of dialogue. When narrating their practices, teachers construct their enunciation considering the listener, that is, their fellow teachers, it is to them that their speech turns. In an enunciative perspective, every enunciation has something unrepeatable, unique, new, concerning the concrete moment of speech, within this perspective, ^{Sobral (2008}, p. 24) states that “[...] the subject always says in a certain way addressing someone, which interferes in the way of saying [...]. To say is to express oneself. The subject is thus a mediator between possible social meanings [...]".

Hence, the moments in which the statements are produced constitute a space for negotiating and sharing meanings, discussing, agreeing, understanding, learning, and teaching. In these moments, the listener becomes a speaker, understanding the speech, taking a position towards it, and adding a layer of his/her responsive words (^{Volóshinov, 2017}).

Antonio: In 2015 we worked with the analysis of effluents, but, in fact, it was only with the 3rd grade students [High School], we collected water from several streams here in the city and analyzed the amount of sewage, organic material in the stream beds, then we mapped where it was most contaminated and where that water would recover faster and so on. So, I think it is possible to involve a lot of school subjects in a project like this [...]. And these days Fernanda, Diego and I were talking about it, and we thought: we can make the students visit the health centers in a certain region and then check if in that region the water is contaminated. Is the incidence of diseases in that health center related to water pollution? And then we can tabulate the results, involve the politics, public policies, involve the issue of the city hall, basic sanitation and so on. It is possible to do a lot of things, but you must plan and get the students to go after them to do all the research work. Because if it is a serious and well-planned thing, which they realize that will have some result, they participate very well.

Fernanda: Exactly, you have to give them the activity, they want to do it and if they don’t research, they won’t learn. When we guide and they take the lead and mobilize themselves, the result is quite different.

Involving students in the construction of their own knowledge is a concern of the teachers. We have already discussed in this text that for formal contents to be of interest of students and to be perceived by them as knowledge to understand life and the world, the students must relate the contents with their own experience (^{Snyders, 1988}, 2001; ^{Vieira & Almeida, 2017}). Mobilizing students’ knowledge in the teaching-learning process, their aspirations and, thus, potentiating the construction of knowledge of the content that the teacher must teach is a complex task and it is made possible through the involvement of all, in a collective and collaborative work, as the teachers of this research show.

Flávia: I was sorting the photos to make that end-of-year video, which we always make of everything that happened during the year and it’s cool to see things again, because there are things we forget. For example, the 6th grade (Elementary School) presented a beautiful project about water, they even made the water molecule with teacher Mariana at the winter festival. So, it was really cool because the 6th grade is already doing these things by themselves. Because we end up underestimating the younger ones, saying that they don’t do it because they are so little. But that was the proof that they did, and they succeeded, so, yes, it is possible to work on any theme if everyone gets involved, right?

Fernanda: So, the good thing is that these subjects make sense to them, these projects are not only about grades, but they also never asked for grades, in fact. The most interesting thing is the meaning it has, the why of the issues, the consequences, the general context here in the community and in their lives and so on. So, this is very cool in the sense that we discuss the actions and have a concrete purpose.

Teachers are constituted as a group in the dynamics of interlocution, seeking to organize activities that aim to engage students in the teaching-learning process with common objectives in the organization of the pedagogical work. ^{Geraldi, Messias, and Guerra (1998}), when presenting the role of the group to ^{Zeichner (1993}), show that the group offers the advantage of teachers being able to support each other and contribute to the knowledge of each other.

From our perspective of analysis, considering that dialogue is not consensus, the discursive constitution of the individual occurs in tension and in conflict with the words of others. Thus, the individuals take their positions in relation to others’ positions, in dialogue, as an event of social interaction, in which words meet, collide, confront each other, each of them presenting itself as a miniature arena (^{Bakhtin, 2006}).

While dialoguing, the teachers take one’s speech, elaborating it, re-emphasizing it, submitting it to their own intentions, negotiating meanings and assuming "[...] an evaluative attitude towards a certain state of things" (^{Faraco, 2009}, p. 24).

In the dynamics of interlocution, teachers also point to the specificities of teaching work: teaching the student, promoting the expansion of knowledge and their emancipation.

Luiz: But first you have to think about the local reality, like when Antonio brought the water proposal, which was the project he already carried out here with the students and he already knows it’s cool, that he had a place to collect water nearby and he knows the place. Because he’s been here for years, now, you can’t take a project from another neighborhood and place it here, you can’t.

Fernanda: I think so, I think it makes perfect sense, we start from that, to understand the local reality and make an adequate project here, but that doesn’t mean that the student won’t have a perspective of what happens in other places: “Oh, we can’t just close ourselves here”.

Luiz: Yes, it’s not a matter of being enclosed in a bubble, it’s just that it’s no use bringing a perspective from Qatar, for example, if they don’t even know their reality. We have to start from here and then compare with other realities, but for that, we have to have local knowledge and then global knowledge, and then to develop the project, in addition to local knowledge we need structure.

We observed that the elaborations that emerge from the dialogues between teachers about which school they want for them and their students, the possibility of effectively making the PPP the face of the school and officiate their activities, the sharing of practices, the concern with students’ learning and involvement, are reflections and exchanges made possible by the meetings, in the way they occur when collective work is, in fact, established, in which teachers are educators and educate themselves.

Final considerations

This study aimed to analyze the dynamics of interlocution and negotiation of meanings for the process of organizing the school’s pedagogical work, therefore, we turned our attention to the teachers’ speeches in the context of the collective pedagogical work meetings.

In the analyses, we noticed that the teachers take up the speeches of their colleagues, refute them and reiterate them in the discursive dynamics, looking for ways to organize the pedagogical work that meet the singularities of the school, of their community, committed to the construction of knowledge in such a way that we can approximate it to ^{Young’s (2007}) understanding of powerful knowledge. For the author, powerful knowledge “[...] refers to what knowledge can do, such as provide reliable explanations or new ways of thinking about the world” (^{Young, 2007}, p. 1294). In the case of many students, it is worth noting that participation in school “[...] can be the only opportunity to acquire powerful knowledge and be able to walk, at least intellectually, beyond their local and particular circumstances” (^{Young, 2007}, p. 1297).

We observed that the collective reflection, provided by the meetings, allows us to look at the alterity established in the pedagogical process, approaching the teaching practice to the students, not the prescriptions. The discursive interactions favor the re-signification of meanings of the collective work that has the possibility of being materialized in the PPP. The teachers try to organize the fundamental principles and the school activities having the construction of the student’s knowledge as their goal, and then, constitute themselves as a collaborative group.

In this group of teachers, the teacher-student-knowledge relationship underlies the principles of the desired pedagogical work. Although we understand the mismatch between what is desired and what is accomplished in the teacher’s pedagogical work, with all the intercurrences of everyday school life, we glimpse the potential of collective work for the emergence of collaborative work and the construction of meaning for the educational action.