METACOGNITIVE PROCESSES TO COPE WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES:
AN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
Prof. Dr. Carmen Lúcia Guimarães de Mattos (PRISMAS)
clgmattos@gmail.com
Prof. Dr. Sandra Maciel de Almeida (Fluminense Federal University – UFF)
sandramacieldealmeida@gmail.com
Prof. Dr. Luís Paulo Cruz Borges (State University of Rio de Janeiro - CAP/UERJ)
borgesluispaulo@yahoo.com.br
Summary
Metacognitive processes are the primary object of study of this chapter. It derived from a set of research
developed within 22 years in three distinct periods on time from 1999 to current in the General Department
of Social Educational Actions (DEGASE), an institution for “socio-educational rehabilitation” applying
"socio-educational measures" to juvenal delinquents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The primary participants are
the youngsters in conflict with the law, which are considered human agencies. It explores concepts of
metacognition, presents the research context, scope, settings, methods, questions, data collection tools,
analysis process, main categories, and a discussion with a glimpse of the results and recommendations
about the topic. The finds may inform professionals in the educational field about the use of metacognitive
strategies with youths with learning difficulties, especially among those in conflict with the law.
Keywords: Metacognition, Learning difficulties, Ethnographic research.
About Metacognition
The notion of metacognition is not recent new in education. But still not well developed and used in
practice, significantly to help students cope with their learning difficulties. Therefore, we intents to
emphasize the importance of this process and its potential educational applications in this chapter. We
start defining the term metacognition and the related categories associated with this process in which a
person thinks about their thinking strategies. Metacognition is an awareness of the strategy used to
elaborate and retain knowledge. Specific terminology is associated with the discussion of metacognition,
and it may be helpful to explain some of these terms:
Metacognition has been defined as general knowledge that learners use when they select and implement
learning strategies. In 1986 Scott G. Paris visited The University of Pennsylvania, explaining the lack of a
specific definition for this process. It has to do with peoples' awareness of their process of knowledge. He
also says that children experience less metacognition than adults, which many people had not known.
Others do not have it at all. He points out that it is a process transmitted, which suggests that it can be
taught.
Metacognitive experience is defined as "any conscious cognitive and affective experiences that
accompany and pertain to an intellectual enterprise" (Flavell, 1978 p. 166). While Metacognitive
Knowledge "is the segment of your (a child's, an adult 's) stored world knowledge that has to do with
people as cognitive creatures and with their diverse cognitive tasks, goals, actions, and experiences."
Flavell (1978, p.166) also defines metacognitive strategies as the resources people use to recognize and
improve their awareness of what is going on during the reading process. Monitoring strategies are the
processes of using thinking strategies with attention to the way they have been used. For instance: poor
readers cannot efficiently understand what they are reading. They are defined as adults who have not yet
acquired fifth-grade reading skills (Gambrell & Heathington, 1981; Johnston, 1985), while good readers
have efficient strategies to understand what they are reading.
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Researchers (Myers & Paris, 1978; Elias; Sigelman, & Danker-Brown, 1980; Flavell, 1978) emphasize
the value of thinking about thinking or the awareness of metacognitive knowledge and its importance in
the reading process. This approach has dominated the field of instructions about reading processes (Elias;
Sigelman, & Danker-Brown, 1980)
The definition of Metacognitive Experience is related to effective learning (Flavell,1978). It could
provide information about how a person progresses from lower learning ability levels to more advanced
stages. This relationship offers valuable insights to explain the development of the learning process and
suggests possible ways to redirect the educational instructional approach. Exploring peoples' learning
strategies discloses that this process is a socially constructed procedure and an individual and internal set
of structures. The study of metacognition will open a new perspective to explore the ways thinking
strategies can be best facilitated by the teaching process.
