FACULTY OF EDUCATION 
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SPECIAL EDUCATION 
SCHOOL COMMUNITY AND EXPERIENCES 
OF PARTICIPATION AND DEMOCRACY: AN 
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY IN THE CHILEAN 
EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT 
Alexis Morales Valdes 
Master’s thesis: 
Programme/course: 
Level: 
Term/year: 
Supervisor: 
Examiner: 
30 hp
PDA184 
Advanced level
Vt/2018 
Adrianna Nizinska 
Ernst Thoutenhoofd 
VT18 IPS PDA184:4Report nr: 
Abstract 
Chilean education is still in the process of overcoming a dark period of dictatorship where the 
school was governed by repressive, controlling and antidemocratic regulations. In 2009 a new 
general law for Chilean education was enacted that included several values suggesting a more 
active participation for all the members of the school community. Additionally the law states 
that schools must provide inclusive environments based on tolerance, mutual respect and 
awareness of current cultural diversity. The inclusions of these values are aimed 
to democratize education of Chilean schools. The purpose of this study is to inquire, from the 
experience and perspectives of the school community in two Chilean schools, the current state 
of democracy within these educational institutions according the theory of democratic 
education proposed by John Dewey among other authors. The research has a qualitative 
nature and uses school ethnography as the main method for investigation. The process of data 
collection included the use of fieldnotes, interviews and participant observation in the context 
of schooling. In both schools, the study evidenced the efforts that some students and teachers 
make in order to create meaningful interrelations were individuals can active participate, 
having a significant communication based on mutual understandings and respect and being 
part of the process of decision-making. Nevertheless major transgressions to democracy in 
education were observed from school authorities and part of the teacher staff. These 
transgressions influence the social life of the school community and represent forms of 
unnecessary formalism, conservatism and militarization of the character. The study concludes 
that the members of the school community perceive democracy in several different ways; 
most of these perceptions reflected contextualized exertions of power, control, repression and 
fear over different school situations which are not consistent with the nature of what a 
democratic education constitute.  
Keywords: School ethnography, democratic education, active participation, Chilean 
education 
Acknowledgments 
I would like to thank the unconditional support of my family and my closest friends, this 
piece of work would not have been possible without their encouragement and the motivation 
they gave me every day. I would like to express my gratitude to Adrianna Nizinska for her 
constant support and supervision and to Ernst Thoutenhoofd for his comments and 
contributions to my research study. 
Table of contents 
Chapter I Research Problem 
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………....7 
Research Questions…………………………………………………………………………….9 
Research limitations……………………………………………………………………………9 
Chapter II Research problem 
A brief historical review of democracy in Chilean education ……………………………….10 
Democracy in schools before Augusto Pinochet……………………………………………..11 
Chilean education and democracy during the Military Government.………………………..12 
The attempts to democratize education after Pinochet……………………………………….13 
Chilean youth, participation, citizenship and education……………………………………...16 
Discussion…………………………………………………………………………………….18 
Chapter III Theoretical Framework 
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..19 
The conception of democratic education……………………………………………………..20 
John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas…………………………………………………………...20 
Paulo Freire and his democratic perceptions upon education………………………………..24 
The neopragmatic view of democratic education and Dewey’s criticism……………………24 
The contemporary idea of democratic education…………………………………………….25 
Discussion…………………………………………………………………………………….27 
Chapter IV Methodology 
A qualitative design and its degree of suitability for the study………………………………29 
Ethnographic methodology…………………………………………………………………...31 
The choosing of educational ethnography as main method for investigation………………...32 
Describing the setting of the research: the place, the society and the education……………..34 
Describing the setting of the research: the process choosing the right schools………………35 
Describing the setting: The chosen two schools……………………………………………...37 
• School A………………………………………………………………………………38 
• School B………………………………………………………………………………39 
Describing the participants: The school community………………………………………….39 
•  Students as research participants. ……………………………………………………40 
• Teachers as research participants …………………………………………………….40 
• Parents as research participants ………………………………………………………41 
• School authorities as research participants …………………………………………..42 
The process of data collection and its methodological techniques…………………………...43 
• Participant observation………………………………………………………………..44 
• Interviews: Unstructured and conversational interviews……………………………..45 
• Fieldnotes……………………………………………………………………………..47
The implications of working in the field: The role of the researcher and the consequences of 
ethnographic research…………………………………………...............................................48 
Data analysis………………………………………………………………………………….52 
• Organization and preparation of data………………………………………………...53 
• Revision of data………………………………………………………………………54 
• Coding process………………………………………………………………………..54 
• Generation of themes and categories…………………………………………………55 
• Representation of data………………………………………………………………..55 
Chapter V Presentation of the research results 
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………56 
The compulsory use of school uniforms, militarization as a form of control and imposed dress 
code among students and teachers: unjustified formalisms…………………………………56 
Perceptions over democracy in schools during the presentation in the Teacher Council……63 
Fear and threat through religious implications in SCHOOL A………………………………65 
How does democracy manifest itself within education in Chilean schools?............................66 
Students and their democratic participation…………………………………………………..68 
• Internal participation………………………………………………………….............69 
• External participation ………………………………………………………………...72 
Parents and their influence in both schools…………………………………………………...74 
Teachers and their democratic influence within the schools…………………………………74 
Chapter VI Discussion 
Chilean State and its policy-makers…………………………………………………………..78 
The School Authority…………………………………………………………………………79 
Teachers………………………………………………………………………………………79 
Students and Parents………………………………………………………………………….80 
Chapter VII 
Ethical consideration in educational ethnography …………………………………………...82 
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………84 
References……………………………………………………………………………………85
. 
7 
 
 
 
