| Summary: |
The project is focused on the analysis of the involvement of local authorities in the promotion of school achievement. More concretely, it is centered in the analysis of the perspectives of local authorities in the confrontation with school drop-out, which is considered as an indicator generally of school underachievement. School achievement is a central question in the contemporary context of the new skills and roles that these political institutions shall develop, in particular in network perspectives, which advocate the significant contributions different entities can bring around a specific issue. In the light of perspectives based on social justice, citizenship and social rights, school drop-out and underachievement that attain mainly specific social groups (related to social class, gender, ethnic origin) gain a dimension that should propel educators, politicians for not accepting these problems passively. Policies and social practices need to find ways of changing them. \nTo identify and to characterize the perspectives, produced by local authorities around these issues, the methodological approach is to pursue a social survey of their discourses, strategies and activities concerning these questions and understand the impact of these near the parents' associations, the school management and teachers directly involved in these activities are certainly finalities for the project. Hence, discourses, strategies and practices pursued and the analysis of their impact will be on the run. \nThe project will develop along three stages. The first will be rather exploratory identifying and selecting the regional districts ('concelhos') with higher rates school drop-out and simultaneously producing a characterization of these districts both in social, cultural and economic conditions. It is expected that this data can be collected through the Education Ministry Departments and its local regional directions and other institutions, such as PETI and INE.  |
Summary
The project is focused on the analysis of the involvement of local authorities in the promotion of school achievement. More concretely, it is centered in the analysis of the perspectives of local authorities in the confrontation with school drop-out, which is considered as an indicator generally of school underachievement. School achievement is a central question in the contemporary context of the new skills and roles that these political institutions shall develop, in particular in network perspectives, which advocate the significant contributions different entities can bring around a specific issue. In the light of perspectives based on social justice, citizenship and social rights, school drop-out and underachievement that attain mainly specific social groups (related to social class, gender, ethnic origin) gain a dimension that should propel educators, politicians for not accepting these problems passively. Policies and social practices need to find ways of changing them. \nTo identify and to characterize the perspectives, produced by local authorities around these issues, the methodological approach is to pursue a social survey of their discourses, strategies and activities concerning these questions and understand the impact of these near the parents' associations, the school management and teachers directly involved in these activities are certainly finalities for the project. Hence, discourses, strategies and practices pursued and the analysis of their impact will be on the run. \nThe project will develop along three stages. The first will be rather exploratory identifying and selecting the regional districts ('concelhos') with higher rates school drop-out and simultaneously producing a characterization of these districts both in social, cultural and economic conditions. It is expected that this data can be collected through the Education Ministry Departments and its local regional directions and other institutions, such as PETI and INE. \nIn the second stage, an intentional sample is built among the most significant examples of the regional districts with higher rates of school drop-out constituted as the analysis units in the project. It will be a stage based mainly in what is called methodologically case studies. In this stage the analysis of strategies and activities from local authorities around school achievement are the focus through three dimensions: discourses produced by local authorities (both oral and written), strategies and pursued activities. This stage will be constituted by interviews of local authorities leaders and technicians in charge of education/social action as well as the analysis of documents such as reports elaborated by local authorities. \nIn the third stage, the project will centered around an analysis of the impact of the activities developed by local authorities, seen by school management and teachers of the schools in these selected regional discticts, directly involved in the activities. This will be pursued through interviews to privileged informants working in these contexts. \nThe teams of the three research centres - Centro de Investigação e Intervenção em Educação, Faculty of Education, Univ of Porto (CIIE/FPCE/UP), Centro de Investigação em Educação da Faculdade de Ciências, Univ of Lisbon (CIE-FCUL) and Centro de Estudos Transdisciplinares para o Desenvolvimento (CETRAD), Univ of Trás-os Montes e Alto Douro - - although following the same methological processes and paths and bringing each one their specific contributions to the construction of the problem here presented - will focus the |