Laboratories
In general, the facilities at UFMG’s Faculty of Education, which houses this PPGE, are good. The environment is spacious, airy, well-lit, wooded and quiet, making it very conducive to study. Each professor has an individual office, equipped with a computer, telephone, internet point and wireless network access, as well as a study table. The postgraduate program has a computer lab for the exclusive use of postgraduate students, with good equipment (9 computers), acquired partly with capital resources from PROEX. The classrooms are equipped with projectors (datashow), a digital whiteboard, internet points, TV, video, speakers and a wireless network. In addition, we have two rooms with teleconferencing equipment and an auditorium format; one of them is the Defense Room, which allows external members to participate virtually in master’s and doctoral exams. This system has been used more and more in dissertation and thesis defenses, allowing the participation of professors from the program, those on post-doctoral leave and foreign professors on the boards, especially sandwich doctorate supervisors.
As a resource for research activities, the Program has LabMetodo – the Research Methodology Laboratory – which has two iMacs, two MacPro (video editor notebooks), a camcorder, a camera and three desktop PCs. LabMetodo is organized to carry out training activities and audiovisual production (image capture and video editing). Each project being carried out must be organized with its own hard drives. LabMetodo serves postgraduate and undergraduate students, especially FIEI (Intercultural Training for Indigenous Educators). It is a support structure for the activities of indigenous and non-indigenous researchers who are part of the OEEI/UFMG (Observatory of Indigenous School Education), and indigenous and non-indigenous trainers in the SIE/UFMG (Indigenous Knowledge at School) program.
In 2012, we set up a second laboratory, the Classroom Research Laboratory, with the audio and video resources needed for observing, recording, collecting and systematizing data on the interactive dynamics in a classroom, conducting interviews and focus groups. The laboratory has high-definition cameras, high-definition microphones, an editing table, as well as separate environments for participants and researchers.
The facilities of the research centers and groups are also available to researchers, for the composition, maintenance and controlled availability of collections and for the work of the students linked to them. These facilities were generally equipped with funds from projects submitted to CNPq, FINEP and FAPEMIG.
These include the rooms and laboratories used for the activities of the following groups, coordinated and made up of teachers and students from the Program:
1. Center for Literacy Reading and Writing – CEALE
2. Center for Science and Mathematics Education – CECIMIG
3. Educational Evaluation and Measurement Group – GAME
4. Group for Studies and Research in the History of Education – GEPHE
5. Study Groups on Educational Policies and Teaching Work – GESTRADO
6. Laboratory for Studies and Research in History Teaching – LABEPEH
7. Museums and Education Studies Laboratory – LEME
8. Youth and Adult Education Center – NEJA
9. Center for Studies on Work and Education – NETE
10. Sociological Observatory Family-School: Schooling Trajectories and Practices – OSFE-
11. Sétima Arte: Education, Cinema & Audiovisual Group
12. Center for Studies and Research in Rural Education and Sustainability – EDUCAMPO
13. Territories, Integral Education and Citizenship – TEIA
14. Group of Studies and Research in Curriculum and Cultures – GECC
15. Research Group on Production and the Teaching Condition – PRODOC
16. Center for Studies and Research in Early Childhood Education-NEPEI
17. Educational Psychology Laboratory – LAPED
18. UFMG Youth Observatory
19. Indigenous Education Group – GEDUC
20. Affirmative Action at UFMG
21. Interdisciplinary Study Group on Inclusive Education and Special Educational Needs – GEINE
22. Interdisciplinary Research Center in Psychoanalysis and Education – NIPSE
23. Study Group on Gender, Sexuality and Sex in Education – GSS
24. Numeracy Study Group – GEN
25. Spaces and Mathematical Languages
26. Literary Literacy Research Group – GPELL
27. Education Systems Policy and Administration Research Group – GRUPASE
28. Study and Research Group on Historical-Cultural Psychology in the Classroom – GEPSA
29. Helena Antipoff Psychology Laboratory
30. Education Policy Observatory
Finally, there are two auditoriums with a capacity of 300 and 132 seats available for PPGE activities, especially those that bring together a large number of students in the same room, such as the fortnightly “Quarta na Pós” seminars, the monthly seminars of the “Pensar a Educaçao, pensar o Brasil” project, as well as a huge number and diversity of events promoted by the programme, organized by its teachers and students, or with their participation.
