Trajetórias escolares em contexto social desfavorável

Abstract

The main objective is to investigate how school trajectories unfold in adverse social context and how school success and failure are socially produced during this time span. For this purpose, a national and international scientific literature review was carried out in the theoretical part considering the field of Sociology of Education, encompassing some of the most relevant works between the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, approaching the determinants of school trajectories, far from exhausting the research scope. Case studies and longitudinal studies of school trajectories are performed throughout elementary school in the empirical analysis. Class diaries and school records containing final results and educational achievement were used as data source in the longitudinal study. The flow of 03 cohorts of students was monitored, i.e., 03 sets of students who were in the same class in the first year of elementary school and were expected to follow all the stages of learning from 2000 to 2006, from 2003 to 2010 and from 2006 to 2014, totaling 225 school trajectories. In addition, 09 cases (03 cases per cohort) were analyzed through semi-structured interviews, aiming to investigate the factors that the scientific literature points out as determinants of educational success and failure. The hypotheses are that the unfolding of school trajectories in unfavorable social contexts is complex since different factors related to the individual, family and school structure play a role in this course, interacting together in the social production of school success (promising trajectories) and school failure (reproduction of educational and social inequalities). It was concluded that individual factors such as sex and color, family factors such as the social position of the family and the economic, cultural and social capital possession, as well as factors related to extrafamiliar socialization manifest indeed in different ways in the trajectories making them complex, implying their success or failure, even in a very subtle way. Regarding the factors related to the structure of educational and social opportunities it is observed that the school practice of grade retention increases inequalities in school trajectories.