Teachers as social capital agents: an exploratory study from Brazil

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Teachers as social capital agents:an exploratory study from Brazil

Tamo Chattopadhay

While socialisation aspects of schooling are widely considered as significant mechanisms of

reproducing social inequalities, teacher contributions are rarely examined in terms of the

social-relational dimensions of student outcomes. This paper employs a social capital

framework to examine teacher-student engagement in two under-resourced urban public

schools in Brazil. Extended interviews with teachers reveal that inspired educators do take

great initiatives to transform the nature of their relationships with low-income students into

sources of critical institutional and psycho-social support. The study offers critical policy

perspectives on how teachers could be enabled to potentially become social capital agents

for their students.

Les enseignants comme agents de capital social : une etude exploratoire menee au BresilSi les aspects de la scolarisation relatifs a la socialisation sont consideres par beaucoup

comme des mecanismes considerables de reproduction des inegalites sociales, les contri-

butions des enseignants sont rarement examinees en termes des dimensions sociales-relation-

nelles des resultats pour les etudiants. Cet article a recours a un cadre de capital social pour

examiner le dialogue enseignant-etudiant dans deux ecoles publiques urbaines bresiliennes

disposant de moyens insuffisants. Des entretiens etendus avec les enseignants revelent que

les pedagogues inspires prennent effectivement de fantastiques initiatives visant a transformer

la nature de leurs rapports avec des etudiants issus de familles a faible revenu en sources

cruciales de soutien institutionnel et psychosocial. Cette etude offre des manieres de voir cru-

ciales sur le plan des politiques en ce qui concerne la maniere dont les enseignants pourraient

avoir la possibilite de devenir peut-etre des agents de capital social pour leurs etudiants.

Los maestros como agentes de capital social: un estudio exploratorio en BrasilSi bien los aspectos socializantes de la educacion son ampliamente considerados como meca-

nismos significativos de reproduccion de las desigualdades sociales, pocas veces se examinan

las contribuciones que los maestros realizan en terminos de las dimensiones social-relacio-

nales de los resultados obtenidos por los estudiantes. Con el fin de analizar la interaccion

que tiene lugar entre maestros y estudiantes de dos escuelas publicas de escasos recursos

localizadas en el ambito urbano de Brasil, el presente artıculo utiliza un marco de capital

social. Las entrevistas a profundidad aplicadas a los maestros revelaron que los educadores

inspirados implementan muchas iniciativas con el objetivo de modificar la naturaleza de sus

relaciones con los estudiantes de bajos recursos, pretendiendo transformar tales relaciones en

cruciales fuentes de apoyo institucional y psico-social. El estudio propone varias ideas

562 # 2013 Taylor & Francis

Development in Practice, 2013

Vol. 23, No. 4, 562–574, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2013.790939

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polıticas fundamentales vinculadas a la forma en que los maestros podrıan ser capacitados de

modo de convertirse en agentes de capital social para sus estudiantes.

Professores enquanto agentes de capital social: um estudo investigativo do BrasilEmbora os aspectos de socializacao do ensino sejam amplamente considerados mecanismos

importantes de reproducao de desigualdades sociais, as contribuicoes dos professores sao

raramente examinadas em termos das dimensoes sociais-relacionais dos resultados dos estu-

dantes. Este artigo emprega uma estrutura de capital social para examinar o engajamento

professor -estudante em duas escolas publicas urbanas com recursos insuficientes no

Brasil. Entrevistas mais longas com professores revelam que educadores inspirados realmente

tem grandes iniciativas para transformar o recurso de sua relacao com estudantes de baixa

renda em fontes de apoio crıtico institucional e psicossocial. O estudo oferece perspectivas de

polıticas crıticas sobre como professores podem ser capacitados para tornarem-se potencial-

mente agentes de capital social para seus estudantes.

KEY WORDS: Social sector – Education: Latin America and the Caribbean; Gender and diversity –Youth

Introduction

Teachers represent one of the most important factors for student outcomes in diverse school-

ing contexts. While the non-cognitive, socialisation aspects of schooling are widely

considered as significant mechanisms of reproducing social inequalities (Bourdieu and

Passeron 1977), most teacher evaluation frameworks in development policy and practice

continue to revolve around the cognitive dimensions of teacher qualifications and learning

achievements of students. In contrast, this paper focuses on the engagement of teachers

towards the social-relational outcomes of students in the context of urban public

education in Brazil. To explore these social-relational processes and outcomes, the paper

employs a conceptual framework that is grounded in the social capital theory of Pierre Bour-

dieu (1985).