Chapter I 
Introduction 
During the 50’ until late of the 80’ education had a significant growth in several countries of 
Latin America. This growth emerged as a reflection of successful, liberal and democratic 
educational strategies aimed to pursue social integration and to encourage participatory 
citizenship education. Accordingly, States were open to discuss the progressiveness on 
Freire’s discourse and to support his well-received ideas against the oppressive and 
authoritarian forces exerted over pedagogies and an increasing world-wide capitalism. Latina 
American societies introduced the debate which claimed social and cultural empowerment, 
welfare and flourishing arguing high responsibility from the State. Thus several social groups 
and organizations, whose incentive was social change, emerged in order to support democracy 
through an active participation of citizens and the inclusion of different values such as 
solidarity and social inclusion; altogether with a rising of quality in public education and a 
considerable reduction of the percentages on illiteracy among people.  The ideologies of 
Neoliberalism interceded with the promising pragmatism of left governments and education, 
as consequence, was one of the institutions that resulted more influenced. The appearance of 
neoliberal policies increased inequalities and produced a breakdown of the educational 
structure in many countries of South and North America together with social instability, 
political disruption and coups that endangered democracy. These policies aimed reduction of 
the State inversion, responsibility and structure, in favor of privatization and 
commercialization of education by using the argument that the State had failed granting 
quality, equality and stability in schools (Puiggrós, 1996). 
The emergence of the coup d'état in Chile in 1973 drove by the General Augusto Pinochet led 
into disastrous consequences for democracy and affected every single social sphere in the 
country, among them education. The implementation of neoliberal ideologies, authoritarian 
nationalism and marked-oriented policies influenced every social aspect in the country and 
introduced totalitarian and radical changes to education. The Military Government dismantled 
the Chilean education structure, imposed repression, power and control over schools and 
transformed education into a consumer good (Moreno & Gamboa, 2014). Furthermore, in 
8 
1990, the Organic Law of Education -LOCE in Spanish- was enacted and regulated every 
sector in education. This law was seen as the legacy of the Military Government, since it 
repressed their freedom of expression and did not recognized the rights of participation, 
decision and collaboration of students, teachers and parents, cultivated fear, obedience and 
discipline (Muñoz, 2011). In 2006 and 2011, in front of the few possibilities for students to 
release from the situation, a new generation of youth born in democracy and characterized by 
being students without fear transformed themselves into several student organizations and 
social groups which emerged and protested against the law LOCE across the country. These 
students’ manifestations were fundamental to settle the debate which proposed an ending to 
an education for-profit, the transgression of democracy in schools and other demands in 
relation to the end of the neoliberal nature of education (Cummings, 2015). 
Due to the constant pressures from different social movements and the extensive criticism 
toward the remaining relevancy of the LOCE and its antidemocratic policies in education, the 
General Law of Education - LGE n Spanish- was enacted in 2009. This law regulates the 
whole educational sector in Chile, the general and cross-curricular objectives and the base 
curricular design. It proposes significant changes that might serve as a basis for a more active 
participation for the whole educational community, promoting a civic formation and structural 
and conceptual changes in the curriculum, the normative and the administration of schools. 
The new law states the importance of tolerance, respect and communication between the 
members of the school community (Mineduc, 2009). The law was constructed under the faith 
for regaining democracy in education by establishing democratic concepts.  Nevertheless after 
eight years of implementation of regulations and normative proposed by the LGE, there is an 
scarcity of educational experiences depriving participation in decision-making, a lack of 
integration for all and problems in the establishment of social bonds within schools. (Flores & 
Garcia, 2014) These proposals and the rhetoric in educational policies are understood as 
aiming to the inclusion, implementation and encouragement of a more democratic path for 
education. Therefore, facing the actual changes in curriculum design, the democratization of 
schools together with the massive students protest waves in Chile in 2006 and 2011, the 
promulgation and current implementation of the LGE, and several efforts of different 
governments after the return of democracy to bind together participation, collaboration and 
democracy in education it is necessary and relevant to understand, from the pragmatic and 
functional perspective of schools, how a democratic education is voiced, perceived and 
9 
manifested within the Chilean educational system and how it influences the different process 
within schools. 
The main purpose of this study is to investigate, using an educational ethnographic approach 
seen from a qualitative perspective, how a “recently introduced” democratic education 
proposed by the General Law of Education (LGE)  is expressed, perceived and experienced 
by students, parents, teachers and school authority in two school of the city Villa in Chile. The 
study will employ an ethnographic methodology to investigate the social life of the 
participants and to look into their daily interactions and perceptions. Research data was 
collected through an ethnographic methodology in a naturalistic setting; where interviews, 
field notes, participant observations and conversations played an important role. The research 
has as a theoretical framework, previous studies made on democratic education where the 
names of John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty are essential and served as a basis 
for understanding the concept of democratic education and use it as an insightful background 
in the field.  
Research questions 
1) How does democracy manifest within education in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B?
2) How do the different actors (students, teachers, parents and school authorities of
SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B) experience democracy in education?
3) What are the students’ perceptions and opinions on participation, collaboration, and
communication in both schools?
Research limitations 
Since the school year in Chile begins in March, the process of data collection in this research 
study began once teachers started planning their lessons and assisting to both schools at the 
middle of February 2018. Because of this, time limitation was one of the most restricting and 
demanding issue during the research process. It would have been beneficial for the purpose of 
the research to have started on December or January collecting data and organizing it in order 
to have had more time for the analysis. However this time was efficiently used to design the 
methodology and to have a better understanding of what constitute the theoretical account of 
10 
democratic education. In addition to the limitations of time, one of the major difficulties 
found while doing the research were data analysis and its organization. There was a general 
experimented limitation of effort and time in translating the interviews from Spanish to 
English and then the proper transcription of them into word files and folders. Since interviews 
and some fieldnotes were collected or made using a tape recorder, the process of transcription 
and translation entailed consuming time and effort. Several days of work and effort were 
required to store all the collected data. It is important to address the challenge of translating 
from one language to another, especially when the register of the interviews has an informal 
tone of everyday language and it is filled with idiomatic expressions and slang. These 
procedures require double attention trying to not lose or miss the core meaning, the general 
intentions and the importance of what was said.  
Chapter II 
Research Problem 
The present chapter delivers a historical review of democracy within the Chilean education 
that might serve as background for the research problem by addressing in a primary instance 
the consequences of the dictatorship in education, the educational censure and the silenced 
voices of students and other member of the school community. The chapter moves toward a 
description of the dynamics produced by the endeavors to regain democracy in the school and 
the outcomes of the aforesaid attempts. The chapter concludes with a discussion and proper 
analysis of how democracy has been historically expressed in the Chilean educational context. 
A brief historical review of democracy in Chilean education 
It is interesting to see the huge amount of national and international research publications that 
touch the period of dictatorship as a significant issue at the moment of studying Chilean 
education. It almost feels as if Chilean education began right after the Military came to power 
in 1973 and everything before is less significant or not that influential for the actual society. It 
has been almost thirty years since the democracy returned to Chile and society released from 
the oppressive and antidemocratic government, however, Chilean society continues talking 
and making emphasis on its ‘legacy’. The truth is that, despite the fact that the researcher 
personally believes that it is time to turn to a new page and leave the past behind, the period 
of Pinochet has been the most radical and influential time in the country and there are 
remaining consequences of the actions implemented and the freedoms snatched. Therefore at 
11 
the moment of analyzing democracy in Chilean education, three different positions in relation 
to the participation, collaboration and influence of students, teachers and parents emerge as a 
before, a during and an after of the dictatorial government of 1973. 
Democracy in schools before Augusto Pinochet 
The periods of Chilean education from 1928 to 1952 had the influence of the left-radical 
governments that significantly collected the contributions of John Dewey. This view of 
education in schools promoted a more participative, collaborative and democratic notion 
among youth by creating and implementing Student Unions along Chilean schools, but also, it 
put special interest in the social and cultural formation of the students. It was a model of 
education that was coherent with the social movements and the sociocultural changes of those 
days. These governments acted consequently with the idea of a republican education, wherein 
the principles of social interests and general common good prevailed over and above the 
private interest. In this sense, the aim of the government was to inspire a free, universal and 
public education, a Chilean education focused on the formation of citizens in an equal and 
including society (Schneider, 2012; Redondo, 2009).  
The educational reform of 1928 acknowledged the participation of parents and guardians in 
education. This recognition was an attempt to create a bond between home and schools; and 
where parents were allowed to participate and engage in the learning process of their children. 
In 1967 the Parents’ representative association was born and it acquired the character of legal 
entity, this normative favored an active relationship between schools and the community. 
Furthermore, in relation to the participation of teachers, different educational proposals were 
discussed and implemented since 1925 where teachers were considered protagonists in several 
participative processes, creating a pedagogic thought and raising their voices, together with 
social associations, in favor of transformations in education and influencing somehow the 
normative and regulations of schools (Muñoz, 2011). This forwardness that existed in the 
centered left-governments of the time to provide, to some extent, the necessary opportunities 
that allowed a relatively active participation and to gradually include all the actors of the 
educational community in the educational process signified an important step towards a 
democratic education that, if it was not for the totalitarian, antidemocratic and excluding 
nature of the dictatorship, perhaps it would be consolidated to a certain point or in it would be 
in a very different process of understanding, acceptance and practice that the ones known in 
the present Chilean schools. 
12 
Chilean education and democracy during the Military Government 
The arrival of the dictatorship meant the beginning of a neoliberal economic system that 
implemented radical changes in the political, socioeconomic, and cultural structure in Chile. 
Democracy was transgressed in many aspects and Chileans suffered the consequences of a 
totalitarian, exclusionary and segregationist regime that sought to establish a totally different 
system from the constitutional, liberal, democratic and republican process initiated in 1810. 
As consequence, all aspects of the Chilean social sphere were strongly influenced by the anti-
democratic concept that signified the implementation in society of an authoritarian 
nationalism and neoliberal policies aimed to promote centralization and privatization of the 
education system. In education, one of the first consequences of the dictatorship was the 
persecution, murder, torture and exile of professors and students. In addition there was a 
collective effort on the part of the Chilean armed forces to dismantle and eliminate any 
dissident position to the military regime by incorporating ideological and nationalist 
principles in the curriculum and influencing in the teacher formation at universities (Moreno 
& Gamboa, 2014). 
Furthermore, freedom of speech and influence in any form of participation for teachers or 
students were completely restricted. In this sense, the philosophical and paradigmatic nature 
of the pedagogical practice was avoided in the curriculum for the compulsory school, yielding 
to a pedagogy aimed at the fulfilment of objectives as the human capital required. Students’ 
participation was controlled and repressed, limited to school activities and participation 
during the lessons. Students’ participation was obliged to be ‘conform to the pre-established 
norms’. Parents’ association representative was seen as contributors of the educative function, 
but it could not intercede or participate in policies, the organizational function, neither 
discipline nor pedagogical practices. The function of parents in education was exclusively 
restrained to a neoliberal perspective where they are the consumers of an education for their 
children and their participation is seen as contributing economically (Muñoz, 2011).  
Beside from the introduction of ideological and political mechanisms of surveillance, and 
threats to the teaching sector and the participation of student and parents, the dictatorship 
finalized its mandate promulgating the LOCE (Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Educación in 
13 
Spanish), this action was supported by the anti-democratic Constitution signed by the General 
Augusto Pinochet minutes before the end of the dictatorial period after the 1988 plebiscite. As 
consequence, the LOCE perpetuated the neoliberal nature of education in Chilean schools, 
ensuring the progressive privatization of education and decreasing the expense on public 
education; it also promoted the decline of the teaching career in the universities and implicitly 
restricted the pedagogical practices oriented to develop the analytical and critical thinking of 
the students. In addition, a voucher system was incorporated into education, which had as 
explicit objective, the introduction of market-oriented competence mechanisms among the 
schools. As a result of this measure, schools would compete to attract students, in this way, 
schools would receive the subsidy of the state and generating a dynamic of ‘improvement’ of 
the academic results, thus, the profit in the education and the selection of students was 
allowed. Finally the LOCE takes away the responsibility of the state in public education in a 
process of municipalization, where most of the decision-making, the subsidies and the control 
over the schools were delegated to the municipalities (Moreno & Gamboa, 2014; Redondo, 
2009; Cornejo, 2006). 
It might be argued that parent’s freedom to choose an education for their children and the 
competition among schools for ensuring quality is something needed and valuable since it 
represents welfare of children and concern for their future. However this view is an 
individualistic one because it does not pursue the common good of people and it is not 
corresponding of democratic values in a democratic society. The kind of education that 
prevails in Chile is a reflection of an education more or less decent, a luxury available to very 
few but a failure in the search of an equal education for all.  
The attempts to democratize education after Pinochet 
Education was part of that social sphere that was victim of the neoliberal and repressive 
policies that the government implemented and exerted during its mandate. As consequence, 
these policies segregated participation of students, prevented communication among the 
actors in schools, hampered cooperation between social communities (the relationship 
between school community and the social communities that surrounded it), and restricted 
freedom of expression in favor of an elitist and selective education. An education oriented to 
individualism, competition, performance, measurement, obedience and discipline. Given the 
structure of the inherited state, it was intended to satisfy the social needs in schools as far as 
possible, however, considering that Chilean society was recently emerging from a process of 
dictatorship and that social organizations were not fully democratized, social relations were 
14 
very uneven and there was no consensus or it was very difficult to reach them. Therefore, the 
voice which had more power and frequency raised higher and strongly, denying the 
possibilities of participation, collaboration for change and the necessary conditions to 
democratize any process (Inzunza, 2009). In this sense, it might be argued that the process of 
dictatorship in Chile not only lacerated democracy as a form government or sociopolitical 
structure, but also it diminished democracy in a sociocultural level, affecting considerably 
society and education. 
When democracy returned in 1990 to the country there were several attempts to reestablish 
and reconstruct all those social aspects which intrinsically had an antidemocratic, 
discriminatory, authoritarian and repressive nature. In order to eradicate the legacy of the 
LOCE, the governments of the Coalition for Democracy made several efforts as an attempt to 
democratize an education that already had embedded the heritage of the dictatorship; 
however, none of them have been actually effective. Thus, in 1990, the decree no. 524 
reestablished Student Unions in every school giving students the possibility to exert 
representation confronting schools authorities and to encourage their participation as citizens. 
Nevertheless, these modes of participation did not have any influence on important aspects 
such as school administration, decision-making in curriculum design or extracurricular 
activities that were more in the line of students’ personal needs and interests. Additionally, 
their participation was always supervised by an adult, a ‘teacher adviser’ in order to assess 
that students obey and remember the norms and rules of the school (Muñoz, 2011). In 2001, 
the Ministry of Education recognized three level of participation for parents and guardians in 
the process of education. The informative level of participation is where parents had the right 
to stay informed about the educational processes of their children. The collaborative level of 
participation of parents is expressed in their cooperation in activities related to the school, 
group activities participation. Finally, the consultative level works directly with the Parents 
representative association and it is related to the influence exercised by parents in various 
matters of education, it involves an active participation in the decision making in relation to 
objectives, school actions and the management of economic resources. In spite of the good 
will of the Ministry of Education for incorporating new policies for the participation of the 
community and involve more actively parents and guardians, in practice only the informative 
and collaborative levels of participation are validated and pre-established (Mineduc, 2001). 
The major efforts to fight the legacy of the Military Government and recover the democracy 
in schools and in education in a broader sense, was made by the same students that had lived 
15 
with the consequences of the implementation of neoliberal polices and the remaining nature of 
a repressive educational system. Thus, in 2006 and 2011, in front of the few possibilities for 
students to release from the situation, a new generation of youth born in democracy and 
characterized by being students without fear transformed themselves into several student 
organizations and social groups which emerged and protested against the law LOCE across 
the country. These students’ manifestations were fundamental to settle the debate which 
proposed an ending to an education for-profit, the transgression of democracy in schools and 
other demands in relation to the end of the neoliberal nature of education (Cummings, 2015; 
Nem & Grugel, 2015; Pousadela, 2013). 
In consequence, confronting the pressures of the students and many other social organizations 
to eradicate the LOCE and create a new law for education. Thus, the enacted law of 2009, The 
General Law of Education in Chile – Ley General de Educación (LGE) in Spanish– came as a 
replacement for the previous law created by the Military Government during the period of 
dictatorship between 1973 and 1990. This law regulated the whole educational sector in Chile, 
the general and cross-curricular objectives and the base curricular design. The LGE stated a 
series of regulations and principles in the educational community which suggested the 
implementation, spread and encouragement of different democratic values such as active 
participation, the awareness and respect for diversity, integration and opportunities for every 
actor in education.  Additionally it proposes significant changes that might serve as a basis for 
a more active participation for the whole educational community, promoting a civic formation 
and structural and conceptual changes in the curriculum, normative and the administration in 
schools (Mineduc, 2009). Nevertheless after eight years of implementation of regulations and 
normative proposed by the LGE, there is an scarcity of educational experiences depriving 
participation in decision-making, integration of all to active change and establishment of 
social bonds within schools (Flores & Garcia, 2014; Prieto, 2005). Moreover the government 
of Michelle Bachelet in 2016, under the law no. 20.911, promulgated the Program for 
Citizenship Education – Plan de Formación Ciudadana – This law proposed the 
implementation of mutual cooperation in education, active communication among the actors 
and the construction of a social discourse aimed to promote the inclusion of democratic values 
and principles in order to democratize schools (Mineduc, 2016). These laws emphasized even 
more in the necessity to foster democracy within schools, and to translate the ideas proposed 
in the LGE into practice and reality. 
16 
 
