School Governance and Academic Excellence: The Representations of Distinguished Students in an Annual Award of Excellence

Abstract

Within a research project on «academic excellence in the state school», this paper is a contribution to the sociological reflection on the cultural and organisational characteristics of the school and its relationship with the academic success of students. The data we present stem from a case study underway at a secondary school in the north of Portugal, referring to the universe of students that since 2003 have distinguished themselves for achieving grades equal to or greater than 18 (on a scale of 0 to 20) and have thus been included in the school's Framework of Excellence. From a contextual approach to this educational practice, we focused on the cultural characteristics of the school/subject as analytical support for the study of school and non-school dimensions in their mutual connections. To this end, we used the information from document analysis and data collected from a questionnaire survey * This work is funded by National Funds through FCT -Foundation for Science and Technology under the PTDC/IVC-PEC/4942/2012 project of the research Centre in Education of the University of Minho (CIEd) entitled «Between more and better school: Academic excellence in Portuguese state schools». A preliminary version of this paper was published in Portuguese language in the journal Sociologia da Educação. Revista Luso-Brasileira, Special Issue, 2012.

The distinction of excellent students in the Portuguese state school as a strategy of educational marketing accountability

“…When we asked students about the three main reasons for their choice of the school they attended in secondary education, their responses pointed, above all, to reasons of a performative, prospective and pedagogical nature (see Fig. 2), as demonstrated by preliminary studies carried out in the scope of this issue (Palhares and Torres 2015). The most consistent responses underlined the need for the school to have a demanding and quality education, in order to properly prepare students for higher education and to have a good learning environment, despite the first two reasons being mainly brought up by students with excellent performance.…”

Marketing accountability e excelência na escola pública portuguesa: A construção da imagem social da escola através da performatividade académica

“…Elegeu-se como população-alvo o universo de alunos com desempenhos excelentes (classificações médias iguais e/ou superiores a 18 valores, numa escala de 0 a 20 valores), em contraponto com uma amostra representativa de alunos não excelentes (com desempenhos médios abaixo de 18 valores). A focagem empírica nos alunos considerados excelentes, em sistemático confronto com os alunos não excelentes (ou menos excelentes) que convivem no mesmo quotidiano escolar, permitiu elucidar o impacto dos fatores organizacionais e culturais (Palhares, 2014(Palhares, , 2015Torres & Palhares, 2015), bem como dos fatores não-escolares na construção da experiência académica (Palhares, 2014a) e na definição dos percursos de excelência deste grupo de jovens. Procedeu-se ainda à administração de dois inquéritos por questionário a estes dois tipos de alunos (1022 alunos de 4 escolas: 200 excelentes e 822 não excelentes) e à realização de várias dezenas de entrevistas individuais e focus group a diferentes grupos de alunos, a uma amostra de professores-modelo apontados pelos alunos, aos Diretores de Turma e aos Diretores das escolas/agrupamentos.…”

“…Quando questionamos os alunos sobre as três principais razões que presidiram à escolha da escola que frequentavam no ensino secundário, as suas respostas fizeram emergir sobretudo razões de índole performativa, prospetiva e pedagógica (cf. figura 2), tal como demonstraram estudos preliminares que realizamos no âmbito desta problemática (Palhares & Torres, 2015).…”