Bett Brasil, Latin America’s largest education and technology event, held another traveling event on October 5 and 6: the 3rd Bett Conference, in Recife (PE). The event brought together educators, administrators, school operators, and educational leaders from the private sector’s K-12 education system in Brazil’s Northeast Region. In all, eight panel discussions were held, featuring 30 speakers who are leading figures in the educational community.

On the second day of the Bett Recife Conference, one of the most well-attended panels featured Acedriana Vicente Vogel, the academic director of the Positivo Education System, who discussed the topic “Where is education headed? How can we implement future-oriented management in the face of constant change?”

To learn more about the management of private schools and faculty development, the competencies and skills needed by 21st-century students, and the Positivo Education System’s participation in the Bett Educação Conference in Recife, the Bett Blog interviewed Acedriana Vicente Vogel. You can read the interview below:

Bett Blog – How does the Positivo Education System help with the management of private schools, and how does it contribute to the professional development of the teaching staff?

Acedriana Vicente Vogel—Academic Director of the Positivo Education System: The school is an interconnected and interdependent whole. For this reason, the resources of the Positivo Education System support the work of school administrators by providing educational, legal, financial, and marketing content that underpins the teaching and learning process—the very purpose of a school. They also support the work of teachers, expanding real learning opportunities throughout the entire school career, with consistency and cohesion.

Throughout the year, both in person and online, we engage with these two groups—teachers and school administrators—so that together we can develop clear solutions to the countless challenges posed by this pandemic, which this year, for example, range from implementing a program to help students catch up on their learning to identifying social-emotional support integrated across all levels of basic education. That amounts to more than 3,000 hours of synchronous courses and 2,000 hours of asynchronous courses. Working in our favor in this systematic and intentional training effort is a network of more than 1,800 schools across all Brazilian states, with an average partnership duration of 12 years—and approximately 500 schools in this network that have been partners for more than 20 years. This long-standing relationship allows us to move forward consistently and gradually.

Bett Blog - What are the 21st-century competencies and skills that school leaders or administrators need to foster in schools, particularly among elementary and middle school students?

Acedriana Vicente Vogel – Positivo: The BNCC presents the 10 general competencies in a direct and assertive manner; among these, I would highlight: a commitment to the development of scientific, critical, and creative thinking; communication skills; empathy; and cooperation. It is the role of school education—through the development of these competencies and in conjunction with its inherent process of humanization—to present the world and its achievements; the costs of these achievements in relation to the planet and other living beings; and the awareness that we, as humans, are social, interconnected, and interdependent beings. One point is already a consensus: there is no other way to shape tomorrow than through our actions today.

Bett Blog - What kind of management approach should be implemented to foster an innovative school?

Acedriana Vicente Vogel – Positivo: Creativity, the fuel for innovative initiatives, is the result of intentional and disciplined work. It isn’t created out of thin air. Creative thinking is an elaborate and highly sophisticated mental process. It requires references, the ability to generalize, provocation, and engagement. Innovative initiatives may well spring from a brilliant mind, but they take shape through a collaborative process, since complex problems require solutions from various fields.

School administrators, therefore, need to value cooperation as a core principle. What is the best we can do to ensure that teachers and students can take delight in creative processes? First and foremost, we must ensure that they feel they belong in the school environment—emotional safety is a prerequisite for innovative initiatives. The entire educational community needs to see itself reflected in the school’s mission. A second aspect to cultivate in the school is curiosity, so that engagement and sustained attention are present. And, as part of this virtuous cycle, problem-based learning must be framed within intelligent and thought-provoking contexts.

Bett Blog - Looking ahead, what will be the next steps for the Positivo Education System in contributing to the country's educational landscape?

Acedriana Vicente Vogel – Positivo: Our focus has been on further expanding active listening, attentive observation, and constructive dialogue with our partner schools. All of this is to identify what we need:

•  maintain and improve;
•  stop doing;
•  build from scratch.

We know that to provide individualized instruction in a group setting, we need technology—both to quickly and continuously assess what students already know and to design teaching strategies based on that assessment, as well as to offer personalized learning paths that run parallel to classroom work, thereby expanding and enhancing learning. For this reason, we are investing in improving the traceability of our platform, so we can learn more about our students and increasingly personalize their learning activities.

Another area of focus is inclusive education—there is a growing number of students who require a different approach to teaching, including the need to adapt instructional materials. We have been working to develop concrete alternatives that can help shape these students’ individualized education plans (IEPs), in line with our overarching goal of fostering a passion for learning.

Bett Blog - Why did the Positivo Education System decide to participate in the Bett Education Conference in Recife?

Acedriana Vicente Vogel—Pedagogical Director of the Positivo Education System: We have more than 340 partner schools in the Northeast, 64 of which have been in operation for over 20 years and five for over 30 years. This region has always inspired Brazilian education through works revered worldwide, such as those of Paulo Freire. Student agency, which today stands as one of the pillars of the new high school curriculum, was already a concept advocated by Paulo Freire in *Pedagogy of Autonomy*.