Chilean youth, participation, citizenship and education 
A study approved and later led by the Curriculum and Evaluation Unit of the Ministry of 
Education between 1999 and 2002 investigated the processes of civic education, participation 
and the exercise of citizenship in students of last year of basic education and last year of high 
school. The study evaluated definitions and concepts that students had about democracy, 
cultural diversity, tolerance and citizenship, afterwards, the results were compared with an 
international sample of fourteen countries. The comparison produced results for the Chilean 
students that were significantly lower than the international average but showed greater 
knowledge than in previous years due to the immersion of democratic values in the national 
curriculum as an attempt to democratize schools. However, as it has been the tone in Chilean 
education in its unequal and exclusionary nature, the low-income students, with few 
expectations to continue studying and whose parents have an educational and socioeconomic 
level lower than the Chilean average, showed less knowledge in central issues for people 
living in democracy such as equality of rights, democracy and citizen participation. 
Moreover when students were asked about their concept and ideas about citizenship, they 
related the concept of exercising citizen's rights with, for example,  being a 'good citizen', but 
they also stated that participating in some way that allows to help others and collaborate with 
the community was part of the right of the citizens. Also, students reflected some knowledge 
on the meaning of civic duty and how to be a responsible citizen, however they did not delve 
into a more elaborate definition of the civic exercise, or about their duty with the community 
and respect for the thinking of others, there was very little in fundamental aspects such as 
collaboration, integration, diversity, participation, change and incidence as main actors in 
their own educational development, aspects that are essential in a democratic education. 
The general definition of democracy among students was seen as that democracy is a form of 
government different from a dictatorship; it was also defined as a form of society where 
people are able to express themselves freely and capable of choosing political representatives 
in a democratic way. Nevertheless, they did not express a need for claiming social and 
political rights or to demand a more active participation in decision-making both in school 
and together with the community (Mineduc, 2003). It can be assumed that this situation 
occurred because back at the end of the 90s and the early 2000s there still was a remaining 
position of submission and resignation on the part of the society, typical positions assumed by 
the population during dictatorship and its undemocratic legacy. According to the above, the 
students showed a low participation in the Student Unions and a scarcity of involvement in 
17 
 
the political debate and discussions emerging from the school, not because of the lack of 
interest among students, but due to the traditional, structured and rigid programs of 
participation offered by the schools which never satisfied the interests and needs of the 
students. Also, the study affirms that there is a significant difference between the participation 
of men and women that shows a gender inequality that is maintained over time and persists to 
this day. This gender comparison indicated that men participate more actively than women in 
political discussions and social movements within schools, while women are not provided 
with the necessary opportunities to participate in the same way as men, since these political 
discussions never were part of their "general and main interest", this results evidenced great 
gender inequalities that still can be perceived in present days. Finally the study concluded that 
Chilean school have a fundamental role in students’ citizen education and their responsibility 
is to create and allow instances of active participation in decision making and oriented to 
change and influence. Schools should also help them to develop their capacity of dialogue for 
the resolution of conflicts, reflect in order to solve, to constructively criticize, and in this way, 
move towards a more democratic and inclusive society. 
The study Paradojas de la participación juvenil y desafíos de la educación ciudadana en 
Chile (Flores y Garcia, 2014) establishes that in great part of Latin America there is a low 
percentage of commitment among youth in relation with expressing democratic values and 
civic duty. There is also an embedded distrust towards institutionalism and political sectors. In 
Chile, the desired return of democracy between people has not been able to provide the 
necessary spaces or the right instances for students to express their ideas, concerns, interests 
and opinions. The governments have had a constant rhetorical participatory discourse within 
the enactment of educational laws and regulations which invite students and youth to 
participate more actively. The Chilean Ministry of Education has been motivating schools to 
work harder in order to build a more democratic education. Even so these discourses 
contradict themselves with what actually happens in school in teaching practice and through 
the interaction of students with the rest of the educational community. Additionally this 
situation also affects the incidence of other members in schools such as parents and teachers 
which have a low participatory influence in the decisions of the school. Today reality 
indicates that, after a decade of implementations of participatory and democratic rhetoric in 
the curriculum; and after several international studies that have been compared with Chilean 
students the results in the understanding of democratic values, civic processes, equal rights 
and moral and democratic obligations are below the international average. These results could 
18 
 
