Thirteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper analyses data from a research carried out in two parts. The first one refers to the collective effort of building an interdisciplinary and multicultural curriculum for primary education carried out within a partnership between a higher education institution and a local authority in Brazil. This phase was developed by the educational actors of both institutions through workshops, meetings, and on-line conversations. The second phase aimed to glean the extent to which multicultural, interdisciplinary curricula have been discussed within the knowledge production in Brazil. Methodology in this phase was the study of the state of art, as gleaned in articles about curriculum within the proceedings of the annual conferences carried out by the Brazilian National Research and Post-Graduation Association, as well as in the Brazilian Review of Education, both from 2010 to 2015. It shows potentials and challenges when translating multicultural and interdisciplinary approaches into actual collective curriculum construction. Data revealed trends and challenges in both phases of the research. The arguments that informed the study were based on a critical multicultural perspective that stresses the increasing need to raise awareness to inequalities that attain identities of gender, race, sexual orientation, and others, besides social and economic disparities.