From the trenches: Pluralism, estructuration and identity construction in Uruguayan highschool students

Interaction and conflict between adults and youngsters inside the institutions of education, mostly during the secondary, has been a usual object of study on behalf of Psychologists and Sociologists around the world. One of the most relevant and influential productions in this field is Paul Willis’ Learning to Labor, which was followed by an important number of studies of the same kind. The article takes Willis’ approach as the point of departure of a discuss that takes also into consideration two of the main concepts of today’s Sociology, as the ideas of structure and action (Giddens) and, more recently, Margaret Archer’s idea of the “internal conversation”. From there, the article analyses the forms in which Uruguayan high school students interact with the adults in the context of the weakening of the educative rules inside schools. From the methodological point of view, the article is based on several series of interviews to secondary teachers and studentes, and on the direct observation of the life and social relations in Montevido´s high schools during the period 1991-2003.