Abstract

In Portugal, educational policies associated with the promotion of school success and education improvement were implemented and justified based on social justice principles. The TEIP program - Educational Territories of Priority Intervention is one of those policies comprising compensation measures (similar to French ZEP). Portugal has 137 school clusters included in the TEIP program, and, particularly, 10 of which are located in border regions – inlands and mainly rural. These regions suffer from structural
inequalities and depopulation, as well as unequal access to local services, education prospects and job opportunities when compared with seaside and other urban territories. In this context, the main aim of this research is to enhance the academic debate on the impact of TEIP program in promoting social justice in schools from Portuguese border regions. In order to identify social justice indicators in these regions
schools, we defined the following objectives:

(1) Identify conditions that promote students’ education pathways;

(2) Identify specificities of TEIP schools’ from border regions analysing the impact of those specificities in the development of the TEIP policy;

(3) explore the influences of European and national territorial policies in TEIP schools from border regions;

(4) Map locally grounded approaches and practices
that foster and support school and curricular practices with focus on social justice and the achievement of an inclusive and equitable education;

(5) To establish links between the practices identified and selfevaluation processes and resilient approaches implemented in these schools that constitute distinguishing features of the TEIP program. Following qualitative and quantitative approaches – interviews, focus group discussion, case studies and a survey – this research aims to provide evidence and recommendations that contribute to the development of an analytical framework on social justice: it will constitute a national indepth analysis of the conditions impacting school resilience in Portuguese border regions that are fostering social justice. Specifically, this research will draw up a social justice framework based on indicators that may provide useful information in order to analyse similar contexts.

CoPIn

JEDI – Youth, Education, Diversity and Innovation

Funding

FCT - Fundação para Ciência e para Tecnologia

Principal Investigator

Marta Sampaio

Partners

CIIE/Faculdade de Psicologia e Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto - FPCEUP