The paper first introduces the theoretical framework of social capital that undergirds the

analysis of teacher engagement in students’ relational outcomes. This is followed by an

outline of the social context of education in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the research took

place. The research design and methods are discussed next, followed by a discussion of the

findings. The paper concludes with a commentary on the interplay of teacher socialisation

and student empowerment within the broader discourse of education policy and practice in

poverty.

Theoretical framework

Bourdieu defined social capital as resources that individuals are able to procure by virtue of

their relationships with others, or “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which

are linked to the possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships

of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (Bourdieu 1985, 248). Notably, such a framing is

distinct from the dominant discourse that considers social capital as norms and networks

that create and sustain “functional communities” through inter-generational and intra-

community relational linkages, or closures (Coleman 1988). As Lareau succinctly observed:

“In contrast to Coleman who portrays social relations as intrinsically valuable for helping

Development in Practice, Volume 23, Number 4, June 2013 563

Teachers as social capital agents

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children comply with dominant standards, Bourdieu critically reflects on the existence of

dominant standards (or rules of the game in the field)” (Lareau 2001, 81). Bourdieu’s

concept of social reproduction introduces notions of power and privilege within the social

capital discourse and offers a powerful theory to examine differentiated socialisation of stu-

dents in the context of unequal education in stratified societies (Lareau 2001; Noguera

2003; Stanton-Salazar 1997, 2011). Building upon these theoretical foundations, student

social capital is conceptualised in three inter-linked domains, or 3-Rs: Relationships,

Resources, and Readiness.

In the broadest sense, the Relationships domain can be understood as the networks that

students build among themselves, with their educators, and with external stakeholders

through school-facilitated contexts, processes, and protocols. Significantly, socio-economi-

cally disadvantaged adolescents might form social networks in ways that differ from

their middle class counterparts, and these differences could inhibit the accumulation and

transmission of important resources embedded within social networks (Stanton-Salazar

1997).

However, being in a network is not enough; it is also important to be in a resource-rich

network since what really matters is the resource of the others (or “second-order” resources)

(Portes 1998), that could be viewed as “bridging” and “linking” social capital (Putnam 1995).

Finally, the concept of Readiness stems from the idea that social networks and the resultant

social capital do not emerge on their own. Rather, acquisition of social capital requires delib-

erate investments of both economic and cultural resources for purposive action (Portes

1998). Bourdieu himself coined the term sociability to distinguish between social networks

and the ability to sustain and utilise them over time (Bourdieu 1987). While the notion of Readi-

ness is akin to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, it is distinctive in its embodiment of a set

of socially constructed and contextually defined critical skills that enables one to be effective in

identifying, nurturing, and mobilising relational resources. Similarly, while networking skill or

network orientation (Stanton-Salazar 1997) remains a core element of Readiness, the concept

extends to the ability to negotiate with and navigate through structures of power and domina-

tion. It is in this wider context of social structures and relationships of power that the notion of

Readiness is framed.

These three interlinked domains – Relationship, Resource and Readiness – of the 3R frame-

work provide the organising principle to capture and interpret how teachers act as conduits of

students’ social capital. For example, under the domain of Relationships, one would consider

the ways in which teachers insert themselves as meaningful actors in the social universe of

their students. The Resources domain would signify the actions and mechanisms through

which teachers enlarge the pool of critical institutional resources for their students. Finally,

the domain of Readiness could capture the processes that teachers employ to enhance the

capacities of their students so that they (the students) become adept in navigating complex

social contexts and creating resourceful networks on their own.

Social context of unequal education in Brazil

While Brazil has made tremendous progress in achieving universal primary enrolment over the

past two decades, a 2009 report from UNICEF highlights the multiple vulnerabilities of income

poverty, race, indigenous origin, and regional inequalities that continue to produce deeply

unequal educational outcomes for Brazilian children and adolescents (Silva and Alcantara

2009).

The many dimensions of social and educational inequality are particularly pronounced in the

city of Rio de Janeiro (Rio), the site of the current study. The majority of Cariocas (residents of

564 Development in Practice, Volume 23, Number 4, June 2013

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Rio) live in slums or favelas – which often are located right next to most elite neighbourhoods of

the city. This Carioca model of segregation – social distance combined with physical proximity

(Ribeiro and Santos 2003) – remains one of the most striking aspects of Rio’s urban inequality.

