2.1 Collaborative Methodologies: From Individual to Collective Written Production

For the proposition of thematic panels⁶, we consider the lines of research as the structuring axes of collective and collaborative work. The Graduate Program in Education (POSEDUC) has three lines of research, namely: Human Formation and Teacher Professional

Development (FHDPD), Education Policies and Management (PGE) and Educational Practices, Culture, Diversity and Inclusion (PECDI), the first two of which were born with the Program, in 2011, and the third, in 2018. According to the descriptors, they propose to carry out the following discussions and studies:

For the production of the panels, the graduate students were grouped by research line, considering that it is the structuring axis where the collective/collaborative work should start. They started to develop their individual production as an attempt to bring the concepts studied in the compulsory discipline Education and Citizenship closer to their research objects. In proportion to the discussions that took place in the classroom, the graduate students were developing the construction of this approximation, as a way to exercise their sociological imagination. It was a more or less successful continuous work, because sometimes the graduate students were able to immediately establish direct articulations with what they discussed in class and their objects; at other times, such articulations required more, since the relationship was not direct and required a greater intellectual exercise. The links/relations between the studied concepts and the research objects are not given a priori, becoming, for this reason, a work of intellectual craftsmanship that is gradually built.

Aiming to contextualize the pedagogical situation that we are explaining in this article, it becomes fundamental to highlight the texts/works that were discussed during the semester of 2018.2, in the mandatory discipline Education and Citizenship. Such materials were selected by the teachers with the purpose of thinking about education and citizenship in Brazil, whose structure and conjuncture demonstrate a country loaded with social, political, and economic contradictions, its deepest consequence being the very denial of citizenship of its people, which accompanies the constitution of the Brazilian society, as ^{Souza (2017}) puts it well.

The process of historical deconstruction of the citizenship of Brazilians advances unbridled in the context of the acute political polarization prevailing in our society, with the very weakening of democracy, which reaches its apotheosis when an authoritarian government, adept of dictatorial postures, is elected by the Brazilian people⁷. We agree with ^{Mounk (2019}, p. 135) when he states: "citizens are increasingly open to authoritarian alternatives", which is a worldwide trend.

The theoretical-epistemological scope that permeated the discussions in the discipline Education and Citizenship during the semester 2018.2 was not circumscribed to a theoretical perspective. In this regard, let us observe the table below:

In the construction of knowledge, the possibilities of articulation were diverse and depended strategically on the abstractions that each one (or group) was capable of making. This was the main appropriation that we were able to propitiate with the use of collaborative methodologies. Nothing was ready, closed, because it depended on the relationships that the postgraduates were establishing individually or collectively. The construction of knowledge did not depend on the possibilities of understanding and interpretation that could be made in the tension between theoretical references and the research object (^{MACEDO; GALEFFI; PIMENTEL, 2009}).

The postgraduates were (in)tensely involved in the knowledge construction process, as they had to aim for two concomitant aspects: 1) make links / connections between the theoretical content discussed in class and their research objects; 2) build articulation networks with other postgraduates in the same line, to develop the production of the collective text. In this process, the collective construction, the culmination of the collaborative methodologies through the production of thematic panels, did not dispense with individual production. In fact, this was the antechamber of the collective work. Every pedagogical effort was to make the graduate students understand that the concepts worked on in class can dialogue with the research objects, and that the relations between a research object and the references studied are mediated, since they are not born a priori. Therefore, there was an urgent need to read the texts to understand the concepts and identify the central ideas that could contribute to the formulation of individual and collective productions. One of the post-graduate students, in her report, states

[...] based on the analysis of the literature studied, we identified six major themes underlying the cited bibliographic reference: globalization, state, democracy, citizenship, social inequality and human rights. Therefore, we decided to highlight the relationship of each research object with the themes worked throughout the discipline (PGE RESEARCH LINE POST-GRADUATE, December, 2018, p. 2, emphasis added).

