O fracasso escolar e as práticas educativas de qualidade: um estudo etnográfico

Abstract

The failure at school is one of the most common subjects of discussions in media, academic environment and our society. At first, this research aims to comprehend the historical and social construction of failure at school in Brazil, besides the meaning of that concept and its implication on Brazilian reality nowadays. Since the studies focusing the history of public Brazilian school, we can consider that the failure at school does not have a significant effect on the necessary changes in education recently. It is due to the negative idea brought by the own word concept, besides it is not efficient to show the complexities and ambiguities of school daily situation. Then, this present research goes towards a counterpoint: the study about the construction of education quality in school practices. An ethnographic research of a classroom has been chosen in order to understand the meaning of education quality and the construction processes of pedagogic quality practices in daily school situations. The choice of the school followed some criteria that was fundamental for the observation of the construction of a learning culture in a space where children are supposed to face vulnerable situations to school failure. The public school chosen for this research is part of the municipal educational system in Belo Horizonte. The research was carried out in a classroom which was involved in literacy cycle, that is, children are on the early stage of learning reading and writing. The methodological procedures were the following: active observation, open and semi-structured interviews, analysis of documents of the school and Municipal Secretary of Belo Horizonte, and analysis of materials belonging to students and teacher involved in this research. The second part of this study aims to understand how the education quality is built since the relations established among the classroom, the school, the public policies and the school community, trying to show some of the multiple aspects and movements present in school daily situatiom, that is, its complexity and dinamism. By means of the ethnographic research we can understand the importance of some aspects in the daily school environment, such as: values, attitudes and pedagogical actions related to the co-responsibility between teacher and students in the classroom space; the construction of mutual respect; the importance of collective production and the continuous elaboration of ludic and pleasant activities; the development of differential activities with the same pedagogical goal; the quality of interactions with the cultural classroom background; and the practice of affection and care towards the others. Such factors showed to be fundamental to qualify the children s teaching-learning process during the literacy cycle at the researched school