Favelas are widely viewed in the middle class media as a deficit or a scar on the city (de Souza e

Silva and Barbosa 2005), and favela residents – derogatively termed favelados – are considered

as marginal, second-class citizens. Janice Perlman, a long-term scholar of urban poverty in

Brazil, has argued that seeing Rio’s favela as the other or marginal to the city was a convenient

justification of the existence of extreme inequality (Perlman 1976). In spite of living in a deeply

asymmetric world, favela residents of Rio demonstrate great ingenuity, pragmatism, and

remarkable humour to negotiate their relationships with structures of power (Goldstein

2003). They build social identities, locate social networks, and develop narratives of memory

and history – official and counter-official (Piccolo 2009) – to take control of their lives in a

city that views them as other, and continues to stigmatise, repress, and distance them from a

closed class system (Perlman 1976). It can be argued that the question of educational equity

in Rio de Janeiro can be seen as an extension of the urban discourse that views the city

through a lens of asset and deficit, ‘asphalt’ and ‘favela’.

While material conditions of favela residents have somewhat improved over the past two

decades of progressive social policies, disruptive violence stemming from armed conflicts

between police, drug dealers, and opposing gangs (Dowdney 2002; Machado da Silva 2010)

have created a pervasive sense of fear in the favela communities today (Perlman 2010). As

Jailson de Souza e Silva – a scholar and activist on youth rights and favela improvements –

has observed, drug trafficking gangs operate by using low-income communities as their

bases for logistic support (de Souza e Silva and Urani 2002), and in doing so they disrupt

both the physical and social fabric of these communities. Sadly, the accompanying discourse

of favelas as other or marginal has evolved into viewing them as territories harbouring the

‘marginals’ – drug dealers and drug-trafficking gangs – i.e. as the source of the problem,

rather than the home of its most obvious victims (Perlman 2010). This dominant discourse

clearly fails to acknowledge that beyond the youth and residents of the favelas who are directly

exposed to and are primary victims of the drug trafficking phenomenon, there are multiple sta-

keholders – both nationally and internationally – who benefit from the continued operation of

drug gangs.

The educational prospects of children and young people growing up in the favelas today need

to be situated against the backdrop of this violent social context and the evolving discourse of

otherness that stigmatises and reinforces their social exclusion. The status quo of unequal edu-

cation, and the elusive formal pathways for mobility in the education or the job markets (Piccolo

2010) fuel a sense of desperation, hopelessness and an overall ‘crisis of future’ among young

people growing up in poor communities of urban Brazil today (Abramovay et al. 1999; de

Souza e Silva and Urani 2002). It is in this dynamic of low-income adolescents’ social exclusion

and educational inequality that the engagement of teachers as conduits of students’ social

capital needs to be explored and interpreted in urban Brazil.

Research methods

The overarching inquiry guiding the current research can be formulated as follows: how do tea-

chers engage in purposive actions to enhance the social capital of their students? Within this

broad research question, the study aimed to examine teacher engagements in the Relationship,

Resource, and Readiness domains of student social capital.

The study employed a qualitative research approach, using in-depth interviews with a purpo-

sive sample of school teachers in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The research was carried out in two



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public schools: one municipality-run middle school, and one state-run high school.1 Such a

choice ensured diversity in grade levels and government jurisdictions.

The municipal school was located in the North Central part of Rio de Janeiro in a vast

complex of slums and low-income communities collectively known as Complexo da Mare.

During the time of the fieldwork, the school had a combined student population of around

850, spread over two shifts (morning and afternoon). The state high school, in contrast, was

located in the upper middle class residential neighbourhood of Leblon in the southern zone

of the city, and drew its students primarily from the adjacent hillside favelas. The school ran

three shifts (morning, afternoon, and evening) and had a combined student population of

1,535 students at the time of the research.

After a four-month period of extensive observations and numerous informal conversations

with students, teachers, and staff in the two schools, eight educators were identified who

appeared to the researcher to demonstrate remarkable ability of engaging with their students

in and outside of classrooms as committed and caring adults. These eight educators were

selected from a pool of 12 teachers who taught 8th grade in the middle school, and 18 teachers

who were teaching 10th and 11th grades at the high school2 during the morning and afternoon

shifts. Table 1 summarises participating teachers’ backgrounds and affiliation.