indicate a lack of discussions on the educational objectives, as for example, the inclusion of 
democratic concepts and definitions as base and obligatory content, equally important as math 
or history. As summary the expressed discourses in educational policies, followed by the 
programs implemented by the government and the norms established by the schools for the 
democratization of the education of the country and the citizen formation of the students, fail 
to create the foundations of a strong educational system , coherent and democratic because  
the lack of school experiences that promote integration and motivation to create social bonds, 
encourage dialogue, active communication and an alignment of the pedagogical practices with 
the curricular objectives. 
Discussion 
Chilean schools are places of restriction, segregation and repression. For years, Chilean 
students, parents and teachers have been waiting for a real opportunity to have influence in 
the strategies and the structural plan in the elaboration of the national curriculum, however, 
the constant power relations within schools – the relationship between teachers and students 
and the influence of the rector and the administrative group – are responsible for the 
restriction of the contribution of students in administrative, normative and disciplinary issues 
in spite of their strengthening discourse about active participation. Teachers, on their behalf, 
are assumed to be implicitly manipulated and obligated by hierarchical voices to repress any 
attempt of acting or saying something that goes beyond the norms and regulations of the 
school. Consequently, when these power actors are consulted about the non-inclusion and null 
influence of the denominated ‘third’ part in the programmatic, administrative curricular and 
structural design of the school, they answer that these kinds of initiatives of students’ 
participation (and teachers) might be disruptive for their own educative formation and also, it 
might constitute a double-edged sword for discipline, restraint and order within schools. The 
truth is that those whose voices are ahead of other, fear for the participation of the excluded 
due to possible dismantling of their unquestionable power (Ortiz, 2006). At the end are the 
stakeholders - the persons that administrate the voucher money in Chilean schools - the ones 
who are the major characters in schools in decision-making; and even if the rector or the other 
actors of the educational community have a will for democratize education in the school or to 
encourage students to raise their voices demanding change and more active participation, they 
will restrict these intentions trying to ‘avoid conflicts’. This is how power relations emerge in 
schools and influence the whole community in a chain of commands, obedience, restriction, 
exclusion and (Muñoz, 2011). 
19 
[In the exercise of participation, teachers and managers have the advantage regarding 
information and knowledge about educational policies and the daily work of the educational 
institution, which generates an asymmetry in the access and handling of the information that 
students and parents have... This ends by consolidating an aspect of the teaching culture, in 
that the issues of the school belong to the "professionals of the education] (p.123). 
Theoretical framework 
Chapter III 
Introduction 
It is the belief of the researcher that, in order to perform the realization of this study, it is 
imperative to understand what a democratic education means, its significance in the history of 
education and what provides the most relevant research on the topic to perform further studies 
in democratic education. According to the latter, the following chapter of this study consists 
of a literature review inquiring the previous work made on democratic education which serves 
as a theoretical frame of the present research study. It is important to understand the main 
purpose of a literature review, its significance for doing research and how to write it in an 
organized way. A literature review can be described as a careful selection of published and 
peer-reviewed documents on a specific topic, which contains previously written statements, 
information and ideas to elaborate a point within a specific field or to express a viewpoint. In 
the elaboration of a Master thesis, for example, is the addition of analytical and original 
assessment of previous and published studies in order to summarize knowledge, to show 
possible bias, omissions, the strengths or limitations; and the creation of awareness of the 
state of knowledge in the subject area (Jesson & Lacey, 2006).  
“A literature review is a narrative account of information that is already currently available, 
accessible and published, which may be written from a number of differing paradigms or 
perspectives, depending on the standpoint of the writer” (p.140). 
According what the history of the democracy in Chilean education says, it is clear that the 
democracy in Chilean schools has been threatened and damaged, in order to have a better 
perspective of what constitute a democratic education the research requires the work of John 
Dewey and other contemporaneous authors that have written about democracy in education. 
20 
 
The present literature review compiles literature from several researchers in the field of social 
sciences and educational research but the input of criticism and the personal imprint of the 
researcher is expressed adding previous knowledge. In this sense, different journal articles 
and online and printed books were previously selected and analyzed attempting to give a form 
and a structure to this review. Moreover it was a useful selection that considerably enriched 
the knowledge of the researcher regarding democratic education. The purpose of this literature 
review is to compile the relevant research on democratic education and creates a link with 
current issues of Chilean education expressed in the final section of discussion. 
The conception of democratic education 
In order to understand what a democratic education is and what has been written in relation to 
democracy in Chilean schools, it is necessary to address and investigate the available theory. 
Several authors have extensively written about democracy in education. Considering the later 
it is important to underscore that the concept of democratic education has been approached 
from different and varied perspectives; many of them have related democratic education with 
other concepts and values that might be regarded as essential in education such as 
participation, inclusion and equality. While others authors have emphasized that democratic 
education means communication, critical thinking and diversity in education. Nevertheless 
most of them agree that a democratic education involves the participation of all the actors in 
the educational community. Participation in education can be defined as the deliberative 
action of all actors in an educational community for being part of different groups expressing 
their opinions and ideas, cooperating in joint activities, situation or place.  Moreover 
participation involves the development of their sense of creativity and responsibility. Active 
participation in education means that they are allowed to play a role in decision-making and in 
generating demands, but also they are capable of producing critical, analytical and 
constructive comments and thoughts (Prieto, 2003). 
John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas 
The democratic conception of education has been primarily understood from the pragmatic 
and philosophical point of view of several authors. In this sense, it would be unthinkable to 
begin the discussion without John Dewey’s contribution to the political and social sciences. 
His works on the comprehension of the concept of democracy as a form of life have been 
extensively used in the field of social sciences. According to Dewey, democracy must be seen 
as a form of life and not merely as a form of government or political model. He believes that 
21 
democracy is a form of life that requires pluralism and sociocultural diversity, because it is 
built – or it should be – on a basis of shared and varied interests and experiences, but also 
democracy expresses itself by means of interaction and communication between individuals, 
groups and society (Garrison, Neubert & Reich, 2012). 
Dewey, who is considered as the father of democratic education, believed that the relation 
between democracy and education is reciprocal and mutual. He understood the importance of 
the educational process in the development of democratic societies and the importance of 
creating a democratic culture within society. Dewey extensively developed his concept of 
educational growth, which indicated that individuals grow through the reorganization and 
reconstruction of experiences in education. This means that people learn significantly from 
their own experiences, but also from the experiences of others. Dewey argues that “every 
individual becomes educated only as he has an opportunity to contribute something from his 
own experience, no matter how meagre or slender that background of experience may be at a 
given time; and…that enlightenment comes from the give and take, from the exchange of 
experiences and ideas” (p. 86).  
Additionally he sustained that education should characterized by its transition from passive 
habits to active habituation of internal control of participation and recreation of experiences. 
These active habits allow sociocultural growth by integrating new habits and creating new 
experiences. The later implies learning from experiences and learning while ‘doing’ with 
others. Therefore, for the reconstruction of experiences in education it is necessary that 
schools provide learning environments that offer resources, ideas, inspirations, opportunities 
and occasions. These learning environments would be impossible to provide without the 
communication factor as a basic component (Waks & English, 2017). According to Dewey, 
communication is inherently educational among the actors of the school, and it reflects power 
for change. All communication is educative in some point. Participants in an educational 
community will have several things in common thanks to communication by partaking and 
sharing meanings in an educational context.  
“Communication itself is a powerful means for significant learning, because in 
communication all parties must form in their imaginations some idea of the others and what 
they are making of each other’s statements” (p.19). 
Dewey deepened the analysis of democracy in education by including the ideas that guide 
students to self-governance in thinking and deliberative criticism of ideas, these concepts has 
22 
been equally important as the creation of experiences in education and the allowance of 
communication facilitating student’s participation. With this in mind, the Deweyan belief is 
that thinking occurs when students are living different educational experiences and when they 
are exposed to the reasons and the consequences of actions in given situations within 
determined experiences. In other words educational reflection about experiences in school is 
the intentional and conscious endeavor of thinking about what has been done and the 
consequences of those actions. In these habits of thinking upon experiences, students are 
interested in active thinking, then, they select, observe and apply solutions, finally, students 
will have to probe and test their ideas making them valid and meaningful (Dewey, 2007). The 
potentials of education can only be reached through the awareness of benefits of criticism and 
self-criticism in educational contexts, but equally important by introducing a 
recontextualization of the modes of teaching and the immersion of central issues in student’s 
thinking. This means to encourage students to criticize and analyze current issues such as 
marginalization of groups and individuals, economic and sociocultural inequalities, poverty, 
unemployment, exclusion and repression of sociocultural or political hegemonies, etc. These 
issues cannot be taken for granted in education; they should not be avoided and ignored by 
teachers and power structures within schools. These are problematics, situations and contexts 
that a democratic education cannot omit or ignore and they must be part of the daily thinking 
teaching and learning process of students.  
For Dewey, this interaction between experiences, educational growth, communication and 
educative thinking is the heart of the educational process and is what makes participation 
possible. Accordingly the relevance of democracy, as an indispensable process in the life of 
students, needs to be recognized by every educational institution and outside school with the 
local communities. The variety of views, ideas and perceptions of life – namely in schools, 
social and political movements, social groups and the neighborhood – can provide rich 
insights in active and inclusive participation, but also better opportunities for a direct 
democratic involvement (Garrison, Neubert & Reich, 2012).  
There must be a fight for equity, and to ensuring that participation, communication and 
critical thinking are held together, reciprocal and mutually and constantly coexisting. 
Fundamental democratic rights must be irrefutably respected and motivated in education, such 
as the right to express oneself freely, have a free, public and appropriate education, freedom 
of religious, intellectual or cultural convictions, the right and the provision of experiences that 
promote free communication between pairs and unalike. “Belief in the potentials of education 
23 
 
