The Future of Education

In Brazil, federal legislation (Laws 10.639/2003 and 11.645/2008) mandates the inclusion of Afro-Brazilian, African, and Indigenous histories and cultures in basic education curricula. More than two decades later, however, the challenge persists: how can teacher education programs move beyond formal compliance toward substantive curricular transformation? This study examines reflective journals written by pre-service teachers enrolled in a public university course on Ethnic-Racial Relations Education in Brazil, designed as a pedagogical strategy to translate legal mandates into formative practice.

The journals were structured assignments requiring students to articulate national legislation with their own racial self-location, family narratives, and prior schooling experiences. Drawing on a corpus of 113 journals, with in-depth analysis of 18 selected cases, the study identifies recurring narrative and pedagogical patterns. Findings indicate that ethnic-racial themes in prior schooling frequently appeared as commemorative events, aesthetic representations, or isolated projects, while questions of institutional responsibility, evaluation, and curriculum organization remained marginal. At the same time, the reflective device created conditions for moments of critical repositioning, making visible how racial hierarchies are normalized, minimized, or administratively managed within school cultures.

Rather than proposing a universal solution, the paper argues that structured reflective writing can function as a methodological bridge between policy discourse and professional identity formation. By documenting how future teachers narrate implication, avoidance, discomfort, and transformation, the study highlights the importance of precise pedagogical design in equity-oriented teacher education.