Public and private actors and educational policy implementation networks during the COVID-19 pandemic: The experience of Minas Gerais/Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes, based on the formulation and implementation of the Special Program for Remote Activities (Reanp), the controversies of these processes, and the associations and translations of public, private, and technological actors during the COVID-19 pandemic. To track the actors and understand their connections, we considered approximately six thousand comments posted in virtual environments (Google Play Store and Facebook) and 37 interviews with education professionals, members of the State Department of Education (SEE/MG), and state schools. The study demonstrates that sociotechnical networks were shaped by dependence on technologies widely provided by private companies. The implementation of Reanp was disjointed, and the agency of private actors was expanded, without SEE/MG and school bureaucrats adequately appropriating its content and implementing it effectively. The relationships observed through Reanp allow us to understand how a process of intensification of virtual interactions occurred, with the mobilization of device functionality to become indispensable work tools, generating a logic of dependence on private corporations mobilized by the network, such as Meta and Alphabet, reinforcing the platformization of education, which was already underway before the pandemic.