Reflecting on the peripheries locus in the development of educational trajectories: observations from a narrative study with Brazilian and Portuguese youth

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on part of the results linked to a research project whose main goal was to understand the schooling trajectories of youth living in peripheral contexts in Brazil and Portugal. The study problematized the meaning of the School for these young people, under the focus of the massification of the public school. Organized as a multi-case research, anchored in the principles of the biographical approach, the project grounded on the analysis of the interrelationship of personal and contextual/social factors in youth biographies, in order to situate the possible meanings of the School as perceived by the participants. Overall, the project involved 25 secondary school students. This paper draws on the analysis dimension concerning the meaning of the periphery, the guiding and founding theme of the investigated issue. The results point out to the polysemy of the concept, suggesting its semantic (re)construction from the biographical approach.

KEYWORDS
peripheries; educational trajectories; biographical narratives; public school