University extension for social change: notes based on popular extension

• Autor(a) principal: Paro, César Augusto
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Universitários (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/index.php/estudosuniversitarios/article/view/251426
• topic: university; society; university extension; popular extension; social change; universidade; sociedade; extensão universitária; extensão popular; transformação social

This study aims to comprehend the challenges and possibilities univer-sity extension faces in  contributing to social change processes. Through a non-systematic literature review to present the state of the art of this subject in Brazilian academia, we describe historical aspects about uni-versities and how extension composed their ethos. We also present some typologies from studies about university extension, with an emphasis in popular extension, the perspective which has been more in tune with the ethical-political-pedagogical assumptions for building a fair and helpful society. Despite the legal advances, like the constitutional recognition of extension as part of the university’s tripod and the formulation of a national policy aligned with a dialogical relationship between universities and society aiming at social transformation, extensionist practices are, generally, still predominantly oriented by a diffused character of knowled-ge, with unilateral communication flows. The problematization of those challenges faced in the relationship between university-society, as well as the proposal of actions to overcome them, ask for a praxical engagement: all people involved in the extension quotidian must act-reflect-act about it. Thus, one of the pathways that would allow us to construct processes for social change and the emergence of innovation, the untested feasibility, seems to include the collective exercise of critical and dense reflection about the extensionist practices experienced, dealing with its daily ten-sions and contradictions to make something new emerge.