Educação com ênfase internacional: uma investigação sobre a relação entre globalização, educação e classe social

Abstract

This doctoral thesis presents the results of research about education and social class conducted with educational leaders from private schools in the city of São Paulo. The work starts from the perspectives of education and the social sciences and proposes a debate on the consciousness-raising about globalization and related themes as they apply to the viewpoints of private schools that offer an internationally focused education. The research explored the literature relating to diverse aspects of globalization and neoliberalism. This made it possible to focus on topics about the relationship between education and these themes. The research started from the hypothesis that the growth of internationally focused education deals with more than just a simple desire to raise the next generation to be fluent in two languages. It also incorporates a belief that in the future being bilingual will differentiate those students from the others, giving them a point of distinction from other social classes. In addition, the research postulates that directors of schools that serve the upper middle class espouse neoliberal thinking and that this affects their leadership of their private schools. The data encountered during the interviews demonstrate evidence about lifestyle and class fractions, but the directors showed little attention to possibilities for distinction. The work sought its theoretical references in the bibliographical review of research into elite education, specifically those related to the society-school relationship, the varied aspects of globalization and education, in particular questions related to mobility, language, and the effects of globalization on the population, and also neoliberal thought. This foundation served to sustain an analysis of the semistructured interviews with three school administrators whose schools serve the upper middle class. The work of Burbules and Torres (2004), Dale (2004), and Harvey (2005) influenced understandings of globalization from various perspectives; Harvey (2014), Afonso (2003), Chaui (2014), and Brown (2015, 2019) sustained a the discussion of neoliberal thought; the research of Almeida (2002), Cattani (2019), and Nogueira (1998, 2002, 2010, 2015, 2021) fed the discussion of privileged classes and the education of their children; and the work of Bourdieu (2004, 2006, 2011, 2017) sustained the discus