Metamorphoses: hybrid education changing shape in each territory

Research diary – Maceió (AL), November 7, 2026

Ovid’s Metamorphoses opens with the poet’s wish to sing of forms changed into new bodies. Across fifteen books, nothing stands still. Gods, people, trees and rivers keep changing shape, yet something of each one remains. That poem came back to me over the last few days, when all of Brazil seemed to fit inside Maceió.

This time the cartography did not need to travel. The country came to us. I took part in three simultaneous events linked to the National High School Policy (PNAEM): the 3rd In-Person Expo of the Innovation Network for Hybrid Education (RIEH), the 2nd In-Person Meeting of the REM and the 2nd GEPEM Meeting. We were immersed in the RIEH Observatory, at the Federal University of Alagoas. It is where the research lives and where every journey of this cartography begins.

I was not alone. I went with the undergraduate research, master’s and doctoral students I supervise, and I want to record here how special these days were. For the undergraduate research students, it was their first event of this size. At the same time, they were taking part in the International Pedagogy Week organized by the Center for Education, where they presented their research for the first time. So proud of these people! We spent the days together in dialogue, in the activities and at meals, always with respect and joy. In cartography, the researcher does not stand outside the field (Passos; Kastrup; Escóssia, 2009), and neither does a research group. Together, we learn to be affected by what happens. Watching the younger ones discover this for the first time was also an event in this research.

They were days of intense work. We followed the actions of the policy and observed how the RIEH Hubs are contributing to it. We were also able to interview in person the coordinators of the Hubs we had not yet visited: Pernambuco, Roraima, Amapá, Pará, Piauí and Minas Gerais. Minas Gerais, by the way, was the state whose visit had been cancelled on a Sunday morning, the cancellation that ended up taking me to Rio. Cartography is like that. What the path closes in one place, it opens in another.

Beyond the interviews, we took part in the program and talked with professionals from many states and from the Federal District who make education happen every day. The challenges came up, and there are many. But for us they also show the beauty and diversity of this immense Brazil. This is where I return to Ovid. A concept such as hybrid education does not arrive in the territories ready-made. CNE/CEB Resolution No. 2/2024 defines hybrid education as mediated by teachers’ planning and action, with the aim of expanding the times and spaces of the educational process. On paper, there is only one definition. In the school networks, it takes on a body. It works its way into structures, reshapes practices and discovers its own dimension. In Goiás, it is a gear in a larger system. In Rio, it lives inside a school. In each place, it moves like a river that flows around the obstacles along its course until it reaches the sea. The shape changes, but the flow goes on.

There was also hope and joy, alongside the challenges. Over the three days, people shared achievements whose cost only those who know each network’s reality can measure. For me, the high point was when the coordinators presented their experiences to one another, in groups. I thought of Vygotsky (2007), for whom we learn through interaction with others and with the world around us. I also thought of a question that has been with me since Acre: what makes a network a national network? In almost every Hub I visited, I heard that exchange between states is not happening yet. There, for a few hours, it did. Kastrup and Passos (2013) say that to map is to draw a common plane. In those circles, I watched that plane take shape, with Amapá talking to Santa Catarina and Piauí listening to Mato Grosso do Sul.

If I had to say what these three days add to the cartography of the Network, I would say it is a combination of a few things:

• the in-person meeting as a space where the network actually becomes a network;
• listening to territories we had not yet visited and that are now part of the map;
• the realization that hybrid education takes many forms while remaining a single policy;
• and the education of a new generation of researchers, who learn by mapping.

The rigid lines are still there. Distances, discontinuities, provisional teams and changes of government were mentioned more than once. But a meeting like this one also opens lines of flight, possibilities that were not foreseen on the map. At the closing session, the RIEH leadership presented its proposals for 2027, with the aim of consolidating the Network and continuing to move forward. The cartography will keep following that movement.

Last but not least, I am sharing here a video I recorded during my visit to the Rio de Janeiro Hub. In it, three students from Colégio Estadual João Alfredo send a special message to the Hub coordinators. I promised to deliver it, and it has arrived. As I wrote in the Rio diary, the message fits in two words: do more.

There is so much more to tell, but we will keep recording it little by little. Now we have a new mission: transcribing the interviews and cataloguing the photos and videos from these three days, which join the research archive.

We keep mapping, like the river that changes shape without ceasing to flow...

And together, because it is through interaction that a network learns to be a network...

References

BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Câmara de Educação Básica. Resolução CNE/CEB nº 2, de 13 de novembro de 2024. Institui as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União: seção 1, Brasília, DF, 14 nov. 2024.

BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Portaria nº 865, de 8 de novembro de 2022. Institui a Rede de Inovação para a Educação Híbrida. Diário Oficial da União: seção 1, Brasília, DF, 10 nov. 2022.

KASTRUP, V.; PASSOS, E. Cartografar é traçar um plano comum. Fractal: Revista de Psicologia, v. 25, n. 2, p. 263-280, 2013.

OVÍDIO. Metamorfoses. Tradução de Domingos Lucas Dias. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2017.

PASSOS, E.; KASTRUP, V.; ESCÓSSIA, L. (org.). Pistas do método da cartografia: pesquisa-intervenção e produção de subjetividade. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2009.

VYGOTSKY, L. S. A formação social da mente. 7. ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2007.