Educação às margens: as representações sociais de escola entre explicadoras de comunidades ribeirinhas da Baía de Guanabara – RJ

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate how social representations about school developed by explainers guide their socio-educational practices carried out in fishing communities located in Itaoca and Piedade, metropolitan region of the state of Rio de Janeiro. We can define explainers as professionals who practice teaching, on a paid basis, in their own homes, in needy communities or peripheral neighborhoods in the metropolitan region of the state of Rio de Janeiro. In order to contribute to the initial discussions of the research, we developed the following guiding questions: What are the social representations about school shared by explainers working in the neighborhoods of Itaoca and Piedade? Do these representations reflect on your socio-pedagogical practices? The research presented Social Pedagogy as a theoretical-methodological basis, which allowed us to articulate these school´s representations with the experiences and interpersonal relationships of the explainers, and the Theory of Social Representations, which helped us in understanding beliefs, information and knowledge, considering the interdependent relationship between individual and social aspects of the group studied in this research. The following data collection instruments were used: document analysis, sociodemographic questionnaire, scenario analysis and semi-structured interview. The data was analyzed using rhetorical-philosophical discourse analysis. 7 female tutors participated in the research, 4 from Itaoca, São Gonçalo, and 3 from Piedade, Magé. We found that the objectification of social representations of the school presents itself as a contradiction, in which the school is conceived as a place of proximity (socialization, affection and reception), of positive experiences and transformation, but, at the same time, as a place distance (culturally, socially and psychologically), from negative experiences (traumas, frustrations) and limitations (standardization and rigid methods). The explainers anchor their beliefs in the idea that the school needs to be translated for the students and that their craft, recognized by the community, makes it possible to carry out this translation which, despite meeting a school demand, is not limited solely to teaching the content of the school and does not even aim to reproduce school methods. On the contrary, they see their socio-educational practices as differentiated and combine their work with social aspects and community life. By analyzing the frequency with which the speeches were repeated and discussed by the explainers, it was possible to identify the figurative core of social representations, that is, the displacement of the meaning of school in terms of its formative and curricular role, reducing it to the socializing aspect. The outline of this figurative core can be represented by the oxymoron “Love and Hate”. In the field of Social Pedagogy, based on the Pedagogy of Hospitality, we identified that the relationship established between the explainers and the students permeates an understanding of diversity, that one student is different from the other and that there is knowledge specific to the community that must be considered in the teaching-learning process. Thus, this negotiation of differences through otherness allows the construction of social bonds that are recognized by the community itself by highlighting the importance of the work carried out by the explainers.