E

1. Enacting the democratic curricular
rhetoric in school.
The role of teachers in guaranteeing
students’ right to participation
LEONEL PEREZ EXPOSITO
UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA METROPOLITANA, UNIDAD XOCHIMILCO
MÉXICO

2. Experiencing democracy in school
 A general challenge for civic education (Dewey, 1916; Levinson, 2012; Allen 2016):
How can we transit from a democratic rhetoric in classroom to a vivid experience of
democracy in daily school practices?
 In Mexico, since the curricular reforms in 2007 and 2011, there is a strong presence
of a rhetoric about democracy and human rights in the program of Civic and Ethical
Formation (CEF) for Escuelas secundarias
 The curriculum envisions an active student in decision-making, conflict solving and
the resolution of collective problems in school and broader communities.
 Yet, secondary schools hardly offer opportunities to guarantee adolescents’ right to
participation (Pérez Expósito, 2013, 2014, 2015a)

3. Research questions and methods
 To what extent Student Societies (SS) in escuelas secundarias are spaces where
students can fully exercise in school their right to participation?
 How teachers as educators and citizens engage or disengage in promoting
students’ quality participation in SS, and what are the implications of it?
 Data from semi structured interviews with teachers involved in a program from
the Secretaría de Educación Pública in Mexico City that aimed to strengthening
and revitalizing SS in Escuelas secundarias técnicas in 2014. Teacher Jesús, and
Teacher Mónica.

4. Adolescents’ right to participation
 CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD
Article 12: the right to express [his or her] views freely in all matters
affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in
accordance with the age and maturity of the child
 LUNDY’S (2007) MODEL:
 SPACE
 VOICE
 AUDIENCE
 INFLUENCE

5. Quality in students’ participation in
school (Pérez-Expósito, 2014, 2015)
 Inclusion
 Authenticity
 Progressive autonomy
 Efficacy

6. Student Societies (SS) in Educación
secundaria
 Mandatory since 1982
 It was conceived more as a place for learning than an organ for students’
representation and participation. While other representative organs in school have
‘attributions’ and ‘functions’, SS have the following goals:
 To exercise among its members the practice of democratic life, as a way to contribute to their
formation.
 To promote the realization of activities which contribute to construct in students a responsible
personality, with a clear sense of their obligations and rights.
 To strength the relations of solidarity among the students.
 To promote whatever it estimates necessary and useful for the physical, moral, social and
cultural improvement of its members, and
 To promote to the school authorities the initiatives that advance the progress and improvement
of the school

7. Student Society: a place for mocking Mexican
democracy
 Elections for the SS:
 An opportunity for having fun with the worst of our national political arena
 A chance of having students’ representatives according to principals’ or teachers’ interests
 A bureaucratic requisite that simulates a democratic dynamic in school
(Pérez-Expósito, 2013; 2014; 2015)
Teacher Jesús:
“It was truly frustrating to see that the authorities underestimated boys’ ideas, taking them as mere games or
faults to school discipline [...], the fact that they did not allow the core of the education system to participate in
the decisions of the school was an incongruity.”
Teacher Mónica:
The lack of sensitivity [from school authorities] to the requests of young people can be annoying […] what can
be more important … than listening with attention and respect to the feeling of the school community, by
offering a channel to the proposals … for the benefit of the Institution. Audience was requested, they do not
respond. With my advice, students started sending their requests through writings, which at best were returned
to us without any annotation, because in many occasions were lost in a pile of “important documents” on the
desk.

8. Teachers and students’ participatory projects:
changing roles and identities
 From controlling, directing and lecturing students, to promoting authentic and
autonomous participation in school and accompany them in their own projects.
Teacher Mónica:
Of all that [the experiences in the SS], the only thing that was clear to me was that
students wanted to be the main executors, the ones who spoke, propose, resolve; but,
above all, they wanted to work with their peers, to talk and work… from students to
students; they wanted to engage in dialogues, debates and activities with one and
other, … from novice to novice, working collaboratively, while I should only be a ‘less
novice’ companion.

9. The role of teachers: Efficacious
participation in school
 Developing “democratic knowledge (the science and
art of association)” and “tactical and strategical
understanding of the mechanics of political action”
(Allen, 2016)

10. The role of teachers: Efficacious
participation in school
Teacher Jesús:
I am struck by the current student representatives. Every time they propose something, they
elaborate cards describing plan A, plan B and plan C. They are their own guides. And when
authorities see them organized, the listen carefully.
I remember the first elections that took place at the beginning of the school year, where
participation and voting were a blind exercise based on false popularity. Now, students are
the ones asking what are the candidates’ proposals. Little by little, they have created a
dynamic that makes them grow and demand correspondence between what it’s promised
and what it’s done. Students have become more demanding than many adults and are
aware of what their representatives do. When they started with the project, they went to the
classrooms to ask for a vote, based on proposals that were not real, for example: ”we will
hold parties frequently”…Now, proposals are: get seats for left-handers, let's see in which
rooms there are no windows and demand a solution or help authorities to find one.

11. The role of teachers: Efficacious
participation in school
Teacher Mónica:
 While enthusiasm for work continued, the relationship with a vertical style of school
management did not leave much room for maneuver to young people. That old style
that ignores the voices and needs of others, caused us frustration, anger. But above all
we pushed to not give things for lost, to find alternative solutions for the projects of our
Work Plan.

12. Conclusions
 Formal agencies of participation have the potential of being spaces for promoting
‘quality’ participation in schools.
 When teachers engage in guaranteeing students’ right to participation, they become
aware of certain necessary changes in their role. They have transited from being the ones
who decide, lecture and direct, to a role of a “less novice” companion, based on
promoting and facilitating their own projects.
 Teachers, as more experienced educators and citizens, can make significant contributions
to students’ participatory projects, by enhancing the efficacy of those experiences.
 Teachers. engagement with students’ right to participation via the SS is a way of
shortening the gap between what is said about democracy and rights in class, and what
they can learn through experiencing it in school

13. Gracias.
Pérez Expósito, Leonel (2014a). La participación adolescente en la escuela
secundaria: explorando lo deseable, lo potencial y lo permisible. Argumentos,
23(74), 47-73.
---------(2014b). Rethinking political participation: A pedagogical approach
for citizenship education. Theory and Research in Education, 12(2), 229-251.
doi: 10.1177/1477878514530713
---------(2015). Scope and quality of student participation in school: towards
an analytical framework for adolescents. International Journal of Adolescence
and Youth. doi: 10.1080/02673843.2015.1009920