is an indispensable component in the democratic faith because it is only through realization 
in the life-experience of individuals in communities that democracy can flourish and be in 
turn enriched by a multitude of individual contributions” (p.85). Democracy in schools is not 
constant, fixed or permanent; it is not transmitted over time or generations, but it must be won 
under a struggle that constantly reflects the needs and problems of students.  
In order to follow the pragmatic view of education it is necessary to mention the work of 
Jürgen Habermas and his approach to the communicative action which can be directly linked 
to the democratic nature of education proposed in Dewey’s work. Habermas argues that there 
is a moral perspective of democracy that Dewey barely arouses. Instead, in education, he 
points out that the norms, values and knowledge can be legitimized through deliberation, 
cooperative and communicative action as similarly and in agreement with the importance 
Dewey relies on communication. The kind of education in the mind of Habermas is holistic 
and never focuses on the basics, rather in social engagement, mutual agreements and 
understandings through rationality (Murphy, 2013). 
 It is by communicative action and social engagement that the concept of democracy in 
education can be understood and reached. In schools, social integration of all can be possible 
when communicative action takes place. The Habermasian cooperative and communicative 
notions of education are mutually interweaved wherein any sort of communicative action may 
be regarded as cooperative because it does not look after individual success but it attempts the 
harmonization of dialogue toward better understandings. This also happens the other way 
around, when cooperative action takes place in education, ‘the better argument’ convinces 
through respect, dialogue and mutual understandings and not through power influences, force 
or thread. This mutual understandings emerging from the better arguments are the result of an 
effective communicative action and will be fundamental for a democratic education where 
better dialogue with others, better social engagement and interrelationships are part of 
student’s knowledge. Another  contribution of Habermas’ work related with the 
understanding of democratic education is part of his work on Critical Theory which, in 
agreement with the Deweyan intentions to foster critical thinking in education, indicates that 
encouraging criticism in students might result in a kind of learning which stands for change 
and justice if whenever necessary in society. Criticism and active communication in education 
are essential for students in their self-reflection, for being emancipated and to release 
themselves from any possible repressive form of life or rigid and antidemocratic ideology 
(Roth, 2001).  
24 
Paulo Freire and his democratic perceptions upon education. 
The democratic thought in education was also widely expressed by Paulo Freire. Freire 
Understood the importance of having an education for change, similarly to what Habermas 
affirmed regarding the proliferation in education of the idea of communicative action, Freire 
believed in the efficiency of dialogue, social consciousness and the power of the words as 
democratic forms to release from oppressive situations. The critical pedagogy proposed by 
Freire was concerned on how an emancipatory education can validate the discourses of the 
members of the school community and their internal cultures make them significant and 
valuable, while at the same time it empower individuals. For Freire, meaningful knowledge 
was a synonym of power, therefore, a democratic education – emancipatory as it might be 
called as well – also includes that students learn the necessary knowledge that fosters critical 
thought on them and transform into knowledgeable individuals. (Feinberg & Torres, 2014) 
The neopragmatic view of democratic education and Dewey’s criticism 
Despite the fact that John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas introduced the educational-
philosophical view of democracy in education, and the other way around, they have not been 
exempt from criticism and disagreements. In an attempt to reconstruct Dewey’s work into 
current and relevant contexts several authors have emerged in what might be called the 
neopragmatic new visions for the relationship between democracy and education. This new 
recontextualization of democratic education suggests the development of new capabilities in 
schools, aiming diversity, equality and deliberative communication (Englund, 2000). Richard 
Rorty is one of the neopragmatist whose philosophical approach to the concept of democracy 
within education has been widely discussed as a new interpretation of Dewey’s work. 
According to Rorty the democratic nature of education rests in the existing and utopian 
solidarity between individuals and do not relies much in the creation of experiences for 
participation of groups, as Dewey proposed. Accordingly, it is in the expansion of the sense of 
solidarity among individuals that the different can be included and being meaningful. The 
understanding between democracy and education can be reached during the interaction 
between learning and solidarity (Truchero, 2008). Moreover another pragmatic author, who 
takes the line of Dewey’s work but reintroduce context into present education, is Hilary 
Putnam. Beside the fact that Putnam openly recognizes the value of Dewey’s democratic 
education, he identifies two problems that need to be recontextualize in Dewey’s statements; 
25 
the first one is that education is the development of capacities in students which enable them 
to intellectually solve social problems and wherein they are empowered in the process, 
however, education should not be only perceived, as in Dewey’s mind, merely as a social 
form but as a precondition for democracy. The second problem in the democratic education of 
Dewey that requires an actualization for practical uses is his view on pluralism and the 
discrepancies with the current multicultural diversity, also in the use and understanding of 
habits and the fear of creating routines from constant habituation in experiences for 
participation (Putnam, 1990; Putnam, 1993).  
Finally, contrary to Dewey’s arguments on the mutual and reciprocal relationship between 
education and democracy as well as total integration and collective participation, are Jürgen 
Oelkers ideas about democracy in education, specifically in the notions of curriculum design 
and participation for decision-making. He states that society and schools belong to a different 
social sphere, therefore, cannot be treated as equals and mutual. Since we live in a democratic 
society and schools are not intrinsically democratic places, they cannot be compared. Oelkers 
claims that including the views, ideas and perspectives of all in participatory action might be 
dangerous, especially at the time of elaborating an educational curriculum for a whole 
community. By including different demands and interests in the curriculum there is a 
possibility of legitimize individualization and particularization of something that should 
safeguard collectiveness and public well-being. A democratic sort of education, according to 
Oelkers, must never serve to personal interests or being exposed to interference or 
fragmentation (Oelkers, 2000). 
The contemporary idea of democratic education 
The concept of democracy is a dynamic structure which renew itself through education, 
similarly as any other social structure, it require changes and transformations over time so that 
education moves toward democracy goes, and viceversa. It seems that the movements in the 
conception of a contemporary democratic education grasp the centralism of progressive views 
in education but these contemporary movements also include issues affecting current societies 
and the problematics of the 21th century. Therefore one task of a contemporary democratic 
education might be, firstly, to create democrats (democratic citizens) in order to democratize 
society. Secondly, a democratic education of the present days must face the contemporary 
problem of inclusion, which is central for the implementation of a democratic education but 
also represents one of its major challenges due to global cultural diversity. The question is 
26 
 
how to include everyone and consider their ideas, needs and demands without leaving people 
behind, so instead of excluding some and let in others, a deliberative transformation is 
necessary. This deliberative approach in education based on communication transform 
individual wants into collective needs (Biesta, 2010; Noddings, 2007). For some authors, 
democratic education is directly linked to the above mentioned problematic of diversity and 
multicultural schools. In this sense, democratic education should focus on equal participation 
of everyone regardless religion, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic or cultural background etc. 
It is a democratic education that fosters tolerance, respect and responsibilities towards others, 
accepting cultural diversity and the contributions of different groups (Gutmann, 1993; 
Gutmann, 2009; Halphin, 1998).  
Hence a democratic education proposes that the nature of democracy resides within the 
boundaries of schools, and it is expressed in democratic structures and processes that provide 
experiences. Thus, democratic schools are meant to be democratic places and where 
participation, inclusion, cooperation and collaboration rather than competition and the 
encouragement of the common good for the whole community are the general rule. 
Nevertheless the democratization of schools requires a reevaluation of curricular design and 
to reconsider and renew any repressive, antidemocratic and exclusive structures. In this way a 
new curriculum will be integrated and might include student’s questions, demands and needs 
but also would favor instances for their critical reflection and to raise their voices (Apple & 
Beane, 2007). 
The formation of a democratic society requires the pluralistic nature of the sociopolitical and 
cultural dimensions of the country. A democratic society is characterized by a critical opinion, 
free and strong, emerging from active and informed citizens. Moreover the essential 
requirements in a democratic education are to fostering interest in the educational community 
on social relations and to develop intellectual, moral and practical capacities. The also 
rationality among actors in a democratic education is based on mutual respect. The type of 
education that creates citizens with these characteristics, constantly advocates the inclusion of 
democratic freedoms, values and rights such as veracity and intellectual honesty, the ability to 
justify arguing through dialogues, without violence and promoting a critical attitude which 
allows actors to be conscious of the processes and their consequences (Meza, 2013).  
Furthermore democratic education means the solidary participation of all, by building a 
democratic social order. This solidary participation implies learning to solve conflicts as 
27 
 
