The Peer Group’s Agency in a Brazilian School

Abstract

Black working-class boys are the group with the most significant difficulties in their schooling process. In dialogue with Raewyn Connell, we seek to analyze how the collective conceptions of peer groups have influenced the school engagement of Brazilian boys. We conducted an ethnographic research with students around the age of 14 at an urban state school in the periphery of the city of São Paulo. We analyzed the hierarchization process between two groups of boys, demonstrating the existence of a collective notion of masculinity that works against engagement with the school. Well-known to the Anglophone academic literature, this association is rather uncommon in the Brazilian literature. We have therefore attempted to describe and analyze here the challenges faced by Black working-class Brazilian boys to establish more positive educational trajectories.

Deploying hegemonic masculinity: A study of uses of the concept in the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinities.

“…Reformulated (e.g., Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005;Messerschmidt, 2018), the concept of hegemonic masculinity continues to be a prominent concern in research and application. Applications can be found in practical fields such as school education, including the understanding of peer group life (Toledo & Carvalho, 2020) and the evaluation of curricula (Eckstein & Sabovik, 2021). In applying the concept, it is important to remember that any hegemonic masculinity exists in a context of other masculinities.…”

O acesso, ao inverso: desigualdades à sombra da expansão do ensino superior brasileiro, 1991-2020

“…29 Tomando emprestada uma reflexão de Dani Rodrik (2020), LauraCarvalho (2020) afirma que a pandemia tende a acelerar tendências que já vinham se desenhando no cenário social. Uma delas é a implementação do ensino remoto, agora propulsionado pelo imperativo do distanciamento físico como profilaxia à disseminação do agente etiológico da covid-19.…”