Brazil's 1988 constitution mandates integrating teaching, research, and extension in higher education. Progress is slow due to unclear implementation. We examine challenges to this integration, which may resonate with other Global South institutions.
In Brazil, the third mission of universities is called university extension, as established in the 1988 constitution (which also introduced “inseparability” of teaching, research, and extension). This means that these three pillars of academia must maintain a deep and close relationship. As a constitutional rule, one expects that, after 30 years, Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs) would have fully implemented inseparability. However, this has been a challenging task, and problems that Brazil faces are common in many countries.
In December 2018, a resolution by the Brazilian ministry of education established guidelines for integrating teaching and extension practices (through community-based learning) to promote the inseparability mandate. Students must have at least 10 percent of their curricular credits from community-based learning activities. They also must be leaders in planning and executing these actions. In short, faculty, undergraduate programs coordinators, and HEIs’ managers needed to rethink the curricula, community engagement learning opportunities, and the means of executing and financing such activities. Additionally, the curricular integration of university extension must be based on the mandatory inseparability with research activities. Implementation of extension to graduate programs is also recommended.
Why has it not worked in the last 30 years? And will the community-based learning within extension projects mandate enable inseparability?
The third mission of HEIs is named in different ways in different countries and institutions, such as “university extension,” “outreach,” “community engagement,” “social engagement,” “civic engagement,” linkage with society/socioeconomic environment, among others. In Brazil, the concept of extension takes on a multifaceted form. It can be implemented through a variety of channels, including continuing education courses and programs, workshops, events, and projects. These initiatives are not limited to specific sectors but extend to various communities, such as schools, nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and vulnerable communities. The terms and meanings generally refer to the use of physical capabilities and knowledge that higher education institutions have to promote interaction with other actors in society, including the provision of services, professional qualification and employability, promotion of rights, or improvement of quality of life, among others.
Over the last few years, researchers in higher education have tried to explain the concept of inseparability. Assuming that teaching, research, and university extension practices must be integrated means recognizing that they must combine theory and practice, creating interrelationships between the three missions. Research, for instance, must find new agendas based on the society’s demands and challenges, and bring those insights and results to the teaching practice. Teaching must enable students to be protagonists of their learning process based on data from research and dialogue with communities. Extension must act as an interface that connects teaching, learning, and research to other social actors.
The inseparability mandate is quite original in HEI practices. But few, if any, countries have similar mandates in their highest-level legal norms. Some countries have mandates for service-learning programs, such as Malaysia’s ministry of higher education mandate.
Until now, the 2018 ministerial resolution has had little effect on the integration between teaching and extension. According to the data from a survey conducted at 160 Brazilian public HEIs in 2022, only 29 percent of the surveyed HEIs had between 91 percent and 100 percent of their programs integrated with extension.
Four factors can explain the slow pace of implementing inseparability in higher education in Brazil. Understanding these factors can also be helpful for other HEIs around the world, especially—but not limited to—in countries in the Global South.
First, although the constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil established the need for inseparability more than 30 years ago, we have observed that, in most cases, these missions merely coexist. In many cases, teaching and research activities need to be more engaged with the needs of other societal actors. This results from a need for a robust, systematic, and extensive support system for inseparability practices.
Second, there are still conflicting views on the relevance of university extension and on the ways of carrying it out. In Brazil and Latin America in general, HEIs’ engagement with society has historically developed with the vital objective of providing service to vulnerable communities. The critical extension movement, whose leading advocates included the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, represented an inflection point in thinking about community engagement. According to Freire, extension practices should occur in a dialogical way that respects different types of knowledge, creating and cocreating new knowledge based on the interaction between actors.
Third, research and teaching have been seen as the noblest activities for an HEI. In contrast, as noted in previous research, the extension activities are implemented “in the background.” This undervaluation is not exclusive to Brazil but is a global phenomenon, considering that the logic of research productivity still guides the selection and evaluation processes of teaching staff and resource allocation. Such disparity in recognition and support undermines the inseparability of the three HEI missions.
Fourth, a lack of legitimacy in extension activities harms the career opportunities of Brazilian faculty members who carry out such activities. In many countries, higher education systems are increasingly guided by the need for prestige and international reputation, which put more value on the number of publications, citations, and other productivity metrics related to research. Even funding agencies need help with evaluating and supporting participatory research projects (engaged research). Those factors increase barriers to the inseparability of HEIs’ three missions, such as: the lack of adequate infrastructure and staff dedicated to extension practices; training opportunities for employees and faculty in extension practices; establishment of formal management processes (including evaluation, communication, and dissemination); formal management of relationships with community partners; support to students’ initiatives with communities; among others.
In this way, significant challenges still need to be addressed, mainly in understanding the possibilities of extending the extension, the preferred audiences, the availability of financing sources, monitoring and evaluating their impacts and promoting inseparability.
Brazilian HEIs need to recognize the essential role of extension and consider it a mission as important as teaching and research. To achieve this goal, HEIs must change the ways they teach, research, and interact with external communities.
HEIs must also give space and voice to stakeholders from internal and external communities, promoting dialogue and offering mutually beneficial exchanges of resources. Such interactions between HEIs and communities contribute to a more pluralistic view of the world, diversity, and the well-being of society.
Finally, it is up to HEI managers to consistently provide the conditions and resources necessary for the inseparability of teaching, research, and extension, especially institutional support (human and financial resources, administrative processes, among others), to value inseparability initiatives, and the faculty selection and evaluation processes.
Ana Maria Nunes Gimenez is postdoctoral fellow at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, and a researcher at the National Institute of Science and Public Policies, Strategy and Development (INCT/PPED), Brazil. E-mail: [email protected].
Muriel de Oliveira Gavira is associate professor at the School of Applied Sciences, University of Campinas (UNICAMP). E-mail: [email protected].
Maria Beatriz M. Bonacelli is associate professor at the Department of Science and Technology Policy at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and researcher at the National Institute of Science and Public Policies, Strategy and Development (INCT/PPED). E-mail: [email protected].