something strictly necessary for a democratic coexisting in schools, but it also signifies to be 
supportive, guide and motivator of school activities, in the acquisition of responsibilities and 
making students the agents of their own educational process - empowerment of actors- . 
Schools which succeed in spreading awareness of the value of democracy among every 
participant, usually stresses the right of think differently without repercussion and the right of 
expressing oneself freely without repression (Prieto, 2003). Finally a democratic education 
should strive for accentuate the participative values of inclusion and acceptance of 
differences. There exist a profound respect for the decisions of the majority and acceptance of 
the divergent and dissenting voices of minorities. Thereupon tolerance for confronting 
opposition is a characteristic of a democratic education alongside with the capacitation of 
individuals and groups to exert criticism, with bravery, efficiency and in a constructive 
manner (Pizarro, 2003).   
Discussion 
After reviewing the previous studies on democratic education it can be determined that exist 
several agreements in the literature regarding the importance of an active participation and 
communication for all the actors involved in education. The agreements on participation are 
not conceived merely in a superficial level, where students and teachers participate 
collaboratively in school activities and have lower forms of representation. Instead, the 
literature suggested the kind of participation emerging from specific experiences oriented 
toward inclusion and participation involving change, partaking in decision-making and in the 
intellectual discussions for the design of their own educational process. Furthermore these 
agreements also include the importance of communication in education as a key aspect of the 
democratic nature of schools. This communication between groups and individuals 
materialize itself while it intends to make mutual agreements through respectful dialogue, 
constructive criticism and tolerance. When comparing the democratization of school in 
Chilean education with the democratic notions of education in the work of John Dewey, it is 
arguable to say that in Chile there has been a moderate progress in the introduction of 
discussions towards a more active participation of all educational actors. However, citizen 
participation, and specifically educative participation, still remains as a non-approached 
theme which is also never addressed in everyday life of the school. The problem of 
participation and representation is not central for policy makers, and represents a rhetorical 
resource expressed in educational laws and regulations that do not maintain an evaluative and 
advisory follow-up on school practices. These rhetorical resources, which intend an approach 
28 
 
of democracy to schools, are truly perceived as an attempt to bring the government in turn to 
public education, but contrary to what might be expected of a beneficial and democratic 
approach, it is the continuation of neoliberal practices, focused on the formation of labor 
force, oriented to the continuous performance of the students and the formation of human and 
economic capital. The social, the community and collaborative side that Dewey proposed for 
education has not been able to take the necessary force for implementing radical changes and 
to ensure an education that guarantees inclusive participation, emancipation and being for all 
actors of the educational community. Additionally in regard to the opportunities for dialogue 
and active communication in Chilean schools and the comparison with the communicative 
action theory proposed by Habermas it is fair to say that Chilean education has not even 
began the serious and formal discussion for a balance in the produced modes of 
communication that Chilean school’s structures have. The remaining hierarchical and power 
relations influencing the relationship between students and the rest of the educational 
community make impossible to establish a proper communication for radicalism. Once 
recognized the benefits of implementing the concepts expressed in the communicative action 
theory, it is important to question at what point Chilean students negotiate their 
understandings, their participation and values in order to reach mutual agreements. Also, what 
are the real chances for active communication of students where they can debate in order to 
reach these mutual agreements? How students may accept the justification of the better 
argument, if there is not a culture in schools for proper communication? In what moment 
Chilean students will learn that mutual dialogue entails freedom from oppression, control and 
hierarchical power? Even though if students are capable to reach that level of communication 
and emancipation, then, what assure them that their voices will be recognized if the modes of 
participation infantilize and diminish their contribution?. Chilean students need to be 
recognized as equal and important people. It is imperative their recognition as competent 
individuals with interesting ideas and convictions, capable students to propose and decide 
intelligently whose voices must be listened and promoted in the educational community. 
 
 
 
 
29 
 
Chapter IV 
Methodology 
Introduction 
A qualitative ethnographic design was used in order to address the research questions which 
aimed data collection and, subsequently, its proper analysis. This chapter provides a brief 
theoretical framework which helps to explain and support the chosen research design that 
upholds this study. Later it moves on through an intended thick description of educational 
ethnography as a research approach and methodological tool for data collection. The chapter 
also remarks on descriptions of the inquired physical and social setting. Additionally 
description of the research participants and their context is provided. Finally the chapter 
discusses the procedures of data analysis in the study and explains the role of the researcher in 
the field and in the life of those who have been investigated. 
A qualitative design and its degree of suitability for the study. 
The main purpose of this investigation was to uncover how democracy is expressed within 
education according to the participants’ perceptions, understandings and thoughts, but also 
living in the field and experiencing the processes, the interactions and way of living in two 
different schools in Chile. The study involved individuals who daily interact in a social 
context — students, teachers, parents, school authorities —. Certainly, a democratic approach 
to education, or rather, schooling as a democratic process, involves the introduction in 
education of concepts such as active participation and communication, integration, equality 
and awareness of hierarchical and power relations among educational actors. All these 
concepts are highly associated with complex social interactions and processes which are 
influenced by individual’s personal background, experiences, beliefs and attitudes. Due to the 
complexity of human social interactions, the kind of data collected and the inquired sources in 
the process, was it necessary to use a qualitative design which is intrinsically interpretive, 
highly inductive and made to investigate and analyze the subjectivity of social human 
interactions. A qualitative research design differs from a positivist conception of the world, in 
its epistemological and ontological orientations, but also in how it approaches to the 
relationship between theory and research. Epistemologically speaking, a qualitative research 
design is hermeneutic which in contrasting to the natural sciences, attempts to understand 
human behavior rather than to explain it. The ontological position of qualitative research 
30 
 
support the idea that the world does not only constitute itself from individuals socially 
interacting, but it sustains that social reality constantly changes and requires a reevaluation of 
its states. Moreover, social reality is constructed by individuals and is never definitive or 
unmodifiable (Bryman, 2012). The ontological consideration of qualitative research takes 
distance from objectivism whereby the social nature of human beings might be given, 
categorized or separated from social actors as in quantitative research approaches. This social 
construction is expressed in qualitative research whereby knowledge and conceptions of the 
world are built by research participants. As the theory of social constructivism suggests, 
investigating the most important experiences, thoughts, ideas and understandings of learners, 
teachers and others educational actors regarding democracy within their own school requires a 
face-to-face interaction, a social interaction in and for everyday life. This would be, by 
definition, a face-to-face interaction that represents people’s subjectivity and gives extensive 
attention to their construction of knowledge, their close expressivity and their self-perception 
of reality. Additionally, constructed realities and co-constructed knowledge differ between 
individuals depending on different social contexts (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Intentionally 
the selected research design, specifically the guidance of the social constructivism, produces 
the sort of data that rises from these face-to-face interactions and constructed knowledge, This 
data position itself is in the same line of the democratic interactions that this study was 
interested on, and the communicative knowledge created in community that were proposed by 
John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas to a great extent. The sort of close interaction that the 
social constructivist proposes describes the approach that the qualitative design attempted to 
achieve during the research process, but more specifically between the relation of the 
researcher and participants. Thus, in qualitative designs, the interaction between researcher 
and researched people is significant in two main aspects. Firstly participants and researcher 
are involved in an interactive process during the investigation, a process which coexists with 
personal beliefs, values and own notions of the same world, making the process of 
investigation dependable of these factors. In this case, the main task of qualitative researchers 
was to understand social complexity from the point of view of those who experienced and 
interpreted democracy in education. And secondly, the researcher attempts to comprehend 
their social constructions, namely, the meaning people give to facts, knowledge and daily 
situations (Salgado, 2007). 
 
 
31 
 
Ethnographic methodology. 
Ethnography was the chosen methodology to cover the investigation as a whole. Martyn 
Hammersley and Paul Atkinson in the book Ethnography: principles in practice (2007) place 
the origin of the term ethnography in the anthropology of the nineteen-century, where it was 
usually perceived as an essential anthropological fieldwork. Ethnography was initially defined 
as a qualitative tradition and an interpretative method designed to describe or inquire into an 
unknown, outsider community or culture. Afterward, at the early twenty-century, the 
characteristics of ethnographic fieldwork were related with living extended periods of time 
with a group of people, investigating, interpreting and describing their customs, beliefs and 
values. Since the 60’s onwards, ethnography has fulfilled and important role in the social 
sciences evolving into a multidisciplinary and key methodology for data collection and 
analysis in cultural studies of urban, rural, Western and Non-western societies. The shifting 
on its focus, its inductive nature and the extension of the method to a more flexible approach 
in the relation between researcher and researched, made the tradition something considered 
ambiguous and properly undefinable. Ethnography is in the process of constant redefinition 
and recontextualization in its form and function since it has been influenced over time by 
several movements and theoretical positions such as phenomenology, pragmatism, feminism, 
constructionism and post-modernism. Nowadays ethnographic research presents particular 
features for the collection, analysis and interpretation of data. It concerns on people’s actions 
and everyday contexts utilizing unstructured procedures for data collection such as participant 
observations, field notes and unstructured interviews. Furthermore it attempts to collect data 
in naturalistic settings where environments are not controlled or influenced in any manner by 
the researcher; however, the investigation process entails an impact in the reality of 
participants and, as an outcome, the relationship between researcher and the researched 
people becomes significant.  
One of the purposes of ethnographic methodology is to understand from a given context or 
setting, the different activities of a group of people, the way they interact and the social 
meanings they construct. So, in order to access the aforesaid constructions, ethnography 
involves doing research closely with informants, analyzing documents, discourses and implies 
having an active participation from both the inquirer and the inquired (Brewer, 2000). As in 
support for Hammersley and Atkinson’s view of ethnographic studies, Brewer proposes that 
ethnography must be considered as both, a method and a methodology. It is a method because 
it is regarded as a qualitative perspective which influences the view of the researcher in the 
32 
 
