A symbolic representation of the school boards as a strategy to democratize the school culture: an interpretative reading through the voice of the social subjects

Abstract

The democratization of the school culture is still a pending debt in the educational system. Although the participation of different representatives of the teaching community has been regulated, this is not yet enough. This investigation uses the comprehensive interpretative paradigm as a theoretical framework. By means of a qualitative approach, and through the symbolic interactionism and the socio-critical pedagogy, this framework allows the understanding of the constructed meanings in the interactions in the school boards. The analysis focuses on macro-politics i.e., on the meanings imposed by the neoliberal hegemonic power that outweighs in the development of the educational policies and on the meanings present in the micro-politics, as significances built up by the own subjects in a horizontal and dialogic relationship. These different meanings present in the School Boards are marked by a dialectic relationship between macro-politics and micro-politics, allowing the conceptualization of democracy and participation.