Schooling trajectories in disadvantaged neighborhoods of Portugal and Brazil – constellations of school’s meanings for secondary education students

Author(s):

Thiago Freires(presenting / submitting)Fátima Pereira

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES D 13, Secondary Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-21

13:30-15:00

Room:

W4.20

Chair:

Shosh Leshem

Contribution

Every year, thousands of students attend school hoping to aggregate meaning to their lives. Their perceptions on educational processes might range according to their social class, identities and dispositions towards the educational system (Dubet & Martuccelli, 1996; Charlot, 2009; Dayrell, 2007). A set of influences from parents, relatives and friends combined with personal beliefs also help comprehending the diversity of trajectories we can identify in everyday school life (Barbosa, 2007; Wilder, 2013).

Assuming that school has always been subordinated to challenges emerging from a dialectical relationship between society and its objectives concerning schooling processes (Boavida & Amado, 2006), this communication focuses on initial results of an ongoing PhD research, which is aimed at comprehending in depth the senses students attribute to their schooling experience. In a few words, the investigation promotes a reflection on educational trajectories of young people residing in areas identified as sensitive (Van Zanten, 2001). This sensibility, a criterion for choice of schools of these students, is mediated by the social development of the cities, following official and academic indexes (Gonçalves, Matos & Manso, 2012; SDE, 2014). As a multicase study, the research contemplates a school from Northern Portugal and another one from the Northeast of Brazil. All students involved come from secondary school level.

Regarding public secondary school, it is of interest emphasizing that both countries, Portugal and Brazil, only more recently have made this level of education universal. In Portugal, despite early school leaving dropped severely from 2011 to 2015 to 13,7%, the country still ranks above the European average of 11% (Eurostat, 2016). High indices of retention in all cycles of education affects the issue of schooling as well. Similarly, Brazil figures high discrepancy in terms of age and school year, while it battles to make access to school truly universal and of quality (Brito, 2013). In a micro approach, reaching secondary school in these places means dealing with a sandy ground where several missions cross, from sociopolitical integration of distinct generations to the management of school and social justice issues (Matos, 2013).

Believing schools are institutions with unique functions and empowered to provide knowledge young people cannot find elsewhere in the community (Young, 2011), we try to grasp a few clues on how it can answer to society’s demands, according to the students’ view, especially, when placed in areas characterized by deprivation. A debate on social equity takes place, then, in the consideration that the substitution of a democratic model centered in citizenship for another model centered in consumption (Matos, 2013) has potentially made school’s mediation more tense. In such scenario, the phenomenon of self-government works as a means of justifying the unfolding of each life history as an individual responsibility, erasing the State’s responsibilities (Derouet, 2010), although we argue that youth practices themselves can modify and reconstitute what we refer by school reality (Dayrell, 2007). In this sense, we are interested in the schooling of subjects in vulnerable spaces, as we try to comprehend how these subjects take ownership of education while writing their own personal histories. In other words, we ask if school keeps making sense for young people living in less developed contexts and, if so, how does it support their personal projects.

Method

Addressing our general goal, which consists in comprehending schooling meanings for students attending school in sensitive contexts, we opted for a multi-case study of qualitative character with a focus on the narrative approach. Data collection addresses a variety of techniques, including focus groups, biographical interviews and document analysis, in a movement of methodological eclecticism, typical of the multi-case studies (Stake, 1995). Associated with two different neighborhoods from two distinct countries, our work is intermediated by a public school of secondary education in each place. One of the schools is located in Northern Portugal, while the other one belongs to the Northeast of Brazil. Both cities were chosen according to the idea that they are part of contexts under development, mainly considering their poor performances in human development indexes (Gonçalves, Matos & Manso, 2012; SDE, 2014). Schools were assigned based on the assumption that they are part of sensitive zones, therefore, potentially portray heterogeneity of public. Criteria for selection of students participating in the research respect gender diversity, age and grade. There is an effort to include students coming especially from popular classes. Empirical research is fully accomplished in the Brazilian neighborhood and it is about to finish in Portugal by the beginning of 2017. Our first step involved focus groups, which worked as a tool to display debate among students on the characterization of their neighborhoods and personal identities. The procedure allowed us to access public knowledge we wanted to confront individually later (Fonseca, 2005) through the application of biographical interviews. These interviews, involving 10 students per country and still ongoing in Portugal, are meant to deepen our understanding of individual students’ trajectories. We are very interested in their first order narratives, i.e., those stories subjects are able to organize about themselves and their experiences meanwhile struggling to understand the senses and purposes of their lives (Elliot, 2005; Goodson, 2013). Final empirical arrangements depict document analysis aimed at broadening the characterization of the neighborhoods, schools and populations mobilized. So far, data have been analyzed within the principles of content analysis (Pereira, 2010).

Expected Outcomes

Initial findings of this ongoing PhD research are organized into three clusters: institutional relationships, family influences and future expectations. Current data indicate that institutional culture and resources, besides relationships ties built among educational actors (teachers, parents, relatives, friends and school staff), interfere directly in the way students take leadership in their educational trajectories. Participants refer to school as a relevant institution, despite not being sure how exactly it can help them overcome their personal dilemmas. In Portugal, school’s positive environment lessens the weight of belonging to a sensitive neighborhood and students elaborate constraints when they consider the future. In the present, challenges involve bonding with teachers and disciplines. In the Brazilian case, deprivation of resources potentially destabilizes more vulnerable trajectories and pedagogical relationship assumes a crucial position then. Teachers’ discourses on students’ capabilities and interest for them are determinant for successful relationships in class. School, in general, and for both contexts, can be interpreted as a minor representation of the world, as a context for acquiring culture for a usually distant future and, more commonly, as a refuge, a place where one can live differently, leaving behind all sort of personal trouble. Families emerge as a paradox, since they work as a web of support, but also increase the pressure students face concerning achievements. Most of the participants’ parents have not finished compulsory school, a constraint that ends up working as a drive for school engagement. Students believe they must respond to the opportunity they have in hands. When they cannot, it stresses them out. Finally, regarding the future, it is acknowledged as their main (in)visible vulnerability because its path refers mostly to unpredictability and uncertainties.

References

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Author Information

Thiago Freires (presenting / submitting)

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto - FPCEUP

Educational Sciences

Porto

Fátima Pereira

Faculty of Psychology and eEducational Sciences, Porto University