Discursive Construction of Meanings around the Possibilities of the Curriculum from the Voices of Students

ABSTRACT This qualitative study aims to analyze the discursive construction of meanings around the possibilities of the curriculum from the voices of the students. The analysis adopts a perspective that integrates the contributions from the Appraisal Model as well as the strategy categories and social actors representation taken from the Critical Discourse Studies. The corpus is made up of three focus groups in public schools. Regarding the analysis procedures, two phases are considered. A first descriptive phase comprises a microanalysis of resources with which the students build their perspective. In the second phase, alignment and misalignment are analyzed as social practices in relation to the possibilities of the school curriculum. Findings show that students propose their own suggestions of changes and use evaluative prosodies. They work to legitimize motivational, playful, creative classes, in charge of experts and to delegitimize classes with passive methodologies and with little affectionate and motivated inspectors. The legitimation strategies make up macrostrategies of transformation of the status. The social actors are represented by means of: activation, functionalization and authorization.