Data from this select group of educators were collected using a combination of semi-struc-

tured interviews and in-depth conversations. Avoiding abstract notations of social capital, the

interviews and conversations explored how these educators were facilitating their students’

access to resources deemed vital for success in school and life. Each participant was interviewed

at least twice – with the first (semi-structured) interview lasting an hour and focusing on the

teachers’ own notions and reflections on their own roles in supporting their students. The

second interview was much more of a free-flowing conversation which sought to solicit

details on specific actions, activities, and strategies that the teachers have conceived and

carried out to support their students. Depending upon the scope of these activities and strategies,

Table 1: Background of teachers who participated in the study

Teacher’sname

Race (selfidentified)

Agerange

Schoolaffiliation

Subjecttaught

Years ofschool

teachingHighestdegree

Residenceneighbourhood

Regina Black

Mid-

40s Middle History 18 Undergraduate

Niteroi (mixed

income)

Andrei

White-

mixed

Late-

20s Middle

Physical

Ed. 4 Undergraduate

Niteroi (mixed

income)

Leonardo

White-

mixed

Mid-

30s Middle Music 7 Undergraduate

North Zone

(mixed income)

Gustavo

White-

mixed

Early-

30s Middle Geography 5 Masters

North Zone

(mixed income)

Ricardo Black

Early-

40s Middle Math 4 PhD

South Zone

(high income)

Maria

White-

mixed

Mid-

40s High

Social

Studies 14 Undergraduate

South Zone

(high income)

Victoria

White-

mixed

Mid-

40s High Sociology 12 Masters

South Zone

(high income)

Jefferson

White-

mixed

Early-

30s High

English,

Portuguese 8 Masters

South Zone

(high income)


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further conversations were held with certain teachers who were assuming prominent roles

within their schools to become strong advocates for their students.

Hereafter, these eight teachers are collective denoted as ‘agent teachers’ in this paper. Such a

qualifier is inspired by Stanton-Salazar’s important construct of Institutional Agents (Stanton-

Salazar 2011), but is somewhat distinct in its scope. Specifically, it is posited that psycho-social

(i.e. non-institutional) resources may constitute a critical component of relational capital, and

that alters without formal institutional affiliations could still act as important sources of rela-

tional support. In other words, to be ‘agents’ of social capital it is neither necessary nor suffi-

cient to be affiliated with an institution of power, or transmit resources that are institutional in

nature. The term agent teacher is thus a more generalised construct of teachers as conduits of

social capital for their students.

It must be reiterated that the purposefully selected group of educators interviewed in this

research represent a minority of school educators in Brazil’s public schools. Precisely

because these teachers are an exception to the norm, their voices and their stories – of rising

above and beyond core teaching-learning responsibilities, of emerging as critical enablers or

agents of social capital for their low-income students – deserve particular attention.

Findings and discussions

Relationship

The agent teachers had a remarkable capacity for developing authentic bonds of camaraderie

and trust with their students. The ability of agent teachers to insert themselves effortlessly

into the relational networks of their pupils was rooted in their appreciation of the fact that

every child came to school with differing backgrounds and learning needs.

Indeed, the agent teachers displayed a critical awareness about the challenges faced by their

low-income students. For example, middle school history teacher Regina (pseudonym used for

all) admitted that a number of students were disruptive in school, yet she approached the notion

of discipline with a keen understanding of her students’ needs:

“Many students come to school not to study, but to make friends and be with friends. They

are just hanging out. For them school is a place to make friends, not a place to learn.”

Instead of distancing herself from her students because of their lack of discipline, Regina

acknowledged their reality through a pedagogical lens. She viewed it as a challenge for her

and her colleagues to transform their students’ focuses on immediate gratification, or ‘the

now’, into motivations for longer-term goals.

A similar sense of empathy shaped middle school sports teacher Andrei’s interactions with

his students. Andrei approached his students with great respect and dignity and proactively

sought to build relationships with them, notwithstanding the challenges that surfaced in every-

day interactions:

“We can understand why kids are fighting. Aggressiveness is a form of expression – kids

often see this violence at home or in communities. We can break the barrier [between

teachers and students] by sharing their reality. Sometimes an intense moment can bring

us together; intense moments could give us an opportunity to come closer.”

Andrei recalled such an intense moment:

“We lost a game [in the city competition], I could not sleep, and we were all sad in the

team. We shared that. Now we are friends.”



