The dispute on the definition of quality in education and its implications for social justice: the perspective of teenager students

• In Event: Equality and social justice in education: analyzing discourses, policies and curricula

Abstract

This paper’s goal is to analyze the struggles for social justice in education through the examination of the current disputes on the definition of quality in education. I first present hegemonic notions of the term educational quality and notions that have been silenced, discussing the idea that quality has been the word used to refer to improvements on the development of education (ENGUITA, 1995). In this sense, the process of articulation of the hegemonic definition of quality, in tandem with capitalism, (BROWN; LAUDER, 2013) has been decisive in increasing social injustice in education, being the concept of social justice understood, as a relational concept that accounts for the plurality of social structures aiming at overcoming oppressions (YOUNG, 2006). Indeed, the current hegemonic conception of quality has been connected to the relational notion of privilege and kept apart from the notion of democratization (GENTILI, 1995). In order to materialize this discussion, I interviewed teenager students from quite different schools: one is a traditional private school; the other is a public school that experienced a successful counter-hegemonic project – the Citizen School (GANDIN, 2002) - both from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Putting the methodological importance of language in its prominent place (BAKHTIN, 2006), I analyze how students’ discourses reveal in practice the complexity of the process of articulation for the hegemony of one particular conception of quality in education, and how this process has decisively influenced, in different ways, the course of social justice in education.

Author

• Ricardo Golbspan, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul