Municipal intervention in education in Portugal (2000–2024): a critical analysis based on the mapping of theses and dissertations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5212/PraxEduc.v.21.25780.009Abstract
This article examines grey literature produced in Portuguese Higher Education Institutions on municipal intervention in education, consisting of 172 Doctoral theses and Master’s dissertations defended between 2000 and 2024, with the aim of mapping, characterizing, and interpreting the meanings constructed around local educational governance. In a context marked by advances and setbacks in decentralization processes, the study seeks to understand not only the topics addressed but also the discursive frameworks and forms of legitimacy attributed to municipal action. The study adopts a descriptive, longitudinal, and interpretive design, combining descriptive statistical analysis of institutional and disciplinary variables with thematic and discourse analysis of abstracts as scientific artefacts. The results reveal an increase in academic production over the period analyzed, as well as institutional and territorial concentration in specific universities, a predominance of qualitative approaches, and the centrality of Education Sciences. In the discursive realm, an ambivalent representation of the municipality emerges, simultaneously conceived as a space of innovation and political agency and as an entity constrained by mechanisms of centralized regulation. It is concluded that, in addition to identifying thematic and methodological gaps, the selected literature exposes a field characterized by tensions between local autonomy and central control, indicating the need for analytical diversification and deepening studies on impacts and intermediate scales of educational governance.
Keywords: Educational governance. Municipal intervention. Grey literature.
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