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INTRODUCTION
This article presents results of an empirical research centred on a case study that aimed to identify critical factors that contributed to the successful completion of the educational paths of a group of former students from a Youth and Adult Education Course integrated to Vocational Education at secondary level (EJA-EPT)2 in Brazil.
We have investigated the sociological approach of Basil Bernstein (1996, 2003) and, in the implications for educational practices, the relationship between social interactions and learning by Étienne Bourgeois (1999), to have the theoretical support necessary to understand how adults position themselves in socially constructed hierarchical structures3 in the school context and what their socio-affective and cognitive dispositions towards learning would be.
What motivated us to adopt the interdisciplinary theoretical orientation presented above was the fact that studies on school success in Brazil linked to Youth and Adult Education (EJA) have not explored the relationship between social phenomena involving the concept of positioning and the socio-affective and cognitive dispositions resulting from social interactions. More specifically, what this relationship entails in terms of effects on learning during the education of young people and adults. This interdisciplinary approach was pointed out by Bernstein (1996) as necessary in order to understand the mechanisms by which students produce what the author refers to as pedagogical text 4, that is, the pedagogical production.
In this sense, Morais and Neves (2001) emphasise that socio-affective and cognitive dispositions towards learning can be understood through a typology that is defined by the appropriate dimensions, aspirations, motivations, and values.
We believe that this research approach - which is linked to a version of class analysis - can contribute to a deeper understanding of the disconnection between the intentionality that adult subjects express when they resume their educational process and the low completion rates in secondary school. In 2019, the EJA-EPT modality in Brazil had a dropout rate of 66.4% i.e., for every four students who entered the EJA-EPT at secondary level, only one completed the course (Carmo et al., 2020).
However, school dropout, according to Ireland (2016), is a social and educational phenomenon which is not specific to the Brazilian national context. In 2021, Brazilian education data showed that 41% of people aged 25 to 64 had not completed secondary level (equivalent to ISCED 3 level), practically double the average of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which was 20%. India and Mexico presented higher percentages, with 78% and 56%, respectively, while for Portugal the data is very close to the Brazilian indicators, around 40% (OECD, 2023).
Although this social problem is a recurring theme among researchers dealing with public policies involving EJA and vocational education in the context of international discussions (Ireland, 2016), we have identified a small number of studies involving Bernstein's theoretical framework and EJA-EPT in Brazil (Gatto, 2008; Manhães et al., 2015). Analysing these Brazilian studies, as well as the international studies that we will detail below, we also found that none of them investigated the dynamics that deal with changes in positioning in relation to students' socio-affective and cognitive dispositions.
At international level, we identified a considerable number of studies aimed at analysing macro and micro school and non-school (family and work, for example), contexts which used Bernstein's theoretical postulates (Apple, 2002; Bonal & Rambla, 1999; Shay, 2015; Stoer & Magalhães, 2003; Vásquez & Naranjo, 2011).
In particular, researchers from the Sociological Studies of the Classroom (ESSA) group at the Education Research Centre of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Lisbon have used an approach based on Bernstein's theoretical framework, especially in terms of the concept of positioning (student-student, student-teacher, teacher-teacher, among other pedagogical discourses) and its relationship with school (un)success.
We have identified studies by this group in the contexts of learning in the family and at school, teacher training and the construction of curricula and programmes (Afonso et al., 2005; Alves et al., 2006; Miranda & Morais, 1996; Morais, 2002; Morais & Neves, 2003, 2009, 2013; Morais et al., 1992; Neves et al., 1999, 2000; Pires, 2001; Pires & Morais, 1997). The object of the studies involved student learning success centred on science education and its relationship with the macro and micro context orientations of the entire Portuguese educational system.
The studies of this group used as variables (i) different pedagogical practices, (ii) teachers from different schools, (iii) different levels of schooling, (iv) different contexts of the school system (official and pedagogical), (v) curricula and programmes and (vi) school knowledge-academic knowledge.
Their results point to the development of a pedagogical practice model that is potentially capable of structuring teaching and learning processes towards school success, reducing, as Morais and Neves (2009) put it, “the gap between students from different social backgrounds” (p. 5).
In general, the studies carried out by the ESSA group focused on a wide age range of people in school, from kindergarten to higher education. However, when it came to young people and adults, their research did not involve subjects who were lagging behind at school.
In order to fill this gap, our investigation focused on young people and adults who, for various social, economic and political reasons, returned to school after significant periods of interruption (over two years) and successfully completed their secondary education in the EJA-EPT course.
