Upper-Secondary Students’ Attendance. Contributions of an Ethnographic Research in Mexico City

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the problem of student class attendance at the upper secondary level. The theme becomes fundamental in times of compulsory Upper Secondary Education (since 2012 in Mexico), given its influence on the setting of specific processes of approval, disapproval, and recovery. The results presented derive from an ethnographic research, carried out between 2014 and 2016, about the accreditation of subjects in daily school life in a campus of Colegio de Bachilleres in Mexico City. The fieldwork consisted of observations, informal conversations and semi-structured interviews (group and individual) with students and other subjects who participate in daily school life. Among the contributions of the ethnographic approach, the possibility of rescue the diversity of voices (students, teachers, coordinators) and the negotiation and redefinition processes of different criteria among which class attendance stands out that shape the accreditation of subjects at the level of daily school life. I argue that the school accreditation –and the criteria that configure it is influenced by current educational policies to improve the indexes considering access, permanence, and approval in institutions of upper secondary level. That administrative mandate causes tensions at the level of the practices and senses that construct the subject in everyday school life. Although the results are not intended to be quantitatively generalizable, they can be retrieved on the generation of proposals aimed at Upper Secondary Education, which recover the expectations, practices, and senses of its protagonists.