A participação das crianças na gestão escolar

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to understand the participation means of children in the school management, beginning with their consideration as subjects of rights and social actors. This research was performed with adults and children in the 4th and 5th grade in a Primary School in the Municipal Teaching Unit of Serra (ES). This methodology is characterized by an ethnographic research, utilizing participant observation, with the performance of semi structured interviews in (formal and informal) conversations, as well as documental analysis (laws, decrees, ordinances, minutes of the school council, political pedagogical project), using the general rules that govern the school management. Discussions about participation, school management, citizenship and the children’s political participation, which is referenced in the study of Infancy Sociology, underlie the possible defense of children’s participation in school management, specially, in guaranteeing their rights to have rights, as citizens. From the data collected, it was evident that just the legal standards are not enough to establish the children’s participation right so that it can be, in fact, effective. It was confirmed by tales and reports, that children participate and interfere with the school management questions for their own means, involving resistance, scams and inventions, that reveal themselves in peer relationships as well as with adults that they interact with. It was also known how important and challenging it is for the school to recognize the kids as valid fellows in the construction of a shared public sphere, legitimizing the peculiar means of participation not only in the democratic formalization process, such as it is in the School Council, but also in the way that they question rules, subvert to adults’ rationalities and search new meanings in different times and spaces experienced in everyday school life