We realize that ideas, according to ^{Mills (2009}), also contribute to our proposition of alternative methodologies in post-graduation stricto sensu. The author explains that the process of "sociological imagination" involves the need for clarification of ideas, through thinking and presenting what was thought.

To make anything you think more objective, you have to work in the context of presentation. At first, "present" your thinking to yourself, which is often called "thinking clearly." Then, when you feel you have done it correctly, present it to others - and often find that you have not made it clear. [Sometimes you will find that as you try to present your thought, you modify it - not moment in expression, but often its content as well. You will come up with new ideas as you work in the context of the presentation (^{MILLS, 2009}, p. 54, emphasis in original).

In this way, Mills himself gives us interesting clues on how to propose collaborative methodologies, since, at the beginning, it is a work for oneself and, later, one helps the other in socializing moments of presentation of ideas. It is a fact that the postgraduates were creating their own strategies of articulation with their research object, as well as building relationships/networks with other postgraduates in the same line of research, with whom they talked to each other. Without having realized the starting point, the production of knowledge was happening in a critical, self-critical and intercritical way (^{MACEDO; GALEFFI; PIMENTEL, 2009}).

In the dialogue between peers of the same line, the postgraduates were replenished in their energies (^{FORTUNA, 2000}), as if the group became for them the most "intimate" space of their academic belonging. It was also in the group that the (in)tense movement from private to public writing took place (^{BARBOSA, 2010}). In the groups, the postgraduates were getting to know each other, their knowledge and constructions, awakening ideas, creating affective-academic bonds, improving paths, without disregarding the virtual alternatives created to establish relationships and contacts.

At this point of the collaborative construction process, the use of the technological apparatus, namely the cell phone through WhatsApp was also indispensable. Technology was already part of the collective construction process. In fact, it emerged as an idea to enable meetings (even if virtual) of people with countless tasks in life and in the academy, including living outside the course headquarters. This was the moment and the movement to awaken the "sociological imagination", similar to the work of a craftsman, who, to design/elaborate his piece - which is the most exciting challenge -, is weaving relationships, seeing possibilities and deciding paths, because to produce an idea is, above all, to do so,

[...] a struggle for order and at the same time for comprehensibility. You must not stop thinking too soon - or you will fail to know all that you should; you must not let it go on forever, or you will blow yourself up. It is this dilemma, I suppose, that of reflection, on those rare occasions when it is more or less successful, the most exciting enterprise of which human beings are capable. (^{MILLS, 2009}, p. 56).

It is from constant thinking that we are able to put order into the ideas that arise. "But, [...] how do ideas arise?" (^{MILLS, 2009}, p. 41). The author himself does not venture to answer this question. He prefers to present some procedures that can facilitate the production of something understandable to himself and others. From this point of view, collaborative methodologies assume an important procedural role in the consolidation of the sociological imagination. This is the consequence of a hard and constant effort, because only through routine and capricious work can we minimally attribute quality to our ideas.

Thinking should not be an exercise that ends as soon as ideas emerge, nor should it be an endless exercise. Between the beginning and the "supposed" end is the human being, experiencing countless capacities for the production of knowledge. It is in this experience that lies reflection, which is one of the most enchanting possibilities that subjects experience. In terms of epistemological approach, thinking and reflecting are dimensions of the sociological imagination that sharpen and develop the ability to be, to be and to make oneself in the world, which is the most enriching subjective plot through which the postgraduates are constituting themselves in the space and time of their relationship and connectivity with the academy.

We also discovered with ^{Mills (2009}) that the inventive capacity - understood as the very substratum of the sociological imagination - has no limits and that the relations/links between concepts and research objects can be as unusual as possible. This is exactly what happened with the experience of the collective production of the thematic panels. The author himself warns that the sociological imagination needs to be cultivated, since it does not happen without routine work and dedication. From this understanding comes our constant insistence that the graduate students exercise the creation and invention of their experience as producers of ideas and researchers in the process of formation.

