Situations experienced and strategies developed by basic education teachers regarding social inequality in education

Abstract

This article aims to understand how Basic Education teachers perceive social inequality in education. Ten teachers from public schools participated in this qualitative, exploratory research. The information was obtained from an online questionnaire containing closed and open questions. The answers to two of the three open questions of the questionnaire were considered in this article. The Discursive Textual Analysis was chosen as an analytical method, based on the following a priori categories: i) situations experienced by teachers regarding social inequality in the school context; and ii) strategies developed by teachers to alleviate the implications of social inequality in education. The results have pointed out that teachers perceive such inequality through material deprivation and issues related to demotivation and family reality. As to the strategies used by teachers to mitigate this phenomenon, student welcoming actions and didactic-methodological adaptation are highlighted. The conclusions have shown the need for sensitive behavior on the part of teachers to identify the phenomenon and create alternatives to promote learning in an egalitarian manner.