Most of the studies about metacognition have been with students. Few specific investigations have
explored the out-of-school context. Studies by Gambrell and Heathington (1981) and Johnston (1985)
have discussed adult learning reading difficulties. They compared poor readers with good readers at the
junior college level. They found that poor readers seemed unaware of reading strategies and perceived
reading as a decoding process. For example, these students think that for better reading, a person must
know how to spell very well. These findings are confirmed by the study of Paris & Meyers (1978),
showing that second graders readers, who perceived reading as an orthographic-verbal translation
problem rather than a meaning construction, had comprehension task difficulties. Compared to sixth
graders, they found that these young children seemed unaware of the skills necessary for good reading
and the strategies for monitoring comprehension. Johnston (1985) presents the case studies of three poor
adult readers. This research suggests that the "source of reading problems is a lack of strategies,
inadequate strategies and inappropriately generalized strategies (p. 154)."
When examining the comprehension and memory skills of good and poor fourth-grade readers, Paris &
Mayers (1978) found that poor readers may have decoded, rather than meaningful goals while reading.
Therefore, they are less accurate when monitoring their failures. This data matches with Flavell's studies
(1978).
Paris & Jacobs (1984) found that the development of reading awareness distinguishes beginning and
advanced readers. Poor readers often concentrate on decoding individual words and do not try to
construct the meaning of sentences. Young and poor readers seem less aware of the existence and value
of techniques for monitoring comprehension (Myers and Paris, 1978; Paris & Oka, 1986). Therefore,
young and poor readers may be grouped into a similar level of metacognitive awareness as having little
consciousness of their reading process.
Flavell's (1978) model of cognitive monitoring metacognitive strategies indicates that younger children
have limited knowledge of their cognitive thinking processes. This affects them in several ways, such as
their ability to communicate information, to use persuasive arguments, to understand oral instructions, to
master reading comprehension, to write, to learn languages or particular structures of their first language,
to memorize, to solve problems, to understand social events, and self-control of their learning processes.
The author delineated a model through which metacognitive awareness might be improved by
recognizing and using an interactive relation among these phenomena: (1) metacognitive knowledge; (2)
metacognitive experiences; (3) goals to achieve; and (4) actions or strategies.
Flavell (1978) demonstrated that by using metacognitive knowledge, a person could identify their
strategies. Defining the learning objectives and recognizing different kinds of learning goals enables a
person to manage and monitor the function of knowledge construction. And, by learning with specific
strategies, a person may become a better learner. He believes that the acquisition of metacognitive
knowledge facilitates the transfer of strategies from one activity to another by selecting, evaluating, and
recalling the appropriate strategy according to their goals. The author suggests that a person becomes
better able to select the right strategy through a wide variety of metacognitive experiences and guided
awareness.
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The studies cited also suggest that it might be possible to identify specific common categories of
metacognitive knowledge that facilitate general learning and explain why people cannot learn effectively
and whether and how one strategy builds to the next.
They point out that people generally did not think about monitoring the learning process and explained its
importance. For example, Flavell (1978) used a study by Elias, Sigelman & Danker-Brown (1980) with
developmentally disabled children that indicated that they learn how to use the same strategy later by
monitoring their strategies in other tasks. He also believes that it might be possible to teach strategies to
improve learning abilities. Sometimes, a person must be persuaded to use these strategies to incorporate
the belief that reading can help.
Myers and Paris's (1978) studies of metacognition indicate that reading consists of strategies relating
aspects of the reading to oral communication, constructing meanings; managing meaning; summarizing,
evaluating (monitoring) selected pieces of the reading, etc. The metacognitive practice facilitates students'
understanding of these questions about strategies: What are strategies for? How do strategies operate?
When should they be used? How do they affect your understanding?
Mayers and Paris (1978) examine the learning procedures and the conditioning aspects of the reading
process. They believe it is crucial to inform teachers and students about metacognitive processes because
students need to be persuaded to investigate and use reading strategies. The authors proposed a dialog as a
technique to mediate learning to read between students and teachers. They use metaphor and analogies to
stimulate motivation and better understand the monitoring and use strategies.
The reading trip metaphor suggested by Myers and Paris (1978) exemplifies how children can understand
the strategies. The reading trip requests learners to see the direction of the trip (direction of how to read)
and asks the children whether the direction is wrong and, if so, why? Are they close to the destination?
