Key words: Relationship to knowledge; curricular policies; curricular practices; epistemology OBJECTIVES Overall objectives: (a) To find out about the students' knowledge opinions, in regard to their academic and professional experiences. (b) To compare/contrast these findings with the objectives and activities recommended by portuguese curricular policies and documents; Specific objectives: (a) To understand how portuguese curriculum, namely at secondary level, aimed to develop relationship to knowledge and to identify curriculum recommendations for mainstream education regarding this issue. (b) To find out about the students' knowledge opinions, in regard to their academic and professional experiences as they are constructed during the project ( 3 years). (c) To identify changes in students' knowledge opinions that are due curriculum recommendations and practices. Abstract In times of change, knowledge, knowing and relationship to knowledge are controversial fields, not only in epistemic approaches, but also in a social point of view. Is that so as new knowledge individuals arise, such as, those who come from peripheral social places (Ball, 2006). Therefore, teaching and learning practices are, often, controversial too (Hargreaves, 2003). The inversion we are proposing is to conceive knowledge as a relationship instead a representation, as a phenomenological approach settles. Such theoretical perspective allows us to define our conceptual field as an epistemic one, where relationship to knowledge means a set of meanings and a field of activities, that each individual arises and develops (Charlot, 2002). It is common that didactics start with an approach that answers to questions like: what is the main subject of this matter and which is the main purpose of its learning. But that reflection gets, usually, realistic answers as soon as subject matters is fixed. In another point of view, pupils learning practices are determined by their families’ expectations and their own prejudices about what learning is for. Literature did show that families expectations and pupils prejudices are usually correlated ( Domingos et al,1986 ; Silva, 2003). However, families do, always, something to improve and make easier (in their own understanding) the school success of their children. Frequently, those efforts are not successful (Mouraz,2004). Some reasons to explain that are concerned with the effects of different cultures of knowledge in presence. The present project came from a set of questions that arisen from two researches we carried out last two years: one concerned with the role played by parents in the school life of their children, the other related to pupils’ meanings about vocational secondary training. Our research problem is to establish what seems to be important in relationship to knowledge in successful and failure pupils and check how important and permanent those factors are in students’ academic and professional transitions. That is the main reason we intend to use controversial cartography. One of basic principles of controversial cartography is to settle knowledge diversity, that, when it is known, allows new ways of meaning and, as a result, new ways of people involvement (Taylor,2003).

Methodology: The research that we are carrying on since 2006 has two pupils cohort: Those who were attending 12º secondary level ( N= 10) and those who were attending 11º secondary level ( N= 10). Together, they constitute the started sample. Among them we selected 6 individuals as they were available to be part of the research, and that we have been followed since 2006. However we started by a questionnaire, at the first project year, that was an extended source of information, we did interviews in the other collecting data moments. The students belong to different curriculum areas, and were aged, at start moment, since 16 to 20 years old.

Potencial impact: As we want to map relationship to knowledge, we hope our research could bring useful information to curriculum policies and practices.