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In other words, agent teachers like Andrei had the ability to transform seemingly difficult situ-

ations, including failure, into strengthened relational bonds with students.

Not only did the agent teachers exhibit a critical consciousness about their student’s realities,

but also they were keen observers of some of their colleagues’ attitudes toward impoverished

students. Music teacher Leonardo commented that while teachers may be approaching their

classroom teaching with sincerity, outside the school, a teacher might view a student through

the stereotype of a favelado who is doomed to fail. According to Gustavo, such a negative

view resulted from the teachers’ own teaching philosophy and life outlooks that were out of

step with reality:

“There is a lot of apathy among teachers – they are doing hours, but are they really think-

ing about their children’s realities and their futures in this society?”

Like their counterparts in the municipal school, agent teachers in the state school displayed a

great degree of critical awareness – even outrage – about the ways the education system in

Brazil reinforced the social stigma associated with public school students. Concurrently with

this study, at issue was the policy that public high school students could only enter or leave

the school premises at the beginning or end of the school day. The rest of the time, including

during their recess, they remained locked inside the school; they needed parental authorisation

to leave the school premises during the school day. However, students from private schools

could freely go in and out of their schools. According to Maria and Victoria, social studies tea-

chers in the state high school, this policy was a stark reminder to adolescents in public schools

that they were different from the wealthier students who go to private schools and that they

could not be trusted. To Maria, this was a profound display of discrimination and disrespect:

“The kids from private schools can get out during their break – walk over to the store and

buy a cup of coffee and candy. But our kids cannot. How humiliating is that to be locked in

when you are 15 and other 15-year-olds can do that, but you cannot?”

But the agent teachers did not merely observe the everyday humiliations and disadvantages

faced by their students; they allowed their critical awareness to inform their teaching strategies.

By systematically engaging her students to work in group projects, Maria created new avenues

for them to share and ‘locate’ each other. She wanted to celebrate the fact that, in spite of

income poverty, her students came with rich and diverse real-life experience: some already vol-

unteered for NGOs, others worked part time in menial jobs to support their families. Maria’s

approach of letting students debate and discuss lesson materials in class thus prompted a new

avenue of rich interaction – something that would not have been possible without Maria’s

choice of a discussion-based participatory learning strategy (not commonly practised in

schools in Brazil). Such purposive pedagogies, rooted in critical awareness of privilege and vul-

nerabilities, enabled Maria to develop new and meaningful contexts of relationship building

among her students.

It was noted earlier that while the state school was located in an upscale neighbourhood, its

students primarily came from the two nearby favelas – Rocinha and Vidigal. As someone who

had previously worked in a state school located inside the large and notorious favela called

Rocinha in the adjacent hills, English and Portuguese language teacher Denilson had some

insightful observations regarding the way students residing in favelas who attend a public

school in the wealthy neighbourhood might feel or act:

“Here they [students] feel that they are the ‘foreigners’, the teachers are at home. So there

is good discipline in the classroom, but they put graffiti on the school walls – because

they are in someone else’s home. But in Rocinha they do not put graffiti – it is their


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‘home’ – the school is clean and the local drug bosses control that there is no damage to

the school. But there is no discipline there in the class – there the teacher is ‘foreigner’

invading their space.”

This awareness and ability to situate oneself in relation to one’s students, often in reversing

symbolic roles, enabled agent teachers such as Denilson to establish authentic relational

bonds with their students.

Resources

In order to understand the role of teachers as social capital agents in the Resources domain, it is

imperative to consider their own social statuses (Stanton-Salazar 2011), which are often clear

correlates of teachers’ neighbourhoods of residence.

Most of the municipal schoolteachers lived in lower middle class neighbourhoods in the

northern part of the city, not far from the school itself. In contrast, almost all the agent teachers

in the state school lived in the middle-income residential neighbourhoods of the south side.

However, the middle school’s agent teachers’ limited access to elite or upper middle class

social and cultural capital in their own communities did not prevent them from finding effective

mechanisms to become reservoirs of critical resources – institutional as well as psychosocial –

for their students.

One such mechanism was to share their own humble backgrounds with students and act as

strong role models. That was the case with middle school history teacher Regina, who is an

Afro-Brazilian. Regina brought a strong sense of identity to her work and used her own story

as an example to inspire her students: “I am a woman, a black woman in Brazil who went to

public school like you. If I can make it, so can you.” Regina was keenly aware of the fact

that students in her school, who lived in the favelas, could develop low self-esteem since

society was reinforcing a negative message to them in every possible social encounter. To

counter that damaging effect, Regina championed her students’ self-esteem through the

mantra, “You can; you are good.’