We would like to point out that the notion of adult assumed in this work is circumscribed to the notion of EJA that is consistent not only with the Brazilian reality, but, according to Di Pierro (2017), with the Latin American reality in general, which has been, even if with little initial visibility, a field of discussion since the 1st International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA) held in Denmark in 1949 and convened every twelve years by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Since then, these conferences on EJA have proved to be historic spaces for debate about the policies implemented for this type of education in different countries around the world. Their most current discussions have been marked by polarisation between two visions due to the different realities of countries and geopolitical and economic regions (Ireland & Spezia, 2014).
According to Ireland and Spezia (2014), the vision that shapes the Lifelong Learning (LLL) approach tends to consolidate itself as the vision of industrialised countries, in which the “strong link with employment and a capacity to help people deal with technological, economic and social change” (p. 43) predominates.
In the view of less developed countries, a more scholastic and compensatory approach predominates, which guides most of their EJA programmes, where the focus is on “offering education to those who have not had the opportunity to access school” (p. 43).
Ireland and Spezia (2014) also argue that the more instrumental view of Youth and Adult Education in industrialised countries is because there is an emphasis on specialized labour as a strategy to increase the competitiveness of economies, so that public policies in this field of education generally interact with other public policies with which they have interfaces.
Brazil has been one of the protagonists of these spaces at this conference. Notably at the VII CONFINTEA, held in 2022 in Morocco, the country represented Latin America and the Caribbean in the Marrakesh Framework for Action Reporting Committee and in the Post-CONFINTEA Committee meeting.
On that occasion, the Marrakech Framework for Action, which brings commitments to translate the vision of the right to Lifelong Learning into reality, was unanimously approved.
We noticed that EJA's perspectives in CONFINTEA VI and VII were marked by the polarisation between the restorative (compensatory) function more aligned with the needs of less developed countries and the qualifying function, a vision closer to the reality of developed countries.
In Brazil, this polarisation has influenced discussions at the National Education Council (CNE), the highest authority in Brazilian education whose responsibility is to formulate and evaluate national education policy. In this arena of political debate, the EJA has been guided by the field of public policies to fight social and economic inequalities, as it is not enough to establish equal chances of access to education for young people and adults. As Klinski (2009), Arruda (2012), Oliveira (2011) and Noro (2011) have pointed out, there are other social and economic factors that define the possibilities of permanence and success along the educational paths, which must be considered.
In short, Brazil has chosen to develop its EJA policies in general, and specifically EJA-EPT, guided by the restorative, qualifying and equalising functions, described in the National Curricular Guidelines for EJA (CNE, 2000) in alignment with the socio-economic and cultural diversity of its target public.
Based on these guidelines, the EJA as a broad form of public policy, and the EJA-EPT as a specific programme within it, have been guided by its restorative (compensatory) function, considering it a social right for those who were unable to use it at the appropriate age.
In turn, the qualifying function provides the EJA with a wider scope, given its perspective on the approach to permanent education in line with urgent human needs in contemporary times, encompassing not only the market, but the working world in all its diverse forms of production.
According to the National Curriculum Guidelines for the EJA (CNE, 2000), the equalising function elaborates the notion of equity, without which the EJA often runs the risk of being treated in a simplistic way and being confused with welfare. The purpose of this function is to reduce the distances between individuals with rights and individuals without rights, the different and the diverse, as equality in these cases does not resolve the structural inequality in the distribution of resources and cultural goods, which Campelo (2009) names “unequal equality” (p. 212).
In this sense, we believe that an investigation that uses interdisciplinarity in the field of educational sociology (Bernstein, 1996) and social psychology (Bourgeois, 1999) expands the possibilities for identifying the critical factors that contributed to the successful completion of the educational paths of a group of former students from an EJA-EPT course.
We chose to construct a singular research object through the eyes of subjects who had successfully completed their education. It is worth emphasising that the choice for a positive reading of the conditions for the appropriation of knowledge was, in advance, an attitude that demonstrates an epistemological choice that encouraged us to think of school success rather than failure as an object of investigation. In practical terms, this choice widened the possibilities for research development, compared to the possibilities if we had focussed on subjects who had only completed part of their education.
This approach, we believe, allows us to identify the key factors that determine the chances of success in the adult's educational path, not only by understanding his/her socio-cognitive and affective dispositions, but also in the power relations´ processes that distribute him/her in social structures that are hierarchically designed to perpetuate the relationship between dominant and dominated groups.
In summary, this study sought to answer the research question of identifying critical factors that contributed to the successful completion of the educational path (object of investigation) of a group of former students contextualised in a Brazilian EJA-EPT course. We chose an interdisciplinary investigative approach centred on a case study as a possibility to clarify the relationships between the dynamics involving the positioning of subjects in socially elaborated hierarchical structures in the school context throughout the course (Bernstein, 1996) and the assumptions defined by the socio-cognitive and affective dispositions for learning (Bourgeois, 1999), in the analysable dimensions pointed out by Morais and Neves (2001) and defined as aspirations, motivations and appropriate values.
