The educational success of children in residential care, an untested feasibility?

Abstract

Children in residential care are one of the groups most affected by school failure. The analysis of the school pathways of Portuguese students shows that the probabilities of educational success are crueler for these children. It also showed that the possibility of finishing a 12-year schooling is a reality that happens to very few. Since the situation of school failure and exclusion is especially serious, it is argued that the work of teachers, which is carried out not only from pedagogical practices and differentiated actions that can take into account the cultural and socio-economic differences that
often characterize these children, must also take into account the serious psychological and affective
problems that mark them. Thus, and using a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy and with the support of Paulo Freire, we argue that, against all expectations, the future of some of these children is revealed as being an “untested feasibility”. Based upon fieldwork of participative observation developed over several years, in a theoretical-methodological framework in which education is associated with socio-anthropology, this text intends to give an account of some examples of these “untested” from the critical analysis of experiences lived by these children.