Individualización y exclusión. La transición a la secundaria en el centro de Madrid

Abstract

Teenagers in transition between primary and compulsory secondary education show a quick integration in the new relational network but also the hard adaptation to a new institutional environment, more academic and selective, in which expositional classes and study at home become hegemonic. Based on a survey and interviews to students and teachers in the first degree of secondary education (7th degree at all), from five schools located in Madrid City Center, current trends on this transition are sketched, in order to discuss the meaning of this intermediary stage, in the different ways it is being appropriated. This analysis enables to confirm that educational field, including in its elementary and universal stages, is still challenged by massive school failure, located on the more disadvantaged segments of society, mostly nowadays immigrants from poor countries. This research has also shown that transition to secondary school is a socially complex moment, in which the individualization process becomes more intense, emerging coherent identity projects lying on higher levels of autonomy, at the same time that institutional pressures for the exclusion of part of the students are reinforced.