THEORETICAL ASPECTS
Basil Bernstein, the English sociologist of education, developed a sociolinguistic approach to social learning focused on the mechanisms that guide pedagogic transmission/acquisition, focussing on how class relations position people differentially to language and language use through ‘codes´. It is through this set of concepts and their relations centred on the notion of positioning, that the author has structured the Model of Cultural Reproduction and Transformation and the Model of Pedagogical Discourse (Bernstein, 1996, 2003). Below we briefly present Bernstein’s contribution with regard to positioning in the context of the Brazilian EJA-EPT in dialogue with Bourgeois' (1999) theoretical assumptions of interactionist learning.
Bernstein (1996) used the expression “class relations” in the sense that it marks the differences in the distribution of power (field of ideological actions) and in the principles of control (field of technological actions) between and within social groups, stimulating different hierarchical structures elaborated in accordance with the dynamic spaces of social statuses, which emerge as the subjects' positions in function of their identities. In the author's words, it is these relations which “generate, distribute, reproduce and legitimate distinctive forms of communication, which transmit dominant and dominated codes, and that subjects are differentially positioned by these codes in the process of acquiring them” (Bernstein, 1996, p. 10).
The notion of positioning used in this work, emerges from the concept developed by Bernstein and is central to this research, as we will see later when the relationships between subjects in the school micro-context where pedagogical practice takes place are addressed. Initially, we clarify Bernstein's theoretical assumptions based on the macro contexts of educational systems.
In this sense, based on the thoughts of Bernstein (1996, 2003), Stoer (2008) emphasises that it is at the level of the macro-context of national education systems that the distribution of power operates the relationship between the state and education under the influence of international agencies, which, under a discourse of modernisation, operate as support in the elaboration of dominant principles to be imposed on society. Through a specific discourse about the financing education systems, these international organisations, as well as agents in the economic field, impose dominant principles that lead public policies in the direction of “education in its reproductive function of socialisation, and thus facilitating the way for the establishment of the political and ideological foundations” that support capitalist ambitions to consolidate themselves as a “superior form of production” (Stoer, 2008, p. 190).
In addition to the dominant principles of the economic and political field that shape the general regulatory discourse of an educational system, there are also discursive resources that translate the legitimate change of consciousness through symbolic means, which, in short, can be understood as broader forms of patriarchy and colonialism (Santos, Meneses & Peixoto, 2018).
Bernstein (1996) emphasises that these regulatory principles act through the mechanisms of a complex process that he calls recontextualisation, where knowledge produced (primarily in academic and scientific institutions) is then recontextualised through education and training. Furthermore, Bernstein (1996) indicates that there is a possibility that the pedagogical discourse, with its regulatory and controlling components, which elaborates the relationship between teachers and students in the micro context of pedagogical practice, occurs in association with the influence arising from this global scenario, because the mechanisms of recontextualisation act through the different fields that the rules of distribution allow to be established.
On the other hand, Bernstein (2003) notes that, due to the complexity of such relationships, what occurs in pedagogic practice among teachers and students does not constitute a mere reproduction of the pedagogic discourse elaborated in other fields and contexts, because when it is recontextualised, the pedagogic discourse has, according to Pires (2001, p. 8) “a specialised grammar, capable of a wide range of realisations, making it very difficult to control all its potential realisations”.
Morais and Neves (2001) broaden the scope of Bernstein's thinking by exploring the different hierarchical structures established by social relations and the rules for distributing power which can establish, legitimise, and reproduce borders among categories formed (i) by subjects ( among classes, gender, ethnicity, age, kinship, educational achievement, etc.); (ii) among discourses (regulative, pedagogic instructional, official, reproduction) and (iii) among spaces (state and private agencies, institutions of reproduction of the pedagogic discourse, as school).
Because of these boundaries imposed on the categories, people, discourses, and spaces are distributed by positions in different hierarchical pyramids in the structures of society, elaborating social statuses for these categories, from macro contexts (state, government) to micro contexts (work environment, family, and school).
In this research, we focused our attention in the category defined by the relationship among people in the school micro-context, in other words, in the scenario (research locus) where the investigation took place: the educational path of the Brazilian EJA-EPT. It was in the relational field teachers-students and students-students during the course that the rules of recognition operated, guiding (regulating by imposition) the subjects in the acquisition of consciousness (specialisation of consciousnesses) about hierarchical relations concerning subjects from other social categories, thus consolidating the internalisation of recognition both in terms of the positioning that is conferred (and perceived) on them in relation to other categories (hetero positioning), and the positioning of intrinsic consciousness (self-positioning) that they perceive of themselves5.
