CALL FOR PAPERS FOR A ABdC THEMATIC EDITION 2027 - Secularism, curricula and moral disputes in contemporary school education
The Revista e-Curriculum (ISSN: 1809-3876 – Qualis A1), an open-access, continuous-publication electronic journal maintained by the post-graduate Education Program Curriculum of PUC-SP [Pontifical Catholic University, São Paulo], invites researchers to submit scientific articles to Associação Brasileira de Currículo (ABdC) 2027’s Themed Edition named “Secularism, curricula and moral disputes in contemporary school education”, or “Laicidade, currículos e disputas morais na educação escolar contemporânea” (in Portuguese), to be published in October 2027.
Submission period: from 1 February 2027 until 15 April 2027.
Dossier Organizers:
- Dr. Amarildo Inácio dos Santos (Universidade Estadual do Paraná – UNESPAR, União da Vitória, PR, Brasil)
- Dra. Alexandrina Monteiro (Universidade Estadual de Campinas - UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brasil)
- Dra. Andrea Díaz Genis (Universidad de la República – UDELAR, Montevideo, Uruguay)
Justification
Over the last decades, multiple curriculum research projects have shown that schools constitute a privileged site of disputes surrounding the production of knowledge, the formation of subjects, and the definition of values considered legitimate for societal life. In this context, secularism is no longer understood merely as a stable legal principle. Still, it is analyzed as a historical construction permanently strained by political, religious, cultural, and moral projects competing over the meanings of public education. While secularism seeks to guarantee freedom of belief and conscience, equal rights, and pluralism, different rationalities attempt to redefine its limits, producing new forms of regulation over school practices and curricula. These tensions become particularly visible with the rise of controversies in Brazil and other contexts involving religious education, academic freedom, human rights education, discussions on race, gender, and sexuality, as well as other agendas that spark disputes over the role of morality in schools. In these conflicts, curricula not only organize knowledge but also produce normativities, legitimizing certain discourses and excluding others, becoming privileged spaces for understanding how different regimes of truth dispute guidance on conduct and define what can or cannot be taught.
Acknowledging that curricula and secularism are produced within power relations, this dossier aims to gather research that problematizes how curriculum politics, pedagogical practices, and educational discourses help constitute differences and produce moral hierarchies. The submitted articles must investigate historical and contemporary processes through which religious, cultural, legal, and political frameworks intersect with school education. Works must also analyze those frameworks' effects on curricula organization, teacher education, public policies, and democratic principles.
In this vein, we propose to collect research that, from a critical and post-critical perspective, understands secularism as a field of dispute and the curricula as political arenas in which different societal projects are confronted. Therefore, we hope to contribute to the debate on the relations between secularism, curricula, and democracy and expand possibilities for studying how school education reproduces and problematizes the norms that regulate collective life. In this way, this dossier aims to consolidate a space for dialogue among researchers committed to knowledge production on public education, religious pluralism, human rights, and differences, reaffirming the importance of these themes to contemporary curriculum studies.
Important Information
Works are accepted if they are written in the target languages of Portuguese, Spanish, and English and must conform to the standards regarding style and the bibliographical requirements of each language and set out in the Guidelines for Authors available in the section About of the Revista.
Between 12 (twelve) and 18 (eighteen) works will be selected to guarantee international, institutional, regional and thematic diversity.
As part of the submission process and partnership among ABdC and other journals, authors must comply with the submission procedures insofar as they apply to the points listed below:
- Authors may submit only one work, written individually or in partnership, to the themed issue ABdC 2027, to be published by partner publishers.
- If the work is approved, all the authors must be members of the Associação Brasileira de Currículo (ABdC) and have a current membership at the time of publication (https://abdcurriculo.com.br/);
- The ABdC guidelines do not supersede the guidelines established by partner journals, including those regarding the minimum interval required for publication in the same academic journal. Therefore, please review the guidelines of the journal to which this dossier pertains.
Manuscripts must be submitted via the e-Curriculum Journal’s submission platform: http://revistas.pucsp.br/curriculum/about/submissions#authorGuidelines, in the section “ABdC 2027 Themed Issue: Laicidade, currículos e disputas morais na educação escolar contemporânea” from February 1 2027 to April 15 2027.
São Paulo, November 04, 2026.
Prof. Dr. Amarildo Inácio dos Santos
Profa. Dra. Alexandrina Monteiro
Profa. Dra. Andrea Díaz Genis