Indeed, reinforcing ‘you can’ emerged as a recurrent strategy among the agent teachers.

Middle school music teacher Leonardo observed the special responsibility that public school

teachers had in Rio de Janeiro to become role models:

“Teachers can talk about their lives and experiences, that they could come from poor

humble backgrounds as well and become a professional, a college graduate, a teacher.”

In a similar vein, part-time mathematics teacher Ricardo conveyed his success story as an Afro-

Brazilian PhD to his pupils, which was a message with great significance in a society where

Afro-Brazilians remain severely underrepresented in higher education.

Other agent teachers demonstrated the ability of critical self-reflection to situate the relative

privileges they (and their own children) enjoyed vis-a-vis their low-income pupils in school.

They were not only keenly aware of their relative standing in the social class, but also they

allowed that awareness to inform their actions to become sources of support for their students.

Discussing the importance of teachers as role models for students from a social class

perspective, Leonardo observed: “Teachers are the people they (students) know, people who

do not live in the favela.”

Agent teachers were also intentional about making their students feel “respected”. This came

out most clearly in words of Maria: “We (teachers) always have the choice of treating the kids

with respect.” Maria’s respect for students’ dignity was rooted in her strong faith in the capacity

and potential of every student: “When kids are given opportunity, they do great.”



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Maria’s colleague Victoria, the other social studies teacher at the state school, was taking

direct initiatives to act as an advocate for her students outside the classroom. Victoria men-

tioned the case of a student who had passed the federally administered school leaving exams

(ENEM) but had certain inconsistencies on her graduation certificate. The student had no

knowledge of how to rectify the error, so Victoria intervened on her behalf when the student

approached her (as opposed to approaching the school administration!). Victoria wrote to the

authorities and, after repeated communications, the error on the student’s record was addressed

and the student was able to receive a passing mark on her certificate. In Victoria’s action, one

sees a caring adult who acts as a conduit to institutional resources for her low-income student,

resources that are routinely accessed by middle class parents. Indeed, both Maria’s and

Victoria’s words and actions demonstrate that teachers can act as significant sources of psycho-

social and institutional support for students, even when they might be constrained by lack of

institutional resources. Perhaps the most acute resource limitation was the low teacher salary

in Brazilian public schools. The issue of poor compensation (and accompanying low morale)

was starkly captured in Denilson’s words:

“Teachers are often doing three jobs to pay their rent and bills; and yet they can never come

to a coffee shop (like this) inside a bookstore next to their school.”

For his colleague Victoria, the financial hardships of teachers also translated into broader con-

sequential impacts for their students:

“It is unreal to expect teachers to transmit cultural capital to their students and provide

them with rich cultural experience because rarely they (teachers) have opportunities to

have such experiences themselves.”

Victoria also made a poignant observations that the perennial lack of resources in school was

never met with any outrage, shock, or questioning among the majority of her colleagues: “We

are always trying to manage, but why not claim what is legitimate?”

As such, actions of agent teachers demonstrate that critical support entails guidance in navigat-

ing complexities of intra-institutional dynamics, as well to linking to extra-institutional resources.

Readiness

While there was no dedicated activity of agent teachers that could qualify as developing stu-

dents’ networking skills, there were some powerful examples of project-based learning and

critical pedagogy that expanded the students’ social competence and repertoire of analytical

skills for navigating the field of opportunity structures. One such example was the case of a

school journal in the municipal school, which was the brainchild of geography teacher Gustavo.

As part of the journal project, Gustavo organised a series of brainstorming and writing ses-

sions with the students and other interested teachers. According to Gustavo, the exercise of

creating the journal was an act of developing self-esteem and also an expression of freedom:

“The students can do what they want – bring their own ideas, interests and observations to

the journal.” More than anything else, the project enabled the students to discuss and describe

their reality with a critical perspective and gave them a voice for change.

From a mere bulletin board poster on the hallway, Gustavo had transformed the school’s

student journal into a space for critical inquiry. By making the students aware of the intercon-

nectedness of their lives with the rest of their fragmented city and the rest of the world, the

journal enhanced their ability to more effectively interface with the unfamiliar other, whether

the unfamiliar other is close by or far away. The journal was aptly named “The world is not

that far”. This capacity to conceptualise one’s trajectory of co-dependence with others was


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an example of an imagined social network that made students aware of new choices for expand-

ing their social universe.