In this way, the concept of positioning is broadened, as it is related to the awareness that the subject acquires of how he/she is perceived by the social agents with whom he/she interacts (hetero positioning) while positioned in a certain hierarchical pyramid, which may or may not coincide with the form in which the subject perceives him/herself in this social structure (self-positioning), reflected in the text that he/she is allowed to produce in communicating with other social agents.
We understand that once the subject has been positioned by the rules of recognition, it is up to the rules of realisation to lead (control by instruction) him/her through communicational coding guidelines that can be restricted (access to limited contexts) or elaborate (access to expanded contexts), thus defining the production of the pedagogical text. Based on his observations, Bernstein (1996) pointed out as the cause of failure in learning the fact that pedagogical practices occur through a code different from that which the subject acquired in his/her relational context.
This relation has been confirmed by several studies (Morais & Neves, 2003, 2013; Neves et al., 2000; Pires, 2001) and few studies applied to Brazilian Youth and Adult Education (Bezerra & Eugenio, 2019; Manhães et al., 2015). Morais and Neves (2003) emphasise that “along with coding orientation, positioning is crucial for student success” (p. 32).
This explains why those students who are in line with the specific communication orientation (communication code) developed by their teachers, tend to successfully develop their educational paths, while those who are not in this condition have learning difficulties, which generally lead to their abandoning the course (Morais & Neves, 2005).
However, the notion of positioning, as pointed out above, cannot be seen as a static, unchanging social phenomenon; on the contrary, it is subject to wider relations of power and the dynamics that shape interpersonal relationships, as we will discuss later.
For this reason, Leite (2004) argues that although school, like the family and the workplace, is a social category of great importance as an organisational structure of social control through the validation of regulatory discourse, it can also be thought of as a space with dynamic characteristics identified by possibilities for changing these positional relationships. We have focused on the possibility of changing or maintaining the positioning to which students are subject and the relationship between this positioning with academic success. We understand that by reorienting the very principles of regulation and control over the processes of access to communicational codes in specific contexts, changes in the class effect are allowed, which define both power relations and the potential for learning materialised as a pedagogical text.
Bernstein initially developed his theoretical assumptions oriented towards two conditioning factors that arise from the relationship between class division, positioning and communicational code, while recognising that they were not enough for textual production to take place.
For Bernstein (1996) the production of a certain pedagogic text by the subjects is possible by combining three conditioning factors. First, the subject must be able to select the appropriate meanings to the specific context and this results from the process of internalization of recognition rules that he/she is allowed to access, as shown before. Secondly, the subject must be able to produce the text in this context according to those meanings, and this takes place through the orientation of realisation rules to which he/she is subject. Even so, Bernstein (1996) recognises that a third factor is also necessary, that the subject presents specific socio-affective and cognitive dispositions that can motivate him/her to produce the text in line with the context that regulates it.
What we propose in this work is to analyse the positioning manifested in the processes of change and maintenance of the self- and hetero positioning of a group of former students from an EJA-EPT course at secondary level in Brazil and relate it to the analysis of socio-affective and cognitive dispositions based on the theoretical perspective of Bourgeois's Socio-Cognitive Interaction (1999) expressed by the dimensions of aspirations, motivations and appropriate values of adult subjects during learning (Morais & Neves, 2001), whose concepts we will clarify later.
Bourgeois (1999) develops his understanding on the relationship between individual learning and social interactions based on the theories of genetic social psychology on the socio-cognitive conflict and on investigations into cooperative learning devices. More specifically, Bourgeois sought to develop his thinking based on the works of Mugny et al. (1981); Carugati et al. (1991); Freany and Bourgeois (1998); Cohen (1994); Smith et al. (1981); Monteil (1987); Johnson and Johnson (1983), among others.
For Bourgeois (1999), learning is a paradoxical act, given that “it is an eminently individual, intimate act, but at the same time, this act is necessarily part of a relationship or, more precisely, an interaction with others (...), with the 'not identical to oneself'” (p. 309), which can be the 'symbolic other' in a purely cognitive process, such as a discourse or another point of view. It can also be a subject in a collaborative task, which in this case consists of cognitive interaction embedded in social interaction.