Due to the expansion of UFMG’s Faculty of Education, as a result of its adhesion to REUNI, the construction of the new building that will house the research and postgraduate centers is expected to be completed in 2015, which will allow the existing space to be expanded into a modern building, built according to our demands.
Computer resources
All postgraduate students at UFMG have wide access to the various resources and facilities available at the university. These include: access to the high-performance computing laboratories (LCC and CENAPAD); access to the journal portal from the internal network (but also from home). The use of electronic academic journals and the Moodle platform as an auxiliary tool in the disciplines is now consolidated.
Since 2008, a wireless internet access network has been made available throughout the Faculty of Education.
The program has an electronic site, through which not only information is disseminated more quickly, but also the development, management and monitoring of some processes.
The entire PPGE selection process for master’s, doctoral and Latin American doctoral degrees, as well as enrollment in isolated subjects, has been entirely computerized. This made the process even more dynamic, since the registration of regular students had already been computerized for the whole of UFMG. In addition, since 2012, the selection process for scholarships and the monitoring of their implementation has also been computerized at the PPGE, as well as all the processes carried out by the secretariat, such as protocols for the delivery and receipt of documents in general.
The process of scheduling defense and qualification exam boards and the generation of related documents are also computerized.
The program is currently evaluating the operability of a student monitoring system, developed to record the specificities of postgraduate students’ trajectories, especially in a program of the size and diversity of ours.
Library
At UFMG, each Academic Unit has its own library, which allows for greater specialization of the collection, services and products, taking into account the particularities of local demands and the specificities of the various areas of knowledge. The Faculty of Education Library is open from Monday to Friday from 7am to 10pm and on Saturdays from 9am to 1pm, with a collection of approximately 85,000 volumes.
With a staff made up of eight librarians, three administrative assistants and three support professionals and occupying an area of 1,750 m2, the Library has 166 seats for users, a research room, study booths and a wireless network, as well as making an average of sixty thousand loans a year.
In terms of its development, the collection is growing by approximately 4,000 volumes a year, representing an annual investment of around R$60,000, especially in the acquisition of books.
In terms of indirect investments, we highlight the exchange with other institutions, approximately two hundred and sixty national, Latin American and European institutions, which guarantees the regular receipt of 148 national and 135 foreign journal titles.
The Library’s special collections are made up of bibliographic and documentary collections of great importance for the preservation of memory and for research in education, including the private collections of professors Lúcia Casasanta, Alaíde Lisboa de Oliveira and Helena Antipoff, as well as the collections of textbooks, theses and dissertations on literacy, and the titles analyzed in the evaluations of various editions of the PNLD and PNBE, coordinated by the Faculty of Education at UFMG, among others.
The FaE-UFMG Library collection is cataloged in the UFMG Database and the Library also indexes journals in Education, currently having indexed fifty-five thousand articles published in the most important national and Latin American journals.
Its presence in networks is highlighted as the Base Library of COMUT / IBICT, its journal collections are described in the CCN – National Collective Catalog, and it is the Dissemination Center of Reduc – Latin American and Caribbean Network of Information and Documentation in Education. It is listed in the OEI – Organization of Ibero-American States directory and maintains exchanges with more than 200 institutions in Brazil and abroad.
The library also has a reading room and a baby library, and promotes regular events such as the “Literary Tertulia”, aimed at primary school teachers, but with significant participation from post-graduate teachers and students, and the “Conversations with the author”, which provide an opportunity to debate directly with those who produce reference texts for many of the students’ works.
The FaE-UFMG Library also organizes workshops on consulting research databases and reference portals for students entering the PPGE, guides research work in the documentation centers under its responsibility and issues cataloguing sheets for the works produced here.
Educação em Revista
The journal Educação em Revista is linked to our program. The editorial board is made up of an editor-in-chief and 6 deputy editors who are professors in the program. The journal has its own room with 2 computers and a printer, as well as space for meetings of the editorial team, and an employee who supports the processes involved in the editorial office. The journal is rated A1 in CAPES Qualis.
Other Services
All UFMG students have access to a number of university restaurants and a large sports complex. Everyone can sign up for the university health plan (www.casu.com.br) and apply for university housing. In the case of housing, it has facilitated the stay of visiting professors and foreign students in the Program, especially students linked to the Latin American Doctorate and DINTER from Angola.