Integrated education in the city: processes of forming educational territories in the Belo Horizonte experience, Brazil

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between school, the neighborhood and the city within the Programa Escola Integrada (PEI) (Integrated School Program), the full-time education experience of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. An ethnographic research experience involving a group of adolescents and educators taking part in the program revealed that establishing educational territories is closely related to the students’ connection with the neighborhood, as well as with the city’s inherent power relations. These elements, which form the basis of the educational territory, have enabled collective actions to be developed through the school, with the improvement of spaces in the community, and have provided an educational process that comes closer to students’ daily lives.