The Rio Negro Extended Day school: political - pedagogical expressions of a focused and localized project

Abstract

This paper is about the relationship between the school and the student's families, regarding the scenario of elementary schools (under public administration) where the "extended day program" has been implemented, located in suburban areas of cities on the Río Negro province.

In this ethnographic investigation, the program of "Schools with Extended Day"is considered as a focalised educational policy. This policy, as it is embodied in the actual practises done by persons, leads to a reconfiguration of focalised practises which is interpellated by the specific conflicts regarding the meaning and the expectations regarding the extended school time, both for the people who work at the school and for the families whose children use this space. This research was done using the ethnographic method. In this epistemological and methodological framework, the ethnographical approach was chosen in order to witness the social phenomena while, at the same time, place the researcher as both a passive and an active actor who is doing a reflexive observation regarding his/her own process, in order to refine or build theoretical categories that help the description and the understanding of the observed phenomenon.