The reasons for absence of association between success at school and social capital in the Judith Bezerra de Melo School - Natal/RN

Abstract

This paper aims to conduct a critical analysis of the unusual empirical findings of a research on the nature of the links between school success and social capital, carried out in the school Escola Estadual Professora Judith Bezerra de Melo located in the metropolitan region of Natal. Among the research conclusions, one is indeed surprising:  the statement that there would be no association between the good performance of the students in Portuguese Language and the social capital existing in their personal networks. In view of this, the theoretical and methodological framework of social networks analysis was used to assess the degree of association between social capital and school success. Results point out that: school success depends on the nature of the student's relationship with knowledge; the social capital metrics may be insufficient to fully capture the association between those two variables; the singularity, the diversity, the uncertainty, the unexpected trajectories that emerge from the field of individualizing possibilities woven by the connections between space and personal networks signal certain sociospatial factors that determine and singularize the different forms of sociability; the researches concerning the application of the educational principles of the new pedagogy in some European countries reveal the pedagogy of effort and the quality of the teacher as the main factors of school success.