Bourgeois (1999, p. 310) addresses the relationship between socio-cognitive interactions and adult learning in vocational education under four aspects: the effects of the way the exchanges between the students are structured and the type of task proposed pedagogically, the effects of the socio-affective climate, the social competences of the students in the interaction and the effects of the asymmetry of the relationship in which the social interaction takes place. In this research, we understand that the approach to the effects of the asymmetry of the relationship during social interaction dialogues conceptually with the very notion of positioning pointed out by Bernstein (1996), in the sense that in both self-positioning and hetero positioning the subject develops differential positions in hierarchical social structures, as we saw earlier6. We understand that these differential positions develop students' perceptions of themselves and their relationship with others (peers or teachers), both of which are associated with the asymmetries of the relationship7.
Unlike Bernstein (1996, 2003), who assumes a sociological approach to these different positions, Bourgeois (1999) studies them from the perspective of the social psychology of socio-cognitive conflict. However, both have attempted to explore the effects of positioning as a generator of relationship asymmetries in learning.
In view of this, we believe that the dimensions aspirations, motivations, and appropriate values of adult subjects during learning presented by Morais and Neves (2007) constitute a practical and objective way of making this connection between the theoretical assumptions of Bernstein (1996, 2003) and those of Bourgeois (1999).
Morais and Neves (2007) emphasise that “(...) the rules of recognition regulate the rules of achievement. These two principles and the necessary socio-affective dispositions are acquired socially and become part of the subject's internal structures” (p. 119). For the authors, there is a clear interrelationship that emphasises the mutual influence among the specific coding orientation that shapes the subject's positioning, socio-affective dispositions, and student performance in specific learning contexts. The authors also add that “although constituting different realities within the subject, the possession of specific coding orientation can be limited by socio-affective dispositions, which, in turn, are limited by coding orientation” (p. 120).
In this sense, it seems clear to us that the level of control defined by the rules of realisation interferes with the interaction among subjects in educational processes, because of what it mobilises in terms of what Bourgeois (1999) defines as the effect of the socio-affective climate and the way in which socio-cognitive interactions are managed.
These effects constitute behavioural orientations in which, according to Morais and Neves (2001), the socio-affective and cognitive dimensions materialise as manifestations that translate into the dimensions of aspirations, motivations, and appropriate values of adult subjects during learning (p. 198). Thus, we have focused on the dynamics that lead to changes in positioning, a central feature of this investigation, as it is through the interpretative potential of this orientation that we realise there are also possibilities for analysing the relationship between the subjects' positioning through the pedagogical process in line with socio-cognitive and affective aspects in the perspective of the dimensions: aspirations, motivation, and appropriate values.
However, this view that takes us to the field of analysis is above all an epistemological and methodological one, as it elaborates the object of investigation from a positive perspective defined by the success in completing the educational process. Assuming a positive analysis for this purpose challenges us to guide the investigation towards what “people do, achieve, have and are, and not just what they fail at and what they lack” (Charlot, 2000, p. 30).
Furthermore, such a positive analysis does not imply ignoring what is observed as a deficiency, but rather being able to interpret it differently; it also means analysing what is happening, how a subject´s context is constructed both in situations of school failure or success.
METHODOLOGY
From a methodological point of view, this is an empirical investigation centred on a case study with a view to a comprehensive analysis of the school trajectories of a group of adult subjects who successfully completed an EJA-EPT course at the Sapucaia do Sul Campus/Instituto Federal Sul-rio-grandense, an autarchy of the Brazilian Federal Network of Vocational, Scientific and Technological Education.
Data were collected through semi-directive interviews (Amado, 2017; Peneff, 1994; Tuckman, 2012; Vieira, 1999) applied to 10 (ten) adults among 172 (one hundred and seventy-two) former students of the Business Administration Course in the EJA-EPT modality, who entered the Course from 2007 to 2013 and finished it from 2010 to 2016.
The non-random sample was obtained from the records in the Sapucaia do Sul/IFSul Campus school archive. Of the 172 (one hundred and seventy-two) who were contacted, 58 (fifty-eight) signed a Free and Informed Consent Form. Ten (10) former students were chosen for the interviews based on proportionality criteria (gender, marital status, age group, length of time away from school and employment status prior to enrolment), in order to be representative of the different social groups that characterise the social diversity of the EJA.
Interviews were conducted through a reflective, retrospective, and prospective process about the school practices that took place in the education process of the selected former students.
The content analysis of the interviews was carried out under the assumptions of Bardin (2011) and Franco (2012). The identified statements after recorded interviews had been transcribed, made up the registration units, which were categorised by the nature of the orientation of the process of change in the expressed positioning (elevation, reduction, or maintenance) and subcategorised in terms of self- or hetero positioning.
