School-community relationships and convivencia. An ethnographic study of conflict management, inclusion and participation in two Mexican primary schools
In Mexico, as in other Latin American countries, school relationships –crucial for ensuring the right to education— are framed under the concept of school convivencia. This Spanish language term refers to the experiences of living together and learning to live together. In Mexico the need to improve convivencia has gone hand in hand with concerns about the need to increase citizen protection and reduce social violence. Educational policies foster the role of schools in this regard, but schools are often perceived as victims of an external harsh context that hinders the possibility of transformation. The ethnographic research here presented is aimed to analyse the relationships between two Mexican schools and their local communities, particularly in terms of families’ engagement, and the implications of such relationships for school convivencia. Data from participant observations, interviews and surveys was analysed using grounded theory oriented coding and situational analysis. The notion of convivencia was theoretically developed using a distinction between restrictive and comprehensive approaches. School practices were examined through an analytical scheme based on explicit and tacit convivencia practices, highlighting processes of conflict management, inclusion and participation. The main findings show, firstly, a restrictive understanding of school convivencia in both the educational policy and in the schools’ explicitly recognized work on convivencia, which is based on modifying students’ individual wrong behaviour. Secondly, that a wider more comprehensive approach which includes other types of actors and relationships is needed to explain and intervene in school convivencia. Finally, four modes –alliance, confrontation, detachment, collaboration- are presented as forms to understand convivencia patterns between families and schools. These modes aid to explain how constructions around the “appropriate” family and the “appropriate” involvement –in relation especially to the notion of “dysfunctional families”— shape specific patterns of relationships that contribute to the exclusion of the schools’ most vulnerable population