As the discussions were happening around these authors, with their approaches and understandings, the graduate students were challenged to produce relations/links between the concepts worked on in class and their research objects. This production had the following characteristics: individual, constant and routine. From the individual written production of the graduate students, the panels started to take shape, intensifying at this moment the collective production. The post-graduate student of the PGE research line reveals:

[...] although this stage required a more particular reflection from each participant, the exchange of ideas in the group did not cease. The graduate students helped each other to identify points of contact between the research objects and the themes, given the similarity between some of the works.

That is, in the contours of collaborative methodologies and according to the line of reasoning of the post-graduate of the PGE line, individual production was not entirely individualized, as the group mobilized to contribute mutually, in view of the possibilities of approximation between the research objects. During the experience, the graduate students understood that the research objects of the same line can connect, not in terms of immediacy, but in terms of understanding and interpretation. In any case, they were making themselves in the knowledge construction process, creating and (re)inventing their own findings, in short, they were discovering themselves. Let's see what the FHDPD post-graduate student presents:

One night while I was studying, I called a colleague and she explained to me by showing me some examples, it was a long dialog and, for the first time, the window opened, something began to fit. From then on, I started talking to my colleagues, observing the sentences of one, the comment of another. A conversation here, a conversation there, and I was building this great enigma, the challenge was already launched and now I had to run to figure it out and decipher what, for me, was a mystery.

These writings demonstrate another situation experienced by postgraduates. As understanding prevails, the unknown becomes more and more distant and, consequently, the anguish dissipates. It may be obvious, but it is important to emphasize that knowledge is a construction that takes place as a process of understanding and comprehension of what surrounds us. About this, ^{Macedo (2009}, p. 108) explains: "they are artisans who relearn that the world and its fragments hold, dynamize, and produce relations, fundamental spheres for the understanding of how these very worlds are born, intertwine, die, and regenerate themselves through their interactions". In short, the post-graduates were finding themselves and constituting themselves as authors of their work in the interactions established among themselves, the most important result of which was the discovery that creation and selfconfidence are fundamental conditions for the production of knowledge in the postgraduation stricto sensu.

From the three research lines, the following thematic panels were assembled, which were presented and discussed in class.

Each post-graduate student was constituting himself as an intellectual craftsman in the collaborative making of the panel. It was not a linear process, because the collaborative/collective construction could not disregard the individual findings. In fact, the process of collective writing could not happen by excluding individual writing, but by incorporating it. In fact, at that moment, the construction of knowledge became so complex that many questions came up: how to weave a collective writing without fading individual ideas? How to aggregate so many research objects in a panel? How far would we get with this possibility of work? In order to discuss these questions, we had to go back to the collective production (panel) and scrutinize how they were elaborated, in the sense of perceiving the individual writing (with the explicitness of each one's research objects). The appreciation of the panels consists in trying to see the starting and finishing points of each group, without having to make comparisons, but only presenting the reasoning used to accomplish the proposed activity.

From Chart 3, we notice that the titles of the panels denote amplitude and pertinence with what was proposed, including in two of them we find the nomenclatures of the research lines as a title or as a subtitle. For a better understanding of how this collective construction of the thematic panel was happening, we highlight an excerpt from the report of one of the postgraduate students.

We scheduled a meeting with the twelve master's students from the Research Line Human Formation and Professional Development of Teachers and, with all the texts in hand, we talked, discussed, made observations, reported our findings, improved our knowledge, and answered each other's questions. It was a big web in which everyone helped each other and together we discovered the power of maturation and its effectiveness. We observed that all the texts brought strong and specific marks from our researches. The interesting thing is that each one of us was able to relate the texts we had worked on to our own researches, our dialogues flowed, one contemplated the other, the exchange of ideas was a very rich and effective moment for our discoveries. (POST-GRADUATE OF THE FHDPD RESEARCH LINE, December, 2018).

