Abstract:

The arrival of a secondary education center with the last two baccalaureate courses has been an important phenomenon in a remote rural area. 40 years later, a set of municipalities of two regions in this remote rural area have a new center where their youngsters can finish the whole secondary education. This opens up new educational and social perspectives that go beyond just pedagogical and educational or closely linked to the educational center. Since students from two different regions attend classes, this iniative was possible for the institutional agreement between the two regions involved.

This relocation of their teenage lives, closer to their families, contains a series of changes that can be important in the perceptions of life in the rural environment, their immediate projects or in the medium to long term. Also, of course, in family negotiations.

In this sense, the role of the educational center can be fundamental. It started as a pilot program, being the only IES shared between autonomous communities, so is a challenge for the entire educational community involved. The uniqueness of experience raises, in fact, many questions from any educational, researcher who is minimally interested in the territory, in the rural school, in the development and sustainability of rural areas, in the future of young people ...

This research approaches to how mayors of the involved municipalities or the principal of the secondary school center think about this phenomenon. It can not be a thrilling phenomenon to observe and with which to understand a series of situations, speeches, ideologies, attitudes, construction of identities ... incardinated at a significant time (adolescence), in a critical demographic environment (rural mountain) and with horizons of the future little hopeful (precariousness). Furthermore, these institutional actors perceptions are crucial when these municipalities are from two different regions.

The research we propose is qualitative. The exploration of the discourses about education or identity demands a design that allows to capture the changes in the perceptions, appraisals and actions of these key agents. Inteviews have been carried out exploring main discourses about the significance of the implementation of the last two years of Seconday School.

The general objective of the research is to analyze the role of the municipalities and the center as a possible vector of discursive change in a rural and border environment. And also analyze how this new inter-regional center affects the perception of institutional agents about rurality, institutional relationships, employability opportunities in a critical demographic area.

Keywords:

Secondary school, institutional perceptions, rural education, sociology.