For each category and subcategory identified, their causal factors (triggering factors) were pointed out by the interviewees as being important for them to complete the Course. From what emerged, these factors were interpreted under Bourgeois' socio-affective and cognitive perspective as effects of the way in which exchanges among students are structured, as effects of the type of task proposed pedagogically, as effects of the socio-affective climate, as effects of the development of students' social competences in interactive processes and as effects of the asymmetry of the relationship in which social interaction takes place.
We have identified the context units8 related to these effects and established a dialogue with the dimensions related to aspirations, motivations, and appropriate values, highlighted by Morais and Neves (2001). The results of the analysis have been organised in condensed form and exemplified in the tables in order to highlight the understanding between the indicator of change in positioning from the subject's perspective (self-positioning and hetero positioning), the hierarchical element that socially manifested itself as a structuring notion in the distribution of power and the triggering socio-cognitive and affective factors in a specific relation to the corresponding context unit identified in the body of the transcribed interviews.
RESULTS
After the coding process (Bardin, 2011), 201 (two-hundred and one) context units were identified whose statements indicated an elevation in positioning, which suggests it was a recurring social phenomenon in the reflective narrative developed among the ten interviewees.
No context units were identified that were consistent with orientations related to reducing positioning in any hierarchical structure in the school context. This might be expected in a study oriented towards school success as the object of investigation. This does not mean, however, that it is possible to exclude the ongoing occurrence or recurrence of factors that, throughout the educational trajectory, may have created constraints for students.
As for the references on the elaboration of the perception of change in positioning, changes due to the elevation in the former students' self-positioning predominated, as opposed to the reference elaborated by hetero positioning, which was represented by a single case.
Based on the context units extracted by analysing the content of the interviewees' statements, the following changes were identified as a result of an elevation in self-positioning related to learning (Table 1), schooling (Table 2), knowledge (Table 3) and in the hierarchical structures of the social statute that changed during socio-cognitive interactions (Table 4). As for the change by elevation of hetero positioning, in the only case the related hierarchical structure referred to professional perspective (Table 5), as we will discuss later.
Next, we present the comprehensive analysis structured after reading the condensed results in the form of tables according to the general results described above. In addition, we present the relationship between the triggering factors of the change phenomenon identified and the respective specific context units for just one case, to exemplify the adopted comprehensive analysis procedure.
Table 1 shows that the factors triggering change by self-positioning elevation in the hierarchical structures related to the learning process in the school context were: the completion of the course associated with the perception of the teachers’ high demand for student performance. Therefore, they were active factors during the educational trajectory which became consolidated at its end.
Table 1: Indicator summary: change by elevation of self-positioning relative to the learning process
If the course completion was a triggering factor for change in the hierarchical structures of the students' learning process at the end of their educational trajectory, access to the course acted at its beginning, influencing the change by elevating self-positioning related to the hierarchical structures built by the notion of schooling, mainly by what they determine in terms of self-esteem for accessing and participating in the course (Table 2).
We have identified that, associated with this social phenomenon, relational factors predominate, such as teacher influence and the relationship among peers, given the possibilities of encountering pleasure of learning (epistemic) in proper pedagogical space times for developing learning strategies especially when there is a link between the learning contents and the needs the students have in everyday life.
Finally, we have identified the importance of the affective sense of being in the school space (hedonic pleasure) which, together with the protagonism in pedagogical space-times, constitute a consistent explanatory structure as triggering factor for the change in self-positioning in the structures of schooling.
We believe that this relationship is best understood in conjunction with the triggering factors perception of high teaching demand in view of student performance (Table 1). By triggering a change in self-positioning in the hierarchical structure related to learning in the school context, the factor perception of the teachers' high demand for student performance may indicate that the subjects interviewed entered the course with a low status in this hierarchical structure. A probable cause for this relationship may be associated with the social representation they had of the EJA-EPT modality: a second-class education.
Thus, together with the change in this social representation to higher levels in the hierarchical structures of learning, we believe it is possible that the factors affective sense of being in the school space and protagonism in pedagogical space-times have promoted changes by raising self-positioning in terms of the hierarchical structures of schooling.
The change by elevation of self-positioning relative to knowledge (Table 3) was triggered by an extensive set of factors that, synergistically, influenced the students since entering the course, and mainly throughout their educational trajectory, of which we highlight a group of factors involving the notion of surpassing expectations. These include exceeding their expectations when they entered the course, both in terms of the depth achieved in the contents of basic secondary education and specific professional education in the field of Business Administration.
The perception concerning the overcoming of personal difficulties emerged associated with the appreciation for the teacher´s role, either because of his/her support in personal relationships, or because of the influence of his/her teaching strategies, especially in projects structured in collaborative pedagogical space-times, which tend to favour learning in a more meaningful way, as the findings and usefulness of contents were elaborated, moved by the epistemic pleasure and by the affective experience of being in school.