What were the goals of the reading activity, etc.? Their study was based on Vygotsky's (1978) ideas that
activities and tools are rich material sources for considering how people think. Mayers & Paris (1978)
affirm that the dialog creates a new atmosphere in the classroom. Students and teachers reported that they
learned much more about their thinking processes after an experience with metacognitive strategies.
Students revealed a feeling of anxiety when they were not able to understand. They explained that after
they learned metacognitive strategies, they found that they use different strategies to read in church, at
home, to themselves, for summarizing, telling stories, etc.
Paris concluded that the dynamic process created by analogy and metaphor, mediated by the dialog
process, can change the instructional process.
About the research
This book chapter presents research results which we believe is one of these rare moments that one can talk
about a real encounter where our research group was interested in developing studies about Metacognition
in a real school environment with the professionals from the General Department of Social Educational
Actions (DEGASE) an institution for “socio-educational rehabilitation” applying "socio-educational
measures" to juvenal delinquents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We were interested in collaborating between
our research group - Nucleus of Ethnography in Education (NetEdu) and the intuition educational
professionals, especially with teachers and pedagogical coordinators. Our goals were to understand the
youngsters' academic difficulties and eventually propose pedagogical measures to cope with those
problems. The institution demanded research that could clarify processes of construction of knowledge that
were typical of adolescents in conflict with the law.
Metacognition seems to bring a lot of possible answers to these demands, as is a qualitative framework in
studies about teaching/learning processes and cognition. Its concepts, conditions, and processes deserve
special attention for its real possibilities in developing an educational proposal. Our experience with
ethnographic studies about school failure between the date of our first research in 1984 indicated that one
of the best ways to obtain valuable results about mental processes is utilizing metacognitive strategies.
Therefore, with a population of juvenile youngsters, we directly observed their ways of dealing with
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educational situations and proceeded several instances of informal talks in "classrooms" to gain access to
their ways of thinking developed during activities proposed by their "instructor/teachers."
At the same time, it was clear to us that the "existent classroom" was only a micro-world within a larger
systemic complex one that influenced very much the behavior and the autonomy of those "teachers". They
were permanently checked by the strict structure imposed on them in this institution for youngsters in
conflict with the law.
Aware of our limitations, we tried to understand educational characteristics within each of the sixteen
unities, which composes the complex of DEGASE institution, particularly the "classroom" and the
interaction that occurred within them as a “whole” that surrounded daily pedagogical practices. Data were
analyzed within this framework. We are also aware that the image we project here represents only one part
of the actual situation. It has value for its possibilities for transformation of the institution and marked a
particular moment of observation during data collection. Life in this institution is always full of unexpected
events, like the constant administrative changes in personnel and radical structure changes as far as
disciplinary measures, for example, or even constructions of buildings that demand re-allocating the
"interns" during those periods we observed. These changes have, for sure, impacts on internal dynamics
that sometimes cannot be felt during the research process.
On the one hand, changes in those periods can reflect a genuine interest by the State to serve these
youngsters better and better respond to Law for Children and Adolescents ECA (1990). Still, on the other
hand, it can also mean a political measure distant from a real worry about better results, making more
difficult the task of designing an educational or institutional profile, as significant changes disguise local
initiatives and modify programmed activities every day. We view the situation was described in the research
report volumes and in small size in the chapter as significant but difficult to us as researchers.
The subjects
We considered primary participants and subjects of our research the youths in conflict with the law,
interns in DEGASE’s unities during the periods of October 1999 to October 2002; January 2011 to
December 2012, and from January 2019 to current. We refuse to see them as “deprived of freedom” or
“prisoners” and, we prefer to call them “students or youngsters” as to us they are “human agency” of the
information since our primary interest is related to their cognitive processes and not their socio profiles as
juvenile delinquents. Nevertheless, we are aware of the implication of our ways of perceiving them.
The secondary participants and social actors of the research are teachers, instructors, educational agents,
psychologists, pedagogical coordinators, discipline agents, directors, and all people we have contact
during those periods inside the DEGASE as well as people from outside, judges, lawyers, professors, and
professionals from the university, etc. We don’t have the exact number the compose the universe of
participants, but it was around three thousand.
Methods and instruments
Patton (1986) considers that hermeneutics is the most common tradition in human sciences research. He
considers that people act according to their beliefs, perceptions, feelings, values, and their behavior always
means something that is not necessarily known immediately, needs to be revealed. This author believes
three characteristics are essential in a qualitative study: holistic perception, inductive approach, and
naturalistic investigation. The holistic perception means that one can only understand the meaning of a
behavior or an event according to understanding the relations that emerge in a specific context. The
inductive approach deals with the researcher as a free observer, dealing with hers/his own interests during
the research process, especially during data collection and analysis. And the naturalistic investigation states
that the researcher's intervention in the context must be reduced to a minimum.
Mattos (2002) added that hermeneutics brings to the picture that the researcher is the main instrument of
investigation and needs to have close and direct contact with the field. She argued that the sole nature of
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qualitative research is a detailed description of events, situational contextualization, people's involvement,
interactions, sensible behaviors, ethnographic attitude (Fagundes, 2017), detailed documented the voices
of the subjects, documents, case histories, among other. In our research, we managed to fulfill those criteria
and the preoccupation in understanding the various mechanisms that our subjects, youngsters in conflict
with the law, developed to cope with learning difficulties.
We characterize our research method as ethnographic. Even though we understand some of the lived
situations as limiting the scope of specific ethnographic procedures, such as the situation surrounding
youngsters' interns has specific difficulties that do not allow “strangers” to be part of the routines claimed
as for security reasons. For analytical purposes, we view the institution as a totality as the macro
ethnographic context while the "classrooms" are micro (Mattos, 2009)
Erickson (1983) states four tendencies in ethnography in education: to make sure the references and points
of view taken for interpretation are more explicit, to make use of microethnography, to involve teachers as
collaborators with the research process, and make use of interaction using computers, as a source to
exchange of information. We use narrative vignettes (Mattos, 2009) to describe the narratives and build the
written reports, looking for a constant contrast, sometimes evidencing interpretative voices of researchers,
sometimes voices of opinions of students, revealing as straightforward as possible the ways of obtaining
data, locals, and circumstances of the several procedures. Besides, we managed to make visible opinions,
facts from participants from different power symmetry, treating them as equal as possible, evidencing data
from the field, the field reports, and the oral reports, to assure readers of a good understanding of our
theoretical and methodological options during data registration and analytical procedures.
Research tools
Ethnographic methods allow us to apply multi-methods approaches and a diversity of instruments to
collect data. Among them, we used main tools participant observation, field notes, interviews, and
archives. Nevertheless, we also use, not with frequency, case study, focus group, microethnography,
photographs, and bibliographic revision as well.
We use participant observations to look at the interactions among youngsters, as we understood
educational activities in a broad sense. Our movement restrictions made, sometimes difficult to overcome
the need for proximity, but we had help from collaborators and counted on our flexibility to understand
academic situations.
To write fieldnotes, we need to be careful as we could only count with our memories (pencils were
forbidden as they could be used as weapons – sic-). We had collective meetings after each visit to
organize our observations. Every visit produced at least one document collectively, fully describing
events and observed situations with our impressions.
The search on the institution archives was developed extensively as well as in other sources like - United
Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics (IBGE), Brazilian Justice Department, etc. as we could not have full direct access to “students’
files” for security reasons. We also relied on previous data from research.
More than one hundred interviews were conducted with the participants, sometimes with the same
youngster trying to register mental processes during educational activities. As a group, we always worked
in pairs for security reasons and to make data more reliable. Sometimes this procedure was complex as
the youngsters seemed to find it hard to relate to more than one adult while discussing personal learning
experiences. We chose a non-structured ethnographic interview, following the themes and the pace
chosen by the interviewees.
Analysis process
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The analysis process was inspired by the bottom-up approach developed by Mattos (1992). It consists of a
dialectic use of conversation promoted by the researcher, acting as a mediator of the proposed subjects, in
inverse order of the top-down process the research participants are usually familiar with. In other words,
the interview subjects are produced by the interlocutor in a hierarchical form (student to teachers, teacher
to school principals, school principals to the secretary of education, etc.), promoting thus dialogical
communication among the participants.
Following these procedures, we studied the perceptions of school context (Erickson, 1973; Mattos, 2009,
Puggian, 2009). The participants described those perceptions through interviews and contextual
interactions (in school, in-classroom situations, in an instructional environment, mainly to explain events
or facts that occurred. We opted for a process of triangulation of affirmations to confirm relevant
categories and themes; we also developed a content analysis using Spradley's (1980) matrix of analysis.
Research questions
The research questions are: How do youngsters at DEGASE develop the tasks proposed by instructors and
organize their thought to finish them? How can the less experienced youngsters, aware of their limitations,
benefit from metacognitive strategies utilized by the well-succeeded youngsters to develop their school
tasks? How becoming self-conscious about using a metacognitive approach can positively influence
acquiring new strategies to establish school knowledge? What are the difficulties mentioned by the
youngsters, and how do these difficulties inform changes in dealing with the school tasks successfully?
Research scope
The research scope includes the complex of DEGASE institutions composed of sixteen Integrated Childcare
Resource Centers (CRIAM), the João Luis Alves School, the Santos Dumont School, and the Padre
Severine Institute.
The reports derived from the research are composed of four volumes: three thousand pages of data
transcripts illustrating situations, facts, and events observed and interpreted by our research team. Volume
I book, which contains identification, literature review, methodology, results, and references. The Volume
II book includes thematic texts on metacognition, its applications in daily classroom routines and intends
to provide teachers and instructors with a framework of reference about their students' mental processes.
And the Volume III book contains five theoretical papers that discuss subjects related to juvenile
delinquency, violence, teaching/learning processes under harsh circumstances, written during the research,
to subsidize discussions from a broader point of view.
Main categories
The main categories that came up from our research analysts were divided into macro-categories; categories
and micro-categories, meaning from the larger view to a narrower view of the perception of the participants
about the issues investigated, they are:
Macro-categories: identity, control, contradictions, time, and space
Categories: health, poverty culture, teaching/learning, language, self-esteem, institution, religion (myths),
expectations (projects/idealizations)
Micro-categories: evaluation, contracts/negotiations, control over body and health, community, discipline,
school/reality, idealizations, internalization of rules, internalization of the school environment, gender
issues, motivation, juridical issues, body representations, social representations, security, the meaning of
language, pedagogical activities, chronology, classroom space, learning strategies, fatalism, materials,
mistakes, classroom procedures, learning processes, routines, meanings of learning
Discussion, glimpse on the results and recommendations
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So far, the extensive research project still has an enormous amount of data to be explored, as the work
developed by our group was intense and involved a tremendous amount of data. Therefore, this chapter
describes a small portion of the results focusing on youngsters in their learning difficulties while in the
situation of conflict with the law and how to cope with those problems suggesting ways to use
metacognitive strategies to help them to cope with their difficulties and to inform people interested on new
forms to deal with institutionalized juvenal delinquents.
Students, teachers, and researchers have herded the voice of the participants revealing that attitudes in the
classroom in DEGASE can be considered non-humanistic. Those practices have kept youngsters away from
school, magnifying the number of excluded and expelled individuals from society deprived of their
fundamental human rights and the right to education.
Knowledge construction is an essential educational task that has been ignored by many who call themselves
teachers/instructors/tutors within the institution. But traditional education used to control bodies and minds
was a common practice observed. Those practice does not allow the development of trust in people as being
able to acquire consciousness of their emotional and mental processes. A human being is a totality – reason
and emotions- is still far from DEGASE's reality. The institution is significantly different from a school
even though the youngsters are there facing “educational and socio measures” as “sentence”.
The place remained me the former concentrations camps in Germany, where the use of terminologies such
as “socio rehabilitation” and “educational labor training” was used to “uncover” violations of human rights
and torture.
The institution in charge of ressocializing those youngsters sometimes worse them because they learn - as
the famous saying – it is a “school of crime”. The ways to cope with this crude reality and make them
“return” to society are even more difficult than when they were outside of it.
The present research describes the routines or the daily lives of those youth and the efforts of some teachers
to work with adverse circumstances. We propose a pedagogical process that develops a more humane
approach to deal with those situations, promoting a reflexive student, conscious of his/her potentials,
learning how to identify capabilities and drawbacks, produce knowledge, feel accepted, re-conquer
freedom.
We understand that to be treated as a human being is a passport to a better quality of life and a possibility
of feeling part of a society that once enclosed him for his attitudes but can receive him as a better person.
We all can benefit from this approach in constructing together a better and more equal society.
Therefore, we listed the following recommendation not only regards to the use of metacognition but also
to inform about a sensible pedagogy to improve the quality of service provided by DEGASE for their
youngsters:
I.
As a result of the investigation, some metacognitive strategies were identified. As they are not
intentional, meaning that no specific efforts were developed to promote reflexive students, we suggest
a redirection of educational practices towards this particular way of dealing with the teaching-learning
process. Plan, monitor, and evaluating one's learning can be essential for developing autonomous
students in DEGASE and other institutions.
II. DEGASE's pedagogy is of fear, control, and punishment, and presents, sometimes, a lack of
commitment with the official educational programs socially validated. But the same oppressive
pedagogy can make possible emancipation, as contradictory as it may seem. Fundamental physics law
states that for every action, there is a reaction. Some well-intentioned professionals work with the belief
that for students as the ones in DEGASE, anything can be acceptable, as they are in a condition of no
complaint. But they complain and can be very firm as far as their rights to education. The existence of
a school within the premises is, by itself, a good sign of a possible move towards a search for freedom
that all human beings have.
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III. A pedagogical proposition that develops a more humanistic practice counting with reflexive teachers
can be fundamental to reverse the dramatic picture of DEGASE's educational politics. The use of
metacognitive strategies and the development of an awareness of their mental structures and capabilities
can lead youngsters to emancipation inside and outside a classroom setting. When planning and
controlling his/her learning processes, one can understand and be active instead of passive, enhance
self-esteem, getting over the feelings of failure so frequently experienced.
IV. During fieldwork, we could not use video or audio registration. Therefore, we trusted memory to
“record” collected data. Coordinating this large group was sometimes quite an ordeal, considering the
great deal of stress that we all were under. It is important to register that working with this subject –
youngsters in conflict with the law – can bring emotional stress and must be thought over and discussed
to clarify issues. This issue must be taken into consideration for future research.
V. Even though DEGASE is an institution, the unities in this complex system have different characteristics,
each one modeling' the students as they found fit. This fact was a challenge to our research, as we had
to adapt our metacognitive strategies and our procedures to enter the institutions without prejudice. We
wish to reinforce the importance of dealing with differences that can significantly enhance students and
teachers. Still, one has to be aware of the potentiality of inference not as a lack but as means to express
reality. In this research, we highlight the importance of incorporating differences within a global
pedagogical framework that looks for unity. We believe 'diversity adds, does not divide.'
VI. Our experience has demonstrated a need to empower the research group with theoretical references
about the theme. We were informing them about metacognition, teaching/learning processes, law
procedures, power and control issues, ethics, violence, only to name a few subjects. We also believe
that they need support to develop an adequate interaction with the primary participants and the
secondary ones, for example, judges, police, politicians, professionals in charge of developing public
actions, and university professors and researchers. This experience made us aware of the importance of
recovering those youngsters through an effective learning and thinking process to redirect attention
towards youngsters in conflict with the law.
VII. During the research periods, the team collected many references taken to DEGASE and offered to
subsidize their pedagogical practices and new proposals. Besides reading and reflecting over
international and national productions in the area, we also suggest that the ones in charge of elaborating
and implementing it make themselves aware of a strong need for group work, between university and
DEGASE, with directors and all professionals in charge of planning and supervising, among teachers
in charge of the youngsters, so that the search for innovations can be developed as a team and not be
imposed by any group over another.
VIII. On the other hand, one cannot wait forever for a change that may not come. We are trying to say that
if one believes a better treatment can be delivered to those youngsters, it must be started. The sooner,
the better. Developing self-esteem and citizenship should begin at birth, but if something does not work
that way, we, made aware of the facts, should do our part to help fix it.
IX. DEGASE, as a system, needs to be aware of the need for humanizing the environment for the ones at
risk, as their balance is delicate and must be respected. Some institutions offer almost no protection to
the physical and emotional integrity of the youngsters, and the teams in charge of caring for them must
learn to respect them as human beings and not collaborate to destroy their identities. Education can
better occur in a school, not in prison.
X. We strongly believe that our findings and suggestions can help the ones in charge of education at
DEGASE to structure their educational politics; developing metacognitive abilities can be an alternative
to establish public politics more adequate to youngsters in conflict with the law.
References
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About the authors
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Prof. Dr. Carmen Lúcia Guimarães de Mattos
clgmattos@gmail.com
CEO of PRISMAS, an educational enterprise aimed to give access to
education for all and retired in 2018 as Full Professor at the
Department of Applied Teaching Studies (DEAE) of the Faculty of
Education (FE) of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj-19972018). She has 50 years of teaching, among which 30 are also
dedicated to the research and training of teachers and researchers.
She is an Adjunct Professor who retires from the Fluminense Federal
University (1991- 1997). He holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. degree in
Education from the University of Pennsylvania (PENN) and
postdoctoral internships in France, Australia, England, and Canada. He
taught in elementary school at the State Department of Education of
Rio de Janeiro (SEE/RJ) and the Private School in High School. She
coordinated research on school failure, gender and poverty in
education, education of incarcerated women and their children, street
children and youth, and exclusivity in the classroom. His work is
guided by qualitative methods of ethnographic
basis, critical theories, and students' voices. Her
studies support the development of innovative practices and policies in the education of children
and young people in public schools. Currently, she supervises doctoral theses in the Graduate
Program in Education (PROPED) at UERJ. Her experience as a teacher includes courses on
qualitative methods in research, ethnography, exclusivity in education, technology in education,
violence, and gender. Received scholarships and research funding from the main agencies in
Brazil and abroad.
Prof. Dr. Sandra Maciel de Almeida
sandramacieldealmeida@gmail.com
Adjunct Professor at Fluminense Federal University
(UFF). BA in Pedagogy (UFF), with a master’s and
Doctorate in Education from the State University of
Rio de Janeiro UERJ). She worked as a teacher in
early childhood education, pedagogical coordinator
of the Solar Bezerra de Menezes shelter, and the
Salto para o Futuro Program/TV Escola. She was
Pedagogical Advisor of the School of Accounts and
Management of the State Court of Auditors. She
develops research of an ethnographic approach
focused on socio-educational inclusion and
exclusion, dedicating itself to research, currently,
about education in spaces of deprivation of liberty,
especially the schooling of adolescents complying
with socio-educational measures of hospitalization.
It is interested in the pedagogical processes that
bring students closer to schools, seeking to
understand the exclusionary dynamics from the
perspective of students and students.
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Luís Paulo Cruz Borges
borgesluispaulo@yahoo.com.br
Adjunct Professor at the Fernando Rodrigues da
Silveira Application Institute of the State University of
Rio de Janeiro (CAp-UERJ). Doctor in Education from
the Graduate Program in Education at the State
University of Rio de Janeiro (ProPEd/UERJ). Master’s
in education from the Faculty of Teacher Training at the
State University of Rio de Janeiro (FFP-UERJ).
Specialist in Ethnic-Racial Relations and Education: a
proposal for (re)construction of the social imaginary by
the Federal Center for Technological Education Celso
Suckow da Fonseca (CEFET-RJ). Graduated in
Pedagogy from the State University of Rio de Janeiro
(UERJ) and in Social Sciences from the Institute of
Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (IFCS-UFRJ).
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