Introduction

Abstract

This introduction presents the issue of Revista Guará devoted to the dossier "Curricular integration and crediting of University Extension: implementation, perspectives, evaluation and challenges". It situates the debate within the framework of Strategy 12.7 of the Brazilian National Education Plan and of Resolution CNE/CES nº 7/2018, which requires at least ten percent of the total workload of undergraduate programs to be allocated to extension activities, and argues that, now that the implementation deadline has expired, the discussion shifts from the merits of the measure to an assessment of its effectiveness. The nine articles of the dossier are presented according to three scales of analysis, namely the institutional scale, concerned with implementation policies and regulations, the scale of the curricular component and of the formative experience, attentive to specific courses and to student perceptions, and the scale of the territory, focused on dialogical interaction with communities and public services. The text then records the twelve original articles that compose the issue, the editorial devoted to the journal's editorial transformations and to the new Brazilian evaluation cycle, and the visual essay on sociocultural mediation through muralism. It concludes that the consolidation of extension policy depends less on compliance with the regulatory percentage than on cultural, pedagogical and institutional transformations capable of sustaining the encounter between university and society.