Coordinators: Bruno Dionísio [CICS.NOVA, FCSH/UNL] Leonor Lima Torres [IE-UM] Mariana Gaio Alves [FCT/UNL]
Education, a space for the reinvention of democracy
The thematic section on Sociology of Education was established in 2009 with the aim of maintaining and strengthening the ties of cooperation between Portuguese sociologists who choose educational phenomena as a privileged object of research and / or intervention. The main axes of action of this thematic section are the dissemination of knowledge, the promotion and organization of scientific events and the strengthening of associative scientific communities. Considering this agenda, the section will participate in the organization of the X Portuguese Congress of Sociology, to be held in the city of Covilhã, at the University of Beira Interior, on the 10th, 11th and 12th of July, 2018, under the general theme In the post-truth era? Public sphere, citizenship and quality of democracy in contemporary Portugal.
Education is an eminently political and cultural process that not only reflects the complex logics that underlies the social world, but also plays a fundamental role in the development of democratic cultures and in the consolidation of the idea of global citizenship in each nation- state. To face this complex mission nowadays, schools are confronted with several contradictory appeals, agendas and constraints that accumulate and permanently challenge the senses of democratization.
The (re)centralization of power and the decentralization of certain decisions to the local sphere, the continual reorganization of the schools and school clusters, the (new) demands of families and communities, the multiplication (and competition) of spaces and learning times generated within the society of information, represent only a few possible inputs to sociological research into the current sense of democratic and citizenship education. Due to its apparently invisible and naturalized effects, the digital governance of education (in an organizational and pedagogical sense) is intensified, generating a proliferation of computer platforms and social networks, which significantly change work, learning and study practices and even more meaningfully the spaces of socialization and democratic coexistence.
What logics and what processes are interfering with the development of the democratization of education at a time when the institutional education program is declining? To what extent are the current reconfigurations in education strengthening or weakening its democratizing potential? The dynamics of contemporary education within a framework of metamorphosis of democratic and citizenship spheres are the main focus of the congress that constitutes an important opportunity to share and debate theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives. These perspectives are expected to cover different angles of approach, from a transnational level to national policies, from school dynamics to non-school possibilities, including classroom micro-contexts, projects, activities and other initiatives of educational relevance.
The thematic section on Sociology of Education calls for the submission of papers presenting solid theoretical frameworks and original empirical research that are relevant to further examine the following topics:
1) Educational policies: democratization and / or meritocracy?
2) School governance: democratic management and / or performative management? 3) Local power: old actors and new protagonists?
4) Dynamics of socialization: standardization and / or singularization?
5) Paths and practices of participation in education: old and new inequalities?
6) Academic mobility and global citizenship: "brain drain" and / or "brain gain"?
7) Migrations and social and cultural diversity: inclusion and / or educational exclusion? 8) Plurality of educational contexts: formalizing the non-school and / or unschooling?
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