PEDAGOGICAL POLITICAL PROJECT AND THE PARTICIPATION OF THE STUDENT UNION: AUTONOMY OR TUTELAGE OF ACTIONS?

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how the Political-Pedagogical Project (PPP) of two public schools considers the participation of the student council as a tool for developing autonomy among its members. It adopts the following question as its guiding principle: Is it possible to identify elements within the PPPs of schools that indicate actions to be carried out by the participants of the Student Council in a way that contributes to the development of student participation and autonomy? To this end, the methodological approach adopted was a review of the literature (authors and academic publications) on the subject, the selection of two Political-Pedagogical Projects for reading the proposed actions, and a documentary analysis of these projects. The results achieved indicate that although the PPPs of the schools surveyed list democratic principles of participation and document that they prioritize these, in the associations this does not occur freely and autonomously on the part of the students. The existing associations operate in a fragmented manner, given that student actions are established in accordance with the opinions of the management team, which leads us to note a weakness both in effective student participation, with a view to exercising citizen autonomy in school spaces, and in the continued low representativeness of student councils in public schools.