Session Information
14 SES 03 B, Education in Rural and Urban Contexts
Paper Session
Contribution
Not unlike other contexts, at the city of Porto (Portugal) we can identify some significant asymmetries concerning the population’s quality of life, namely in the access to basic commodities and services. Housing, health care, education and culture are not at everyone’s grasp yet.
That said, local associations have been having a relevant role in the communities’ and territories’ development. Citizen associationism, as it appeals to individual and institutional participation, can not only contribute to such development, but also allow the local relationship and tension management.
Learning to read and decipher a territory, as a space inhabited by the memory and experience of those who inhabit it, demands the use of tools that falicitate, not only the understanding, but also the dissemination of information. In this sense, the use of maps/charts (of problems, resources and social networks), which are, simultaneously, instruments and products of the local-based knowledge construction, is a particularly adequate way of doing it.
Social cartography allows the deep knowledge of each civil parish, neighborhood or city street, while, at the same time, promotes the citizens’ participation in social change and in the construction of a more equal and democratic society, reinforcing the sense of belonging to the place where one lives.
The innovative character of this tool lies in the fact that it aims to know a reality, through communitarian participation, which has a methodological potential that goes beyond approaching the geographical space, expanding its potentialities to the community’s social-economical and historical-cultural aspects.
This project aims to build instruments that enable an accurate and contemporary reading of the Porto city’s 15 civil parishes, and the citizens’ understanding, promoting their implication in the improvement of the community’s live conditions.
The civil parish of Miragaia (Porto) is a part of the city’s historical core. In the past, given its location, it was strongly connected to the city’s commercial activity (national and international), namely because it is located closely to the Douro river. Nowadays, given a delocalization of such commercial activities, Miragaia is becoming increasingly impoverished, thanks to the absence of employment opportunities and local productivity. Its population is increasingly older, given that young people feel the need to leave Miragaia in order to achieve professional and personal development; those who remain there tend to develop life habits that place them at risk. Miragaia has high school drop-out levels (even at basic education), and, consequently, its inhabitants have low levels (or absence) of professional training. The civil parish’s impoverishment has brought infrastructural ruin and a loss of life quality for the parish’s inhabitants.
Facing this situation, the Educating City Observatory (a work team belonging to the CIIE/FPCE-UP), selecting a network analysis methodology, began approaching local entities, where we identified privileged informants. These are a set of social-educational actors, in the public and private spheres, namely representing the diverse local services, aiming to build a first approach to the territorial network map, and, with them, design the future intervention.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
- CANÁRIO Rui ; Alves, Natália ; Rolo, Clara (2001) Escola e exclusão social. Lisboa : Educa. - CHARLOT, Bernard (dir.) (1994) L'école et le territoire: nouveaux espaces, nouveaux enjeux. Paris: Armand Colin. - SPOSATI, Aldaíza (2000) Exclusão Social e Fracasso Escolar. Em Aberto, V17, nº71, p 21-32. - VELTZ, Pierre (2008) Des lieux et des liens. Paris : Eds de l’Aube. - VILLASANTE, T (1995), Las democracias participativas, Madrid, HOAC. - VILLASANTE, T. R., Montañés, M. e Martí J. [coordinadores] (2002) La Investigación Social Participativa : construyendo ciudadanía/1. Madrid. El Viego Topo. - VILLASANTE, T. R., Montañés, M. e Martin, P.[coordinadores] (2003) Práticas Locales de Criatividad Social: construyendo ciudadanía/2. Madrid. El Viego Topo.
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