[Maths-Education] FW: Message to Nottingham List Members - Sudden dismissal - Lulu Healy and colleagues, PUCSP, Brazil

[Gates Peter]

________________________________

From: Nardi Elena Dr (EDU) [mailto:E.Nardi at uea.ac.uk] 
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 12:48 PM
To: Peter.Gates at nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: Message to Nottingham List Members - Sudden dismissal - Lulu Healy and colleagues, PUCSP, Brazil
Importance: High

 

Dear Peter, 

 

if you think this is appropriate I would be grateful if you could circulate the message below to the membership of the Nottingham list.

 

With best wishes

Elena

 

Dr Elena Nardi

Reader in Mathematics Education

UEA-EDU, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

 http://www.uea.ac.uk/~m011 <https://ueaexchange.uea.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.uea.ac.uk/~m011> , Tel: + 441603592631


 

MESSAGE TO MEMBERS OF THE NOTTINGHAM LIST

 

Dear member, 

 

I am writing to you in order to inform you about some news I have just heard from colleagues in Brazil. 

Four lecturers  - including Lulu Healy - were suddenly dismissed by their institution PUCSP, Brazil. 

PUCSP students as well as colleagues from Brazil, UK, USA and Portugal are protesting to the Rector of the university. 

(I have written to the Rector as well, also in my capacity as PUCSP's invited speaker in 2004). 

However a more collective effort would perhaps yield better results. 

I would therefore like to invite you to respond to the following account of events that I received from Lulu. 

Please respond via email to PUCSP's Rector Maura Pardini Bicudo Véras at reitoria at pucsp.br <mailto:reitoria at pucsp.br> . 

 

Lulu has sent me the following account of events - she can also be contacted at:: lulu at pq.cnpq.br <mailto:lulu at pq.cnpq.br> 

 

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On Monday 3rd December there was a meeting of the program of post-graduate studies in mathematics education of PUC Sao Paulo, during which the proposal for the dismissal of four mathematics educators of the program was presented and voted on.

The only official justification given in the meeting - and in all the subsequent meetings - is that the proposal stems from the need for a reorganisation of a academic-administrative nature and the fact that the four, Ana Paula Jahn, Janete Bolite Frant, Lulu Healy and Wagner Valente do not have adequate profiles for this reorganisation. A fifth member of the program Vincenzo Bongiovanni immediately handed in his notice in indignation and shock following the vote .

No indication of what form this reorganisation might take and why suddenly these four academics are not fit to continue as lecturers in the program - again neither during the first meeting, nor the other meetings of the administrative bodies of the Centre of Exact Sciences, PUC Sao Paulo during which the decision was endorsed by nor indeed during a meeting between the coordination of the postgraduate program and around 90 post-graduate students who demanded explanations for this extraordinary sequence of events.

Some of the students have received and open letter in which also no explanations are given, but in which it is imply that the decision was taken to exclude a group who supposedly have demonstrated they have no commitment to the program or to maintaining its academic excellence. This is very hard to understand or accept. Amongst those who were dismissed, are the most productive academics of the program - particularly those with most publications in academic journals and books, responsibility for the majority of the international affiliations of the program and who collectively coordinate a significant number the funded research projects carried out in the program during the last five years.

Their dismissal - supposed an act taken after considerable reflection and study - leaves at least 50 students without research supervisors. These 50 students have repeatedly asked for concrete information about the plans for the continuation of their studies. They are feeling worried and insecure by the lack of response and left believing that their needs were simply not adequately considered by those initiating the dismissal process.The number of manifestations of support received from the students by the four academics has been enormous. These students have also made insistent pleas to the "reitoria"   (equivalent to university vice-chancellor) that the decision be reconsidered and reverted. The final endorsement, in which the dismissal process will become official in currently in the hands of this body.

The real reason for the dismissal is neither academic nor administrative, but one of political and personal persecution. In Brazil, it is not uncommon practice to work in more that one educational institution - various members of the program do so and certainly not only the four being dismissed. What the four have in common (in addition to their proven record of academic excellence) is a connection with a recently created post-graduate program coordinated by Tania Campos, another internationally recognised researcher in the mathematical education community and formerly director of the Centre of Exact Sciences of   PUC- Sao Paulo. We believe that the dismissal process is a deliberate attempt to isolate and "punish" any academics who continue academic connections with this researcher.

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With sincere thanks for considering this invitation and many good wishes,

 

Elena Nardi

School of Education and Lifelong Learning

University of East Anglia

<http://www.uea.ac.uk/~m011>  

 

<http://www.uea.ac.uk/~m011>