Session Information
05 SES 12 A, New Perspectives on School Exclusion Drop-Out and Participation
Paper Session
Contribution
The present research starts from the causes of school drop-out in order to question how to intervene effectively at structural and systemic levels to prevent and tackle conditions of youth at educational risk and discomfort aged between 14 and 16 years old.
Many studies, especially since the 2000s, explored the factors within the school system affecting the phenomenon (Rumberger & Lim, 2008; Glogowski, 2015; Batini & Bartolucci, 2016; Pandolfi, 2017; Girelli & Bevilacqua, 2018); however, there is a shortage of research analyzing contextual variables – especially from a strictly qualitative point of view – in relation to the school system understood as an ideological apparatus of power and social reproduction (Benvenuto, 2011; Baldacci, 2019). Thus, this project sought to take on a critical and radical perspective and adopt a trasformative approach (Freire, 1968), both educational and political (Gramsci, 1975, revived by Baldacci), to reflect on the inequalities elicited by a system based on the success/failure logic: not by chance, drop-out means “slag” from an industrial production process. So, the emerging theoretical framework is that of Social Justice Education (Cochran-Smith, 2004) according to the key principles of Problematicism (Bertin, 1968; Frabboni, 2012), towards emancipatory and anti-oppressive practices.
This same pedagogical model, hinged on an economic matrix, underlies many of the interventions and actions aimed at preventing and contrasting school drop-out: even second-chance experiences, that are now a bulwark against educational risk and poverty, have their roots in a business-oriented paradigm, that of the European White Paper on Education and Training (see European Commission, 1995). For this reason, in order to take a truly critical, divergent and radical look at the phenomenon and the traditional school form, the research tried to decentralize its perspective from the education mainstream, focusing on a reality that has always represented a real alternative to public schooling: popular education - which has always offered places able to face youth educational discomfort and restore meaning to a teaching and learning experience which is felt as crystallised in the denial of possibility (Bertoni Jovine, 1954; De Meo & Fiorucci, 2011; most recently, the 2021 special issue of the Journal Formazione, Lavoro, Persona). Indeed, the (symbolic and actual) education peripheries, by virtue of their nonconformist and marginal nature, can turn out to be places of social and cultural transformations and co-construction of meaning.
The idea guiding the present research, from which the opening question arises, is that only a radical transformation of cultural, pedagogical and institutional perspective, together with structural changes and interventions, will be able to guarantee the conditions for achieving social justice (both in school environments and Teacher Education). And more: What methods, strategies and tools (educational and didactic) are most effective for adolescents? Is it possible to systematize some good practices, overcoming the extemporaneousness which often characterizes some interventions? What are the implicit models underlying the educational and teaching practices of popular education, which offers learning paths alternative to the traditional school?
Finally, as a leading ambition that permeates the whole research, another question emerges, aiming to overcome an all-encompassing definition: Is it possible to strive towards a real de-construction of the school drop-out sphere, envisaging its re-semantization – and maybe even its re-lexicalization – in terms of rights, equity and social justice? Indeed, the dropping-out student is a system scrap, i.e. a waste of resources to the detriment of society, who must be “recovered” and led on the right track; in this frame of mind, the semantic and lexical sphere of drop-out expression refers to a paradigm steeped in conformism and standardization, mainly based on the economic exploitation.
Method
In the light of the framework above, the research adopted a very qualitative approach: the presentation aims at showing the results and findings of an intrinsic case study (Yin, 2006) carried out throughout the s.y. 2020/2021 (so, in the middle of the pandemic period) in the Popular School managed by the "Antonia Vita" Association in Monza. This school welcomes adolescents aged 13 to 16 who cannot “stay inside” the traditional school classes, because of hardships and discomfort, often victims of social exclusion and withdrawal, also with past experiences of failed migration, disillusionment and demotivation. For a deep understanding of the case at all levels (Bronfenbrenner, 2005), the case study design was structured into two distinct but complementary studies, in particular: 1. Case knowledge, including a settling-in period and a fact-finding phase (research tools: participant observations in the classroom; 40 non directive and semi-structured interviews, aimed at a plurality of actors and stakeholders - director, coordinator and educators of the School; volunteer teachers and laboratory leaders of the School; ongoing students [Grion & Cook-Sather, 2013]; managers and teachers of the students' home schools in the territory of Monza; the head of the Educational Offer Service of the Municipality; the director of the “Sicomoro I Care” Second-Chance School in Milan); 2. Participatory Action-Research (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Retallick, 2004), including 2 paths: 1) a professional development and training-research path with the educational team of the School (10 meetings, of about 2 hours each); 2) Intervention-Researches, i.e. 2 laboratories with the students, one in creative and collective writing and one in educational robotics with Coderbot (7 meetings, also with peer tutoring activities; Datteri & Zecca, 2016). All activities were audio- or video-recorded and then transcribed with the consent of the parents of minors and the participants. The first study was designed to explore perceptions and representations: therefore, it adopted the research methodology of socio-constructivist Grounded Theory declined according to the critical inquiry (Charmaz, 2017); data are being analysed through the ATLAS.ti software. The same procedure is being followed to analyze the path with the educational team, while the findings of the Intervention-Research aims to put forward some lines of intervention by studying didactic mediation strategies in culturally deprived contexts: so, in this latter case, the analysis is being conducted using a qualitative tool for the observation of communicative functions (ODIS - Strumento per l’Osservazione delle Funzioni Comunicative in classe).
Expected Outcomes
Research activities and data gathering ended in September 2021. Analysis is currently in progress and is expected to be almost completed by August 2022. First of all, the emerging findings may allow to devise some moments of restitution to the participants, to pave the way to a shared reflection that can guide educational actions. One of the first expected outcome is managing to bring to light the implicit model of the Popular School, through a complex narrative process moving from the voices of those who live this context and from an in-depth analysis of its practices and culture. To this end, significant results may come from the path carried out with the team, from which it is possibile to see emerge the School's cultural heritage and the world of values underlying it, strongly linked to some historic pillars of popular education. Assuming the framework of Social Justice and Problematicism enabled reflection to be geared towards trasformative goals, starting from the development of new assessment and knowledge-construction tools. Public schools are often unable to take care of at-risk students (effectively expelling them from the system), maybe also because to a standardized idea of school, as argued above. So, looking at a re-semantization of the cultural paradigm, the challenge is to deepen the contextual conditions from a peripheral point of view, that of popular education, to get to reflecting on the relationships with the pedagogical model underlying traditional schooling. In conclusion, the perspective is therefore to succeed in initiating a debate on these issues, creating a recursive movement between the educational hinterland and the traditional school system, outlining a new pedagogical-political paradigm geared towards complex interventions that pay attention to the real conditions for achieving social justice and to the synergic work between different and complementary skills and expertise.
References
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