O que faz uma boa escola?: perspectivas de adultos e crianças de uma instituição pública no Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

How do adults and children qualify a “good school”? This thesis seeks to answer this question based on an ethnography carried out with adults (guardians and staff) and children (students) in a municipal public school in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Considered by its adult actors as a “reference school”, the institution is located in a middle-class neighborhood, serving around 400 children, between 4 and 10 years old. The fieldwork – which took place during the 2019 school year, with participant observation, in-depth interviews and workshops with children – analyzes the perspectives of the entire school community on the institution, seeking to understand how the subjects of this context participate in its construction. For this, I start from the “reference school” category, discussing with adults (guardians and staff) what are the parameters used to define a good school. Despite the context of intergenerational asymmetry, children have their own ideas and actively place themselves in relationships, and their parameters for describing and evaluating the school are also analyzed. In a context still marked by homogeneities and heterogeneities (cultural, socioeconomic, territorial, ethnic-racial and others), we saw adults and children producing dialogues, conflicts and negotiations, sharing meanings and presenting dissonances.