This setting concerns the socio-affective dimension of social interactions. It refers to the effects of social interactions during learning which are conditioned by the structure of the relationship in the pedagogical space-times in which these interactions take place, where tasks guided by the collaborative pedagogical process and the teacher's role in organising interactions predominate.
According to Bourgeois (1999, p. 321), this set of factors tends to favour learning because it provides opportunities for the development of cognitive interactions of the "contradiction" type (disagreement between students' points of view) rather than those of the "approval" type (agreement on points of view) and affective interactions of the "amenity" type (cordiality, sympathy, benevolence) instead of “opposition” type interactions (antagonism, discord, aggressiveness).
The author points out that, as well as not being spontaneous and therefore having to be learned, the mobilisation of these behavioural competences requires mental and affective dispositions on the part of the subject, especially in terms of self-esteem (see Table 2) and sociocultural belonging (see the factor affective sense of being in the school space in (Table 3).
The triggering factors for changes in self-positioning regarding socio-cognitive interactions are presented in Table 4.
We have noticed, in this case, the relevance that students attached to the extra-class pedagogical spaces and times developed through institutional programs related to extension projects. Thus, it was in the condition of fellow students in a situation of interactive learning with peers that they were able to experience something new by changing roles, something always seen as a teacher´s exclusive task: the meaning of protagonism with their peers’ learning.
This condition materialises in a new type of learning, manifested by the new personal professional perspective which had not yet been considered. This understanding is reinforced by the fact that these extra-class pedagogical space-times strongly promoted the pedagogical valuation of work experience, together with the development of the perception of exceeding expectations related to the depth achieved in the vocational educational contents.
Table 4: Indicator summary: change by elevation of self-positioning relative to socio-cognitive interactions
Even though common-sense points to the importance of the role of educators in motivating students, only in one case out of the ten interviewees did this role appear as a triggering factor for the interviewee's potential for professional success throughout the course, thus characterising the orientation towards change by elevating hetero positioning regarding professional prospects (Table 5). Due to the specific nature of this case, we have pinpointed the elements of the comprehensive analysis in the transcribed text of the interview below, based on the concepts used in this study.
Former student: "(...)It was there (trainee grant) that the seed of the question of my being an educator started to be planted" (indication that there was initially no socio-professional perspective on becoming a teacher or education professional because there was no intrinsic perception of him/herself (self-positioning) as having the attributes for this professional activity) “and who started planting that seed was the (teacher), who kept telling me... he didn't talk about pedagogy, he didn't talk... but he said, like, that I had a profile to be a teacher, something like that, to work with the public, you know? He kept telling me a lot of things and I was..." (an indicator of the development of the perception of the other, in this case the teacher, who positioned him/her - hetero positioning - on a high hierarchical level as possessing the necessary attributes to undertake this professional activity), "well, then I started doing my tasks as a trainee there" (indicator of change in the hierarchical structures involved with professional perspectives).
By reading the context units, we have noticed the high value of this guidance as a triggering factor for change. The isolation of this observed phenomenon calls our attention, mainly because the vocational school is a favourable context for the development of motivational discourses for the professional empowerment of students by teachers. With the analysis of this case, however, we have shown how much teaching practice in this sense can be determinant, not only as a triggering factor - teachers' influence - of the change throughout the course, but beyond the secondary level vocational education, elaborating a professional trajectory which extended to the pursuit of higher education.
As a factor of pedagogical space-time, what triggered the situation in question does not refer to the pedagogical activity of teaching, but it was in an extra-class activity, more precisely, during curricular professional trainee activities developed at the institution.
This situation presents two important aspects: one of them refers to the reduced role of the institutional protagonists (teachers, educational technicians, pedagogues) regarding the manifestations that generated changes by raising the hetero positioning of the subjects of the EJA-EPT Business Administration course; the other distinguishes the potential character influencing these changes perceived in the life trajectory of the subjects in the course.
Table 5: Indicator summary: change by elevation of hetero-positioning relative to professional perspective
To summarise, the results point to a set of factors that were critical for the changes due to an elevation both in self-positioning in the socially elaborated hierarchical structures by means of schooling, learning, knowledge, socio-cognitive interactions, and in hetero positioning related to professional perspective.
To broaden our understanding of the results, we have categorised the identified critical factors in terms of the dimensions related to aspirations, motivations and appropriate values pointed out by Morais and Neves (2001).
