Photographs in Discourse: The Functions of the School According to Senior High School Students

How do young people understand the functions of the school today? Such question has guided the investigation ‘The school and the configurations of contemporaneity: The voice of senior high school and elementary school students” (MCTI/CNPq/Universal 14/2014), which was carried out from 2015 to 2017 in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. This paper aims to discuss the results of a research involving the production of photographical images by students attending the last grade of High School. From studies by Sibilia (2012) and Masschelein & Simons (2014), the theoretical framework of this investigation includes the notion of discourse (FOUCAULT, 2002; 2012; 2015) besides the theory of photography (BARTHES, 1984; DUBOIS, 2012) and its potentialities in social and human sciences. The methodological design comprehends focus groups and photo elicitation (TORRE; MURPHY, 2015; BANKS, 2009; BANKS, 2001), from a qualitative perspective. The focus groups consisted of 55 students from two schools. In one of the meetings, after debating on the functions of the school, the students were asked to produce photographs with captions explaining the functions of the school today. From the enunciative visibilities and possibilities enabled by Foucauldian discourse analysis, the results have evidenced that the school performs pedagogical, political and social functions in contemporaneity, according to the young students. Although discipline and both time and space norms restrict the students’ capacities, they still mention the possibilities of expression and the meetings enabled by the school. The library and other living spaces were also pointed out as teaching and learning environments, and articulations between pedagogical and social functions by means of friendship were highlighted. The participants think it is important to provide hearing spaces to the students at school, and their creative, argumentative and questioning potential should be considered.