The dispute for status between school subjects in Brazilian education: the status indicators

• In Event: Brazilian curricular issues in three layers: educational policies, curriculum in school and subject curriculum

Proposal

This paper proposes analyzing the dispute for status between school subjects in Brazilian education focusing on a central aspect: the status indicators. Theoretically, the idea of status as a concept that means value, space and prestige is drawn from Sociology (Weber, 1978; Ollivier, 2009). In this research, status is formulated to maintain the sociological principles while address school subjects rather than individuals. It is suggested then that status of a school subject is set by social agents when they attribute value to the status indicators. These indicators are a group of signs of prestige related to the school subjects’ raised by the agents themselves. The theoretical framework that bears this research is the pedagogy device theory (Bernstein, 2003) which points out that the pedagogy discourse is transformed when it moves from a social space to a new one. I argue that the status attribution to the school subjects is an aspect of the pedagogic discourse and thus it is produced through curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation, the three systems of messages in the pedagogic communication (Bernstein, 1996). In the study’s phase presented in this paper, a sample of school teachers from a Brazilian state capital was requested to respond a written question: ‘what are the signs that one subject is more valued than other (s) in the school curriculum?’. Answers were categorized and analyzed based on Bernstein’s theory. Findings demonstrate that status indicators mentioned by teachers are primarily related to the curriculum and evaluation than pedagogy. Results present a challenge for those who are interested in issues of equity or balance between different fields of knowledge in school education, mapping a clear space for the action of change in a local dimension, the school.

Author

• Iuri Correa Soares, Instituto Federal do Rio Grande do Sul