way he or she looks into a whole. But also, ethnography is a methodology that provides 
different ways researchers actively do research as, for example, within a physical fieldwork, 
collecting data, investigating real-life situations and participating in community. Finally, it 
might be associated to an unstructured, open and flexible methodology. The election of 
ethnography as a method and methodology seemed as the most suitable and appropriated 
decision for this study because it approaches and unifies the problematization, its theory and 
the methodology together into a holistic and integrative manner. In order to explain the 
decision: some of the main intentions of this investigation were to inquire in the processes of 
the participant’s active participation and communication, also their mutual collaboration 
among equals and their modes of daily interaction in a denominated democratic Chilean 
education. On the one hand ethnography as an approach, allowed a more flexible, open and 
unstructured standpoint of the researcher upon participants; a methodological approach 
regarded as perspective towards people and their life. Ethnography invited to dialogue, to 
made people express more freely and to be involved in non-invasive environments. On the 
other hand the election of ethnography as methodology is directly linked with its methods for 
data collection; this means that the informal conversations, participant observation and 
unstructured interviews entailed an active role of the researcher wherein participation, 
communication and constant interaction is persistent for both researcher and participants. As 
consequence, ethnography emerged in this study as the most democratic method to 
investigate, describe and build up knowledge from a reasonable, harmonious and holistic 
interconnection between the selected methodology and the democratic conceptions of the 
research topic.  
The choosing of educational ethnography as main method for investigation. 
In this chapter, ethnography is presented as the chosen method and methodology as a 
inferable approach toward a more democratic research design within its purpose and its 
function, additionally, the ethnographic design of this study  might be perceived as  a more 
participative and interactive methodology for participants and the researcher, something that 
goes hand-in-hand with the main topic of investigation. In order to go deeply in the notions of 
performing ethnography in educational settings, a subarea of ethnography seemed to be 
epistemologically essential for the nature and purpose of this research. This is how 
educational ethnography played an important role in shaping the researcher’s position and his 
standpoint, as well as his ideas regarding the context and the location where the investigation 
was carried out and the form in which it was done.  
33 
 
Educational ethnography –also called school ethnography– arouse during the early 60’s from 
the anthropological field and from the increasingly need for inquiring within educational 
settings and producing research outcomes from school studies. One of the main purposes of 
educational ethnography was to explore educational problems of special, cultural and social 
groups. Moreover it came out increasingly to champion the rights and interest of marginalized 
people. The sort of educational ethnographic research produced in those days was totally 
shaped and influenced by social responsibility and ethical implications of researchers who 
were progressively more involved in understanding problems and issues from different 
educational contexts and settings. Over the years, the conception of educational ethnography 
systematically evolved by incorporating current global issues that influence and shape 
education and the societies where it coexists such as the problems of representation, 
inequalities in education and cultural shifting targeting reproductions of class, gender and race 
(Yon, 2003).  
It was necessary to delimitate, specify and to narrow the methodology from ethnography to 
educational ethnography for one fundamental reason. This research intends to inquire and 
comprehend a global phenomenon, meaning that in the world, democracy is seen as a form of 
living, a goal to achieve of great value for many societies and cultures, therefore, democracy 
is a broad research topic to investigate which occupies considerable space and field within the 
social sciences. The qualitative approach of ethnography, as merely methodology, places its 
efforts in the holistic comprehension of a phenomenon, in the unity of that whole and not 
segmented or divided. For this reason, in order to go deeply into the research topic, 
educational ethnography presents several characteristics which facilitate the position of the 
study within the school institution; it also inserts the study inside the network of interactions 
between the actors, the teaching-learning processes and the negotiation or supply of values 
and principles. Educational ethnography inserts itself in schools, searching for educational 
processes and not educational results. In this sense, this perspective does not allow delving 
into academic results, qualifications, school performance or achievement in competitive 
international tests, but rather it is interested in the complexity of meanings, symbols and 
habits that school actors live every day (Lopez, Assael & Neumann, 1991).  Actions and 
events occurring in schools gaining meaning in the course of the investigation, they are 
contextualized, subsequently interpreted and finally they acquire significance, relevance and 
social importance. This actions and events in the life of schools actors are not meaningful 
because of the frequency they occur but due to the social impact that they exert and produce. 
34 
 
The main contribution of educational ethnography relies on its capacity to illustrate 
researchers about the educational context in question, allowing the research to understand 
daily dynamics and situations of the school. Additionally, one essential characteristic of an 
educational ethnographer is the strangeness he or she needs to look into a whole. This form of 
perceiving and interpreting educational situations and experiences must occur even if the 
researcher is a native – as it is the case in this research study – or even if the research partially 
acknowledges and recognizes the social interactions that he witnesses or is a current 
participant of the studied reality. Strangeness in the mind of the researcher allows the 
researcher to detach himself from known spaces, previous conceptions or materiality that 
seems familiar and might influence in a certain way or impact in its interpretation of observed 
and experienced situations. Moreover, remaining strange in front of a studied culture or 
reality, guarantee and maintain the capacity of the researcher for being astonished and being 
surprise with the consequences of observations, listened conversations, facts, different 
situations and interactions that in the condition as native or pertaining of the culture might be 
overlooked, irrelevant or trivial.  These overlooked situations might have an important value 
for the study and might be absolutely worthy of consideration (Alvarez, 2011).  Finally the 
produced text emerging from educational ethnography are not just narrations or merely 
descriptions of what has been observed, talked, written or listened. The descriptive nature of 
school ethnography is simultaneously analytic and interpretive; the statements made by the 
ethnographer about the experienced in schools are constantly supported empirically, by 
collecting data form a direct source, and theoretically by relying statements in the previously 
made theoretical framework. These statements justify themselves coming from real and 
concrete data which come from [“aspects of real quotidian life of the community, the school 
and the classroom, the feeling, the attitudes and the ways of implicate with other person, 
different ways of thinking and acting  in teachers, students, family members,  school 
authorities and other groups which shape educational communities.”] (Calvo, 1992, p.16).  
Describing the setting of the research: the place, the society and the education 
The process of data collection was performed in a city named Villa. This city is located within 
one of the twelve regions in Chile, South America. Villa has a population of estimated 
126.548 inhabitants and the city involves a mixture of rural and urban spaces, typical 
geographic scenario of the Chilean central coastline. The city is highly industrialized, 
governed by multinational companies and retail. It has plenty of private inversion which 
capitalizes the incoming trade from the city and it is commercialized by micro, small and 
35 
 
medium-sized enterprises. The city is a place with a varied distribution in the population in 
terms of space, sex and age. Villa – and Chile as a country in general terms – has 
experimented a increment in immigrants shifting due to its political and economic stability 
which make the country an attractive destination for thousands of people upcoming from 
other South American countries such as Venezuela, Colombia Peru and Bolivia, but also this 
shifting has been seen mostly in people from Haiti and some countries of Asia. Chile is, in 
fact, the country where immigration has grown most in comparison with any other country in 
Latin America.  
The Villian – the gentilic used for people from Villa – are mostly middle class working people 
living in the center area of the city or in the suburbs with a visible differentiation in their 
socioeconomic status. The variation in schools in Villa represents the reality of education in 
many other cities of Chile, where neoliberal policies have influenced in the establishment and 
creation of three kinds of schools. 1) Private schools: schools made for the most 
accommodated part of the population which has the means to afford the payment. Usually 
these schools counts with several resources emerging form private inversion that allow these 
schools  to provide a better quality of education, gathering highly qualified teachers who are 
receive a considerable salary and obtaining overall better results comparing with other 
schools. There are no more than three private schools in Villa. 2) Subsided-private schools: 
These schools receive support from the municipality and from private inversion, they 
represent the majority of schools in the city with at least ten or more, since most of the 
population in Villa belongs to a middle class population some of them who possess the 
necessary resources might be capable to afford these schools. 3) Public schools: There is one 
big public school in Villa. Education in these schools is totally free and most of the low-
income population study there. Public schools have historically dealt with lack of material and 
human resources, problems of infrastructure, low educational outcomes in national tests, etc.  
Describing the setting of the research: the process choosing the right schools. 
It is important to understand the setting where the experiences and understandings of the 
school community occur as consequence of using an ethnographic methodology and where 
the process of data collection and its post-analysis have taken place. In order to initiate the 
process of research and data collection, six schools were taken into consideration, after further 
deliberation and time consumption, two schools were selected for the realization of the 
36 
 