In a similar vein, Gustavo’s colleague and maths teacher Ricardo made the constant and delib-

erate effort to demonstrate to his students that all classroom activities were linked: “Students need

to understand that work they do in class is linked to their success in life and in work in future.”

Thus, Ricardo enhanced his students’ success orientation by imagining and charting new life

pathways with them. Such deliberate pedagogical acts of the agent teachers like Gustavo and

Ricardo transformed the traditional classroom interactions into a readiness-enhancing exchange.

Like their counterparts in the municipal middle school, the agent teachers in the state high

school were also quietly preparing their students with skills and capacities needed to navigate

the complexities of career and educational pathways. Victoria brought her own passion and

knowledge of sociology into her 10th and 11th grade classrooms. She was the first teacher in

the high school to organise trips to concerts in the grand municipal theatre and the opera

house in the centre of Rio. In her own courses, she allowed students to take open-book

exams. She felt that students of public school were not exposed to lessons in which they had

to locate information on their own, a practice widely acceptable in elite private schools.

While there were important steps towards improving the critical thinking skills and social

competence of students by individual teachers, Victoria also observed that there was a systemic

lack of serious critical material in the high school curricula that could enable students to reflect

upon their own reality:

“We have to give theory to make them understand; it is important for them (students) to

understand how in our society we organise, they must understand how politics works,

and they must also understand how they can change things. We have to tell them, make

them believe ‘you can’ (‘voce pode’).”

Needless to say, in a city that is divided into favela and asphalt, where even among the lower

middle class parents there is an overwhelming disregard for public schools, teachers with good

intentions face enormous structural obstacles to act as empowering social capital agents for their

low-income students. However, the agent teachers were not necessarily discouraged by the

sheer lack of physical resources at their disposal; instead, they employed ever-innovative strat-

egies to enhance the strategic orientation and social competence of their students. Two years

prior, Maria and English teacher Denilson had organised a school-wide event called Semana

da Cultura (Culture Week). During this weeklong event, panels were organised with invited

speakers from different professions. The students also had to prepare and display group exhibits

that were related to a subject in their curriculum – history, science, social studies, etc. – in the

school hallways. There were also interactive walks around the neighbourhood in which students

had to go out and explore the school neighbourhood and its resources. The idea was to empha-

sise the importance of claiming the urban public space which low-income students often felt

intimidated to access in an elite neighbourhood. The objective of the event was not only for stu-

dents to learn new content and professional career information, but also to critically think about

their own options for the future.

Time and again, the ability of agent teachers to truly appreciate where their students were

coming from enabled them to enhance their students’ capacities of social interactions.

Acknowledging the sublime hostility displayed by the surrounding elite neighbourhood to

the impoverished students of the high school, Denilson reiterated his counsel to his students:

“Here they [students] know that they are constantly being watched and judged for every

move. Something I say at the beginning of my class ‘you are being watched, so you

have a bigger responsibility that no one can find a reason to say that you are bad. You



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have a responsibility here to protect your dignity because you are constantly watched in

this neighbourhood’.”

The need for, and notion of, Readiness thus remained a function of social space. This was true

not only for the students, but also for their teachers.

Conclusion

The account from two under-resourced schools in Brazil demonstrates that individual teachers

do take great initiative to transform the nature of their relationships with students into sources of

critical support. However, schools and teachers are only a part of the broader social relational

universe of adolescents; the family remains the proximal site through which all children and

youth access social resources and networks. In his keenly observant analysis, scholar-activist

Jailson de Souza Silva (2003) depicts life trajectories of youth who made it to college from

the communities of Mare. While Jailson’s portraits demonstrate that families, even in their

most struggling circumstances, try to encourage educational advancement of their more acade-

mically adept children, they also demonstrate the limits of such resourcefulness in overcoming

the structural barriers and existential threats that permeate life in the favelas. Throughout,

Jailson emphasises that having “institutional knowledge” (and understanding the rules of the

game) is critical for social mobility of poor children in the favelas; and it is in this realm

that teachers could play a significant role. Indeed, the notion of teachers imparting and decon-

structing ‘institutional knowledge’ resonates well with the accounts of Jailson’s protagonists –

each of whom acknowledges mentorship from specific teachers from their school days (de

Souza e Silva 2003). Clearly, familial social capital is indispensable. At the same time, the

fact that only some and not all siblings make it to college in Jailson Silva’s account, is a testi-

mony to the significance of young people’s extra-familial network dynamics. Put differently,

both family members and school adults could act as sources of social capital for young

people; and the alignment and synergy between the efforts of these two constituents would

be critical in unlocking adolescents’ agency and empowerment.

