Summary:
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the course of Group Dynamics in Education given by NUTES/CLATES, whose basic and presupposed idea is: to work with Group, Dynamics is to exercise the ability to institute, defined as “the capacity to create, construct and transform”.
The material which served as a basis for this study was taken from questionnaires given at registration time to each participant, reports of their activities developed during the course, and individual, anonymously written evaluations given at the end of the course.
The results showed that the course was explicitely taken for intellectual needs and implicitely for affective needs; the capacity to institute was developed as the major social context permitted. Finally, three principal obstacles which limit this capacity were detected: time, the authoritarian social organization in Brazil, and a more mechanical than dialectical perspective adopted in conducing the course.
A change in the course is recommended; this change should take into account the transversal composition of the group, the dialectical view of group dynamics, and the necessity to discuss the relationship between technique and ideology.