The official knowledge and adult education agents: an ethnographic study of the adult education team of a local development-oriented nongovernmental organization in the north of Portugal

Nongovernmental organizations, particularly those related to development work (local development-oriented nongovernmental organizations; LDNGO), and their agents have been assuming, in Portugal, an important role in the field of adult education. These organizations develop with the State, at the national level, and with supranational institutions and programs different types of relationships and arrangements, as a result of the activity in such educational arena. This article intends to question, on the basis of an ethnographic study of an adult education team of an LDNGO and using the pedagogical discourse model of Bernstein, the relationship that these agents establish with the official knowledge (pedagogical discourse) emerging from State-dependent intervention bodies. The results of the study shows that, even in strongly prescriptive working contexts, it is possible to develop an active relationship with the official knowledge and make recontextualizing uses of it.