Alternation Rural Schools and Co-management. A Sociolinguistic and Ethnographic Framework to Analyzing Decision Making at the Board

ABSTRACT We present a sociolinguistic and ethnographic analysis of interactions taking place at the Board of a rural school run by the pedagogy of alternance model. The members of the Board are the students´ family, teachers, the principal and alumni, who meet in order to make decisions together. In as much as these members occupy different and differential positions in the school, their material and symbolic resources are diverse. Our analysis shows that the processes entailed in making decisions relate not only to the specific issues brought to discussion but also to several other situations connected to the way in which the members of the rural community live. Therefore, making decisions at the Board involves developing a specific communicative competence related to learning to listen, ponder alternatives, engage in debate, and follow up with the decision taken as a collective.