Education in violent environments: teaching stories

Abstract

This paper reports the progress of a research project focused on educational attention in areas of poverty, exclusion, and social vulnerability, which are affected by violence. The research is approached from an interpretive perspective through narratives, which enables the researcher to approach the world of the educational actors in order to analyze essential aspects of their daily practice. For the in-depth interviews, in the interest of knowing the vision of teachers who work in socially disadvantaged contexts, schools located in priority attention zones in Ciudad Juárez were chosen, which are determined by the Ministry of Welfare of the federal government as neighborhoods where the population presents poverty and social backwardness in the exercise of their rights for social development. 36 teachers from the elementary school level, from the federal and state subsystems, were selected to conduct interviews individually or in focus groups. Based on the comments of the interviewees, it stands out that the teachers have the need to develop their practice amid these types of situations: children violated by their families, parents who participate in illegal activities, schools in contexts where it is “normal” to see deaths, shootings, robberies, and assaults. The situation that Ciudad Juárez is going through regarding violence, is reflected in the schools and homes of the students; the teacher, being in permanent contact with them, knows and is inevitably involved in these stories.