"Our students are not numbers" Teachers´ pedagogic habitus in secondary schools for "vulnerable" and "poor" young people in the City of Buenos Aires

MEO, ANALÍA INÉS

Bruselas

Seminario; LABOS du Groupe interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur la Socioalisation, l`education et la formation; 2016

Universidad Católica de Lovaina

After a short historical and institutional contextualisation of the educational sistem in Argentina, this-paper will concentrate on contemporary educational policies targetted at young people from ?vulnerable?, ?poor? or ?disadvantaged? backgrounds. The paper will show that there is evidence of the consolidation of a specific teachers? pedagogic habitus in secondary schools working with this specific population, in the City of Buenos Aires. It examines evidence from two differnt research projects carried out in different periods in two different secondary schools: one Escuela de Educacion Municipal ? municipal school- (opened up in 1990) and one Escuela de Reingreso ?Returning schools- (created in 2004). Despite their particularities, the creation of these schools illustrate (although in very specific ways) both local policy attempts to democratize secondary schooling and the configuration of school circuits targeted at those who did not ?fit in? in ?traditional? secondary schools. This paper will be divided in two parts. In the first part, I present the key features of the two antagonistic educational policy discourses that have coexisted in the City since the 1990s, what I would call the homogenisation and selection? and the ?personalisation and inclusion? discourses. These discourses could be traced in policy texts, initiatives and educational programmes; funding priorities; the organization of the school´s space and time; and policy actors? practices and views (including school inspectors, head teachers, teachers and students) around the compulsory nature of secondary schooling. Each of them could be interpreted as discursive formations that ?converge with institutions and practices, and carry meanings that may be common to a whole period? (Foucault 1986, 118). They encompass different discourses on learning, behaviour, teaching, educational failure and seem to onfigure a ?sort of great, uniform text? (Foucault 1986, 118). In the second part of the paper, I will focus firstly on the studied schools and my research methods. Secondly, I will examine interview data. My analysis illustrates the convergence of many headteachers and teachers´ narratives around the centrality of the recognition of students as ?individuals?, the personalisation of pedagogic strategies and the need to nurture emotional proximity between teachers and students. I would use the concept of ?pedagogic habitus? to provisionally refer to the collection of dispositions, perspectives and practices these teachers deploy towards the selection of relevant school knowledge, teaching and assessment methods. I would argue that this ?pedagogic habitus? have challenged individualised and traditional classroom centred approaches to teaching, and redefined teachers in complex and contradictory ways.