With this report, we realize how collaborative methodologies favor the learning and maturation of graduate students. They are able to provoke self-confidence and self-awareness of their experiences and, at the same time, enable innovation in the classroom, aiming at the individual and collective writing process. For this reason, we reaffirm the ideas of ^{Mills (2009}, p. 94), when he stresses that "to write is to reason; it is to struggle against chaos and darkness. We bet on this idea from the beginning to the end of the writing process.

Although innovation can assume several epistemological connotations, including conceiving it as a result of the knowledge society, whose production becomes socially and economically useful to meet capitalism in its contemporary development (^{DUARTE, 2008}). Innovation for us does not assume this connotation of competitiveness, of productivism (^{MANCEBO, 2013}), of the publish or perish policy (BIACHETTI, ZUIN and FERRAZ, 2018). By the way, we are understanding innovation as a pedagogical practice different from the usual. It is one that challenges students to have moments of creation and collective discoveries. By thinking this way, we consider that pedagogical practice reinforces the need for postgraduates to assume their condition of subject (^{BARBOSA, 2014}; 2010), boosting their inventive capacity. Innovation is to escape from the common place, therefore it frightens and destabilizes. Let's see what the post-graduates told us about this in their reports:

As Caetano would say "and the mind frightens what is not yet old", that is why the beginning of the work was difficult, I would even say painful, given the novelty of the activity proposed to us. No master's student had experience in the elaboration of a panel and, despite the guidance and monitoring of the professors, the doubts were many and so was the fear of not being able to handle the work. (POSTGRADUATE OF THE PGE RESEARCH LINE, December, 2018, emphasis in original).

When the teachers passed the instructions of this individual and group work [...], at first I thought it was impossible to do this work in view of so many similar but at the same time different subjects, [...]. After all, what did they want? It took days of thinking and I could not understand, write, make a relationship with the texts and my research project. I cried, I thought of giving up. (FHDPD RESEARCH LINE POST-GRADUATE, December, 2018).

[...] when we stop to think deeply we start to come across characteristics that we want to see, as the case of politics is present in everyone's life. From my point of view, the work was very important in academic life for learning to think more, [...].

(PECDI RESEARCH LINE POSTGRADUATE, December, 2018).

Therefore, innovation is necessary for teaching and learning in post-graduation stricto sensu, so that beginner researchers can exercise their sociological imagination. For this exercise, researchers need to make use of all the tools at their disposal, including the use of new technologies. From these reports, we can see the potential of the collaborative methodology, in which the master's students were challenged to solve problems as a team, respecting the discussion of ideas, which corroborates the studies of Rodrigo-Cano (2016).

This whole process is an epistemological rupture, according to what ^{Cunha (2016}) proposes about innovation in the university. In fact, the changes resulting from innovative pedagogical practices can be summarized in the following aspects: 1) graduate students assume their condition of subjects, because they are authors of ideas; 2) the classroom is not the space of knowledge reproduction, but of debate and construction of knowledge through the use of collaborative methodologies; 3) the teacher assumes the condition of mediator of the process; 4) teaching and learning take place in the midst of criticism, self-criticism and intercriticism.

At that point of the experience, we were already clear on how interesting the use of collaborative methodologies was to mobilize the post-graduates in their exchange of knowledge and learning. From the reading of the collective written work, we noticed that the group of the PGE research line, composed of thirteen graduate students, chose six a priori themes related to the authors studied in class during the semester, namely: globalization, democracy, State, citizenship, human rights and social inequality, so that, based on them, each one could associate them to their research object. The most recurrent themes among the graduate students for relating the texts to their objects were: democracy, citizenship and globalization. With the use of this methodological strategy, only one graduate student was unable to link his research object to the collectively defined themes. All the others used more than one theme to surround their object. The group justifies this way:

All the texts present reflections that help us understand how the influences of the State and society can affect both the exercise of citizenship and education, as well as the processes of management and educational policy. In this sense, the texts point out the context that we must necessarily confront in the contemporary world and that will influence educational policy and educational management. (WRITTEN WORK PGE GROUP, December 2018).

The definition of the themes as a starting point contributed significantly to each postgraduate student's individual written construction, without being disconnected from the horizon that had been collectively established. From this process, we deduce that the themes defined by the group were the points of possible convergence between one work and another.

Continuing the discussion, the organization of the panel of the FHDPD research line, made up of 12 masters' students, followed a different path from the previous group. The methodological strategy used by the group was the definition of broad a posteriori thematic axes, such as: globalization; labor and social inequality; education, human rights and democracy, to incorporate the post-graduate students' objects. That is, such definition happened after the individual writing of each master's student. With this methodology, the identification of the research objects became more difficult, because they did not appear explicitly. Of the twelve research objects in this line of research, we were able to identify eleven, since one was diluted in the set of ideas of the authors studied. The group makes the following considerations:

In the first moment, an individual text was made by each student with his or her research objects, after which a synthesis of the texts was organized with the group according to the selected thematic axes relating them to the studies carried out in the classroom (WORK WRITTEN GROUP FHDPD, December 2018).

With the definition of the thematic axes, our evaluation leads us to realize that the group worked very well with the authors studied in class, establishing relationships with the research objects, which were identified throughout the text. The students managed to internalize the logic of the panel construction and autonomously developed the necessary strategies to achieve the objectives of the proposed activity. In practice, students are guided to a reflection process in situations of collective decisions and democratic coexistence. This is a manifestation of democratic values whose movement is only possible in a democratic society. The attitudes manifested in these reports portray some of the dissensions, consensus, and contradictions that exist in processes that require constant interactions between individuals. In this sense, dialogue is the basis, since the autonomy of students to think about solutions and find answers when they are challenged is exposed, especially in activities that involve collective engagement.

According to ^{Moran (1999}), historically, human relations are marked by authoritarianism and reflect in the mirror the image of a backward society. The break with this tradition can be initiated when we educate for autonomy and freedom in formative, interactive, liberating processes that respect differences, free people and organizations.

The PECDI research group is composed of 10 master's students. In the same direction of the FHDPD group, they have elected great thematic axes to group the master's students' objects by thematic affinity, namely: learning, inclusion and technologies; globalization and implications in the inclusion process of people with disabilities; identity, subjectivity, and subject formation. In this group, of the ten research objects, we were able to identify nine, all related to the ideas of the authors studied. The group explains the directions used for the collective work.

However, in a work that proposes to be collective, the connection between the diversity of world readings lacks certain lines that, even if tenuous, give a sense of partnership and collaboration in a reflection that starts from the individual and ends in a collectivity. In an attempt not to make a collage of the ideas of the various points of view, the composition was made from the individual productions of the participants, grouping them by thematic affinity, the analysis of the texts, and their elaboration in topics in an attempt to give greater clarity and objectivity to the work.

(PECDI GROUP WRITTEN WORK, December 2018).

Anyway, with the exposition of how the groups were organized to build the collective work, without weakening the individual productions, two basic forms were evidenced: a) definition of themes a priori so that the Masters students could use them in their individual writings from an articulated and collectively thought strategy; b) definition of thematic a posteriori axes to group the individual productions. Both forms presented themselves very efficient in the creativity, in the comprehension of the authors studied, in the authorial construction of the post-graduates, although, in the second form adopted, the possibilities of hiding some research object ended up being confirmed in both groups.

We can also assure that the reported experience presents limits, like any other experience, no matter how successful it may be. Two limits were possible to see, which corroborate the difficulties that stricto sensu postgraduates present in reading and writing. The first concerns the comprehension and interpretation of the authors studied in class, which is why the difficulties in establishing relations/links with the objects of study were aggravated, to the point of thinking of giving up. The second refers to the collective writing, making it evident that, in all the groups, one or another graduate student did not manage to make explicit, in the text, his/her research object.