investigation and they granted complete access to the researcher. These two schools were 
chosen because of four main reasons:  
1) During the process of obtaining and negotiating access to perform ethnographic 
research in the schools, the researcher presented the aim and the purpose of the project 
to the whole six schools in order to display the main characteristics of the 
investigation and to inform school’s authorities about what would occur during the 
process. Under this manner, the concept of democratic education, and everything what 
it entails, was introduced together with descriptions and guidance of what an 
ethnographic methodology and approach implies for the school community regarding 
the post-effects of the research and its consequences. The two selected schools in 
particular demonstrated special interest for the realization of this investigation. 
Furthermore, they were willing to actively participate by putting everything necessary 
on the researcher’s disposal and introducing him from the beginning to the whole 
school community. Additionally at the beginning of the research, when access was 
obtained, one of these schools requested the researcher to prepare a presentation 
aiming the group of teachers and school authorities almost at the middle of the process 
of data collection. This request was proposed as one hour of presentation during the 
teacher’s council meeting that conducts every week in the school. Moreover the 
presentation was intended to explain, introduce and teach the conception and 
importance of a democratic education in the life of Chilean students and within 
education in general.  This presentation was, at a large extent, significant and 
meaningful for the researcher and for the investigation itself. This significance and the 
outcomes of the presentation will be presented further in the following chapters where 
the results of the research are presented and discussed. 
2) Despite the fact that both schools are similar in terms of their purposes with the 
students, their vision, function and structure –more specifically the academic 
intentions which attempt to achieve quantifiable results and have a simplistic view of 
their democratic life, namely ‘to cultivate good grades and good individuals for future 
society – schools presented several differences regarding: 1. Their financing and the 
discrepancies from where/who do they obtain their resources – their economic nature 
– one is a public school and the other one is a subsidized-private school 2. They are 
different in their sociocultural status within the reality of Chilean education, and 
finally 3. They are different in their approach to religion as an essential component for 
37 
 
the formation of the students. The subsidized-private school is a catholic one and the 
public school has a secular nature. These differences between both schools were 
interesting, worthy and considered meaningful for the purposes of the research. The 
significance of these differences will be exposed later in the results chapter.  
3) Both schools are located in a central and easy access for the researcher who, by the 
time of data collection, was living in the proximity of the schools and reaching 
closeness and creating a trust relationship with the community. Consequently, the 
proximity of the inquired physical place and the approach to the community, where 
most of the research participants live, facilitated the access and the research process on 
its own. The two schools are separated from each other in not more than one kilometer 
of distance, which made it possible to expend a lot of time doing research in both 
places without inconvenient of time consuming travel. 
4) These schools were chosen mainly because they are representative of the current 
diverse schools existing in Chile. This representativeness will be presented in the 
following section. 
Describing the setting: The chosen two schools 
The two selected schools are located in Villa in Chile, both schools have elementary school 
educación primaria – which belong to compulsory school – and educacíon media or 
secondary school. It is common in the educational system of Chile that most schools have 
both systems of education therefore the usual view of students in several schools in Chile is, 
in fact, a mixture of small kids playing around together with adolescents sharing the same 
physical space. The schools have students whose range of age is between 6 and 18 years old. 
Furthermore the two schools start their day early in the morning at 8 am, and they end the 
lessons around 3 or 4 pm. It is important to mention that between these hours, students have 1 
hour for lunch and two other separated breaks of half an hour each. These breaks were 
important for two reasons: 1) this time was used for approaching students, teachers and other 
members of the school outside the context of the classroom or the teacher council. The breaks 
were useful time for data collection as in previously agreed interviews, observations of 
students and other participants’ behaviors, writing notes or having some conversational 
interviews in the hallways of the school. 2) breaks were meaningful for the researcher as an 
ethnographer and his possibility to actively participate with the school community, especially 
during lunch and break where, beside the fact that there was a researcher observing and taking 
notes, there were major intentions for meeting new people, creating trust relationships among 
38 
 
the students and the staff; and finally becoming part of the community by sharing mutual 
affect and respect. In order to write about the inquired schools in this research was important 
to have ethical considerations and protecting their identity as an entity the identity of the 
participants, therefore the names of the aforesaid schools will be referred as SCHOOL A and 
SCHOOL B.  
SCHOOL A: This school is a subsidized-private school of the city of Villa in Chile. It is a 
catholic school with 820 students which are divided in 12 levels, two classes for each level  
from 1ro básico to 4to medio –from first year of primary school to last year of highschool– 
and having around of 36 to 40 students in every classrooms. SCHOOL A has 24 teachers and 
around 15 other members of the staff, among them, kitchen workers, the person in charge of 
IT, the cleaning and fixing staff and school authorities such as UTP unidad tecnica 
pedagogica which is the teaching unit, the inspector general, the Mother Superior, who is the 
person in charge of the Christian order of the school, and the Principal. The use of school 
uniforms is compulsory and they are demanded and listed at the beginning of every school 
year. The researcher of this investigation was invited as participant in all the Teachers Council 
Meeting which was carried out every week. The school was recognized with academic 
excellence in 2016 by the Ministry of Education providing economical resources, financing 
and funding projects and awarding good students with scholarships. The school is provided 
with renovated classrooms with TV screen in some of them and a projector in all the 
classrooms. The computer room is equipped with high-speed internet and more than 45 
computers. The school webpage share their vision and offers the following description about 
the school and their commitment with the students: 
[The duty of the SCHOOL A is to form responsible, engaged, creative and participative 
students, students provided with a solid intellectual construction based on moral and 
Christian values. The students of SCHOOL A are capable of facing the challenges of life 
when they are inserted in society. The education provided by this school has an Humanistic 
nature, it emphasizes in the social, the cognitive, physical, artistic and affective development 
of the student by considering as important all their different learning process.] During the 
middle of the process of data collection and investigation, the school requested a formal 
presentation of the research topic, the methodology and the purpose of the research. 
SCHOOL B: This school is a laic public school located in Villa, in Chile. This school has 
more than 1250 students with 12 levels and 3 classes for each level. The levels are divided as, 
39 
 
for example: 1ro basico A, 1ro basico B, 1ro basico C. This would be the equivalent to three 
different courses in 1st year of compulsory school (A, B and C). Each class has around 45 
students and only one teacher in every subject. The school has 33 teachers and more than 23 
members of the staff including authorities. The researcher of this investigation was invited as 
participant in all the Teachers Council Meeting which was carried out every week. The school 
deals in a daily basis with the problematics of having thousands of students coexisting in 
difficult environment where some of the students come from a vulnerable socioeconomic 
background and others have criminal records or other problems such as parents suffering from 
alcoholism or drugs use. This school in particular has demonstrated to have hardworking 
students who strive for obtaining good grades, regularly assisting to the lessons and moving 
forward from adversity. It is important to mention there is precariousness and vulnerability in 
the physical space of the school, namely the classrooms, the offices, the computer room, the 
kitchen, the shower and the front and backyard where students have their breaks. This 
situation adds itself to the fact that the school has little and scarcity of resources such as old 
tables and chairs inside the classroom, obsolete IT and computers and lack of proper literature 
translated in a poor library filled with old and out-of-date books. In spite of the difficulties 
presented in this school, the members of the community showed great interest and willingness 
to participate and being part of the research.  
Describing the participants: The school community 
For the purpose of this investigation several members of the school community participated 
and were taken into consideration for the process of data collection. Some of them were part 
of interviews and addressed in observations and notes written in the field. The purpose of 
researching participants using ethnographic methodologies in the school was to understand 
the current status of democracy within Chilean education, therefore, the life of the 
participants, as well as their thoughts, ideas, behavior, knowledge and experiences were 
considered fundamental for the study. It was considered important to provide a description of 
the participants because it gives context to the study and allows understanding of the persons 
from whom data was gathered. The selected participants were chosen because, according to 
the belief of the researcher, they represent in its entirety the composition of a school 
community. These people are in constant social interaction, coexisting within the confines of 
the school, communicating with each other and being mutually participant and meaningful of 
their own development. Moreover another important reason for the election of these 
participants is their natural characteristics for being significant under the perspective of 
40 
 
ethnography as an inquiring tool. The participants in this research have been denominated as: 
Students, Teachers, Parents and School authorities.  
Students as research participants. 
The research used as participant for data collection, 20 students from 7mo Basico to 4to 
Medio – 7th grade of compulsory school to last year students of high school – who were 
randomly selected from SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B. These participants have a range of age 
between 13 and 18 years old and they study together within the same physical space, in other 
words, they study and coexist in the same school. The students were interviewed in 
unstructured interviews previously agreed and consented; others had conversational 
interviews with the researcher during breaks or in the school corridors. Furthermore the 
interaction between the students, their behavior and their action were observed and recorded 
in fieldnotes. The students were initially curious by having a strange person asking questions 
and observing around, therefore, little context and explanation of the purpose of the research 
was given to the students in both schools. Later on, during the research process, the 
authorities of both schools informed about the researcher’s presence and his purpose. It is 
important to mention that all the students show themselves participative and willing to answer 
the questions of the researcher. They seemed comfortable and relaxed about been inquired.  
Teachers as research participants. 
Considering teachers as participants, was equally important than addressing the significance 
of the students as subjects of study in the investigation due to their close daily connections 
and interactions. Teachers form an essential part of the students’ life, they are meant to be 
guiders, supporters, motivators and they play an important role in the learning, flourishing and 
empowerment of the students. In this research, 15 teachers from SCHOