The Institutionalization of the First- and Second-Grade Pedagogical Unit in the Province of Córdoba: Prior Conditions and Future Challenges

Abstract

The focus on school trajectories currently constitutes a dominant perspective in the pedagogical field, both as a key for interpreting issues of educational inclusion and inequality and in the production of interventions of varying scope in formal educational processes.

Among the most recent measures inspired by this perspective is the transformation of the first and second grades of primary education into a pedagogical unit, within the framework of Resolution 174/12 of the Federal Council of Education. This measure intervenes centrally in the processes of transition between these two grades by eliminating grade repetition as the legitimate pedagogical response to learning problems that, under the previously existing promotion system, prevented many children from passing first grade.

Like any policy aimed at transforming school practices, the one analyzed in this paper enters an arena of meanings that precedes it. These meanings operate as practical translations of what is prescribed, reorienting and redefining it in ways unforeseen in its normative formulation.

For this reason, in this paper we seek to make visible some of the conditions involved in the institutionalization of the pedagogical unit, based on the analysis of statistical information, inquiries among primary-school principals and teachers in the city of Córdoba, and journalistic information. In particular, we are interested in highlighting some of the competing meanings surrounding this measure and analyzing its likely impact on the schooling of socially disadvantaged children.