Chicas y poder en la escuela. Identidades académicas, sociales y de género entre jóvenes de la periferia.

Abstract

The apparently greater success at school of girls at most levels of education mask the_x000D_ permanence of difficulties and exclusions that they still experience as they go through_x000D_ school. Also, young working-class youths, now of different origins and in a context of_x000D_ old and new migrations, as is the case in Catalonia, suffer greater school failure and_x000D_ find it harder to find employment in relation to their level of studies and in_x000D_ comparison with other social classes. However, very few studies have examined what_x000D_ type of school experience is developed on the urban peripheries for the modern-day_x000D_ working classes._x000D_ This thesis is based on an ethnography that has monitored a cohort of working class_x000D_ students of different origins taking their third year of ESO (compulsory secondary_x000D_ education) in a city on the periphery of Barcelona. The ethnographic approach was_x000D_ carried out over a school year, with posterior monitoring of a significant sample of_x000D_ girls for the three following years. From a gender perspective, the tension between the_x000D_ limitations and opportunities that the school apparently offered working-class and_x000D_ minority girls was studied. An analysis was made of the school and social_x000D_ experiences, the teaching staff and pupils’ discursive practices, the disciplinary_x000D_ technologies and the school mechanisms for organising pupils, as well as their impact_x000D_ on their identities in construction._x000D_ The results obtained indicate that the school on the periphery produces new and_x000D_ interiorised inequalities for most of the pupils although it does achieve success for a_x000D_ select group, which not only does not fully coincide with pupils having the greatest_x000D_ expectations, but nor does it even do so with pupils showing the greatest potential at_x000D_ the outset, very especially in the case of girls: of the 80 pupils that formed the original_x000D_ cohort, only 11 completed ‘bachillerato’ (higher secondary education) and only 3_x000D_ were girls. What is finally produced is a progressive and involuntary disempowerment_x000D_ of strong and assertive working-class girls, an invisibility of their process of school_x000D_ and social exclusion, and a school selection that produces fragile success among the_x000D_ girls that manage to reach post-compulsory education; and all this in an employment_x000D_ market in which only a far better education than that of their parents can guarantee a_x000D_ certain social mobility along this complex path and in the long term.

Date of Award	22 Jan 2008
Original language	Undefined/Unknown
Supervisor	Silvia Carrasco Pons (Director)