Abstract:

In the metropolitan area of Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil, are reproduced, albeit with their own characteristics and dimensions, the problems and challenges that are typical to all large urban agglomerations in the country. Education and basic education is one of them. The metropolitan problematic is, therefore, extensive and complex and covers the new generation of Brazilian metropolises. Thus, this study shares the current concern of the academic community and official agencies, about a common theme, that is, education understood as one of the essential forces for development within the framework of participative action of the individuals who are directly concerned by it - teachers researchers, parents and official agencies. In this sense the analytical effort is focused on basic education, whose results have the aim of contributing to the improvement of the quality of basic education leading to better school performance.

In this context, this study identifies the inequalities that exist in the environments where the educational social life of basic education students of the state schools of the municipalities from the metropolitan area of Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, takes place.

The theoretical reference comes from Pierre Bourdieu habitus concept, addressing the school environment as a space where the educational social life of the students takes place and as a space able to generate in the students a willingness to study.

In this sense, through a set of variables related to the environments of the educational social life and grouped under four dimensions (context, institutional, teaching-learning and educational), the aim of this article is to perform a comparative analysis between the years 2000 and 2010 to show, through the construction of typologies, the inequalities that exist in the environments where the educational social life of the students of the state schools of the municipalities of the metropolitan area of Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, takes place.

School census data were used from the years 2000 and 2010 for obtaining the variables relating to the school environments. We used the method Grade of Membership - GoM to operationalize the typologies that characterise those inequalities. The results are presented for the schools of each one of the municipalities of the metropolitan area of Natal showing three typologies that characterise the inequalities of the environments where the educational social life of the students takes place: i) adverse environment; ii) environment with deficits; iii) good environment. Moreover, these results would show the quality of the environment of the schools analysed to enable a better approach to the problems associated with the existing inequalities, allowing a broader view, according to their needs and deficiencies, given that they would be working to create a willingness to study in the students.

Keywords:

habitus of study, School, School environment