Significantly, the ability of teachers to act as social capital agents and expand the relational uni-

verse of their students could be greatly constrained by the governance structures of the education

system they operate in, and by the limits of their own social capital. In the case of Rio de Janeiro,

the rules of engagement for public schools with other parts of the civil sector gave little room for

autonomous decision and independent initiatives for school leaders in particular, and teachers in

general. The public education bureaucracy was rather prescriptive in almost every aspect of the

school’s management decisions, thereby restricting the teachers’ abilities to institute processes

and practices to enrich and enhance the Relationships, Resources, and Readiness of their students.

In other words, while personal values are determinants of a school educator’s aspiration and

ability to manifest as an institutional agent, the overwhelming significance of the broader insti-

tutional landscape where s/he operates cannot be denied. Indeed, the discourse of social capital

in the social reproduction paradigm is one of the incessant interplays between agency and struc-

ture (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). Hence, the institutional dimensions of public education,

with its normative structures and governance protocols, need to be re-imagined so as to

enable educators to empower their students.

While the exact scope of an enabling institutional environment would vary from local con-

ditions and historicity, any systemic approach towards empowering teachers as social capital

agents needs a strong consciousness building component in which critical reflection and coura-

geous self-articulation about power, privilege, and poverty in one’s societal ecosystem is at the

foundation. Just as expert teachers are widely called upon to train their colleagues on content


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area pedagogy, demonstrated agent teachers could be supported to form the core of a support

and training system for their peers to become agents of social capital. A structured teacher

induction programme that enables educators to come together and explore the social reality

of their students with informed, compassionate, and critical peer advisors will go a long way

in changing the mindset of a vast majority of teachers in under-resourced schools in Brazil.

In addition, in-service professional development channels for the teachers could be recali-

brated so as to present teachers with opportunities to expand and enrich their own portfolios

of relational resources. A re-imagined professional development program could demonstrate

good practices of skilfully employing pedagogical repertoires to prepare socio-economically

disadvantaged students within each of the 3R domains to compete and succeed in an unequal

society. Such a program could also demonstrate the networking strategies that the agent tea-

chers seem to have employed effectively to enhance their own social capital.

Even when systemic inertia might prevent any rapid transformation of the status quo for

public education at large, governance norms and policies at the school level could encourage

more educators to experiment with social capital-enhancing strategies such as Gustavo’s

school journal project or Maria and Denilson’s culture week. With adequate support, release

time from other administrative responsibilities, and with an official validation of these efforts

as authentic educational and developmental enrichments, teachers will be more capable of

engaging in social-capital enhancing strategies.

Ultimately, the story of a few inspired teachers in under-resourced public schools in Brazil

who have found innovative ways to enhance their students’ social capital says little about the

systemic impact of these extraordinary individuals. However, the approaches they employ to

engage their students through content and pedagogy, and the sensibilities they embody in appre-

ciating the scope of exclusionary barriers their students encounter in everyday life, shed light on

how their exemplary practices could be transformed into norms of teacher conduct with regards

to low-income students in Brazil and in other international contexts.

Notes

1. At the time of the research, middle schools comprised grades 1 through 8, while high schools offered

grades 9 through 11. Currently, middle school goes up to 9th grade, and high school comprises grades

10 through to 12.

2. A teachers’ union strike in the state-operated high schools in Rio de Janeiro during the time of the field-

work resulted in fewer high school teachers present in the school regularly. The numbers presented here

do not reflect the total number of teachers employed; only those who continued to come to school and

deliver lessons during the months of the strike.

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The author

Tamo Chattopadhay is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Institute for Educational Initiatives, University

of Notre Dame. A Faculty Fellow at Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies,

Dr Chattopadhay’s teaching and research interests include adolescent socialisation, youth entrepreneurship,

and linkages between post-primary education and social development. ,[email protected].


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Documents

Teachers as social capital agents: an exploratory study from Brazil