Secondary Spanish Teachers: Advances of a Research on Educational and Professional Guidance

This paper constitutes a first approach to a research project submitted to the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, in the call for research grants within the State Program of Research, Development and Innovation for funding corresponding to the State Program for the Promotion of Scientific and Technical Research, I + D + i.

Our goal is to present the progress of an ongoing research whose purpose is to analyse the social and cultural representations that influence teachers in the role and practice of counselling students, both educationally and professionally. It means to examine these social and cultural representations in order to identify guidance models deployed and practiced by teachers, according to the characteristics and socioeconomic and cultural conditions of the environment. So, with job opportunities, aspects such as the location and characteristics of schools, the social origin of the school population, its cultural capital and ethnic background, or gender ideology, become relevant in this analysis, due to its impact on the interaction between students and teachers and, consequently, in the construction of the valuations that teachers offers about students.

In this first approach to the phenomenon, we have chosen four autonomous regions: Balearic Islands, Basque Country, Andalusia, and Madrid to try to develop a typology of teachers and curriculum models, considering the existing socio-economic sectors in the Spanish territory.