Thus, among the factors identified in the interviewees' statements, those related to the affective sense of being in the school space (hedonic motivation) to the pleasure in learning (epistemic pleasure) constitute the motivational aspects of socio-affective and cognitive dispositions, combined with the increase in self-esteem for accessing and participating in the course.
The factors that make up the dimensional structure aspirations are: access to the course, perception of overcoming personal difficulties through the educational trajectory in the course, perception of exceeding expectations related to the depth reached in secondary education contents as well as in specific vocational contents, perception of the meaning of learning as a discovery, as a perspective of professional trajectory and as something practical, appreciation for the acquired contents related to the professional area, the availability of curricular professional trainee activities developed at the institution and the course conclusion.
As for the socio-affective and cognitive dispositions related to the dimension values, we have identified those factors that were defined within pedagogical practices structured by the socio-cognitive and affective regulation of social relationships, namely : the value of peer relationship, the value of the teacher's perception in personal relationships, the value of teachers’ influence, the value attributed to protagonism in pedagogical space-times, the value of the meaning of protagonism in peer learning and the value of the extension grant for students participating in inclusion projects.
In addition to the three dimensions pointed out by Morais and Neves (2001), we have recognised the possibility of extending their typology by involving socio-cognitive and affective aspects with the critical factors related to the curricular dimension.
For the curricular dimension, we point out the pedagogical valuation of work experience, the perception of high teaching demand in relation to the students' performance, the influence of teachers, the appreciation of the general education content acquired, the meaning of learning in relation to the context involving everyday life, the leading role in pedagogical time-spaces, favourable time-spaces for developing learning strategies, access to collaborative pedagogical spaces, teaching projects structured around collaborative relationships, the availability of work experience grants and curricular internships at the school, and the appreciation for the teaching methodology. The latter has emerged much more as a consequence of the set of critical factors that have come with it in the curricular dimensional structure.
CONCLUSIONS
The methodology used in this investigation proved promising as it established a dialogical comprehensive analysis between the dynamics involved in changing and in maintaining one's position in socially constructed hierarchical structures in the school context and the factors that trigger the socio-affective and cognitive dispositions of a group of adults in a formal Brazilian EJA-EPT course.
The critical factors identified as triggering the dynamics of positioning, namely in hierarchical structures elaborated intrinsically in the sphere of self-positioning (schooling, learning, knowledge, and socio-cognitive interactions) and extrinsically in the domain of hetero-positioning (professional perspective) constitute a set of high heuristic value for reflections on the context and on the necessary pedagogical practice for teacher development programmes and the construction of curricula for the Brazilian EJA-EPT.
The correlation between these triggering critical factors and the dimensions of aspirations, motivations and appropriate values, according to Morais and Neves (2001), which until then had not been explored as analytical units, had their scope expanded with the addition of the curricular dimension, as an influence related to the socio-affective and cognitive dispositions of learning strategies in collaborative project spaces and in line with the factors that define the teaching methodology.
In general terms, we can infer that the set of critical factors identified as triggering the dynamics of positioning which determine the successful completion of educational paths can be an indicator of conformity between the orientation given to the communicational code under which pedagogical practices are carried out and the code that the subject has acquired in his/her relational context. In other words, the analysis of socio-cognitive and affective factors under the theoretical presuppositions of Étienne Bourgeois (1999) with contributions from Morais and Neves (2001), when put into dialogue with the theoretical assumptions of Basil Bernstein's thinking (1996, 2003), creates a broader analytical perspective in terms of the potential to evaluate the complexity of the mechanisms involving the processes of distribution of power relations and their influence in the relationship among social class, positioning, the communicational code and success, in the educational path of subjects in the Brazilian EJA-EPT school context.
Any pedagogical context is made up of categories that position subjects, discourses and spaces in hierarchical structures constructed in terms of power (regulation) and control. In regulatory terms, control refers to the hierarchical rules that regulate students' social relations of communication with the teacher or with their peers. Thus, what is involved in these socio-cognitive interactions can affect communication in such a way as to favour or hinder the process of writing the pedagogical text, which is directly linked to success or failure at school.
In this article we suggest that the factors identified in the context of the interviews indicate that good performance throughout the course may be related to the alignment in the specific communication orientation (communication code) developed between students and teachers and among their peers, and to the presence of socio-affective and cognitive dispositions in the school context.
Finally, the results are in line with the guidelines presented by Bernstein who, despite not having addressed issues related to socio-affective and cognitive dispositions in his models, pointed out their importance in understanding the pedagogical result that is favourable or unfavourable to learning, when he stated that “the features that create the speciality of the interactional practice (i.e. the form of the social relationship) regulate orientations with regard to meanings, and the latter generate, through selection, specific textual productions.” (Bernstein, 1996, p. 32).
