Maria Alice Nogueira

Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of education: limits and contributions

This paper emphasizes the limits and contributions of Pierre Bourdieus Sociology of Education. In the first part, it discusses Bourdieus reflections on the relationship between family inheritance (specially the cultural one) and school performance. In the second part, Bourdieus theses about the role of school in the reproduction and legitimation of social inequalities are analized.

Relação família-escola: novo objeto na sociologia da educação

This paper deals with the appearance, since the 80s, of a new subject in the field of Educational Sociology: the one of family and school interaction. The first treatments to familys theme by sociologists are examined, showing that they are limited to the observation of familys background influence in childrens schoolarship destiny. The discussion presents arguments and approachs to prouve that daily process and concret childrearing practices are the ones responsibles for this type of influence.

Internationalisation Strategies of Brazilian Private Schools.

The objective of this work is to reflect on unequal schooling opportunities in Brazil, focusing on certain characteristics that mark, nowadays, the schooling trajectories of young people from middle- and high-income families. Our previous researches showed that an important part of these families are increasingly investing in international resources, seen as a vital tool for their kids’ success. This led to questions about the repercussion of this phenomenon in the strategies used by schools to fulfil parental demands. The research focuses on private schools in high-income neighbourhoods in Belo Horizonte. Interviews with school staff, an analysis on their website and other printed materials revealed that: (a) around half of the researched schools develop internationalisation initiatives such as: special programmes of foreign language learning; bilingual pedagogical projects; and trips abroad and (b) these initiatives could start in a precocious age (since kindergarten), especially foreign language learning.

The role of internationalisation in the schooling of Brazilian elites: distinctions between two class fractions

This paper analyses tendencies that distinguish the internationalisation of education for two class fractions – owners of medium to large businesses and highly qualified university professors and researchers. We identify the importance of cosmopolitan cultural capital, particularly fluency in English, in strengthening the position of both groups and granting them access to an international field of power from which less privileged groups are excluded. Considering the diverging experiences of the two groups compared with Bourdieu’s own findings of a high level of ruling-class cultural unity, we argue that these differences are reflective of the greater heterogeneity of the Brazilian ruling class.

Impactos das práticas familiares sobre a proficiência em Língua Portuguesa e Matemática no Ensino Fundamental

O objetivo do estudo aqui relatado e investigar o impacto de recursos e praticas familiares no desempenho escolar de alunos dos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental. Selecionaram-se 299 alunos que participaram do GERES 2005, aos quais se aplicou um questionario com 145 questoes. Empregaram-se metodos quantitativos: modelagem de equacoes estruturais. Dentre os principais resultados, destaca-se que os fatores capital cultural objetivado, capital informacional, praticas de escrita e interacao pais e filhos foram impactados pelo nivel socioeconomico; as praticas de escrita foram a variavel de maior impacto no desempenho em portugues; e o capital informacional, o fator de maior impacto em matematica. Ocorreu vantagem significativa das escolas privadas no que se refere a proficiencia dos alunos; e a matematica se mostrou mais diretamente dependente do tipo de escola

Incluindo quem? Um exame de indicadores socioeconômicos do Programa de Inclusão Social da USP

In 2006, the University of Sao Paulo (USP) created the Social Inclusion Program of USP (named Inclusp, and its acronym in Portuguese), an added scoring system whose main purpose is to expand the number of students coming from public schools (PS) within the institution. However, one of the criticisms this program gets is that it would not be able to include students with socioeconomic profile very different from those who would pass the “vestibular” (in Brazil, it is an exam which classifies candidates to a university according to their score), regardless of the program´s actions. Thus, the objective of this work is to obtain in-depth knowledge of some the Inclup´s indicators, with the aim of providing a better answer to the question: who the program has been contributing to include in USP? More specifically, some socioeconomic data are examined from students who entered USP this way. We compared the socioeconomic profile, for the three most and least attractive degree courses, of students in general, of those coming from PS and, among them, of those who were admitted at USP as a result of getting a bonus granted by Inclusp. The analysis of the socioeconomic indicators shows that the program has contributed to include PS students from families with a family income lower than their peers who also come from a PS. Notwithstanding, it also points to the fact that there is no variation in the education level of the father between those two groups, which indicates that, whereas Inclusp helps reduce the economic disadvantage, it has not been able, generally speaking, of eliminating cultural obstacles that prevent or make it difficult the access of students from working class backgrounds to the University of Sao Paulo.

Desigualdades socioespaciais e escolhas escolares

These article shows the results of a research, whose problem is in the intersection of classical problems of sociology of education and urban sociology. Aiming to understand if and how socio-spatial inequalities impact on schooling inequalities, we analyzed the way certain social and urban characteristics of a territory structure the strategies and families’ school choices. In order to do so, we examined two sub-regions in the Barreiro area, situated in Belo Horizonte, that present socioeconomic and urban contrasts. Starting from the notion of geography of opportunities, we compared the strategies used and school choices made by families that lived in these two areas, aiming to identify how the socio-economic characteristics of the environment constrained or favored their schooling preferences. The results indicated an effect of the unequal distribution of school opportunities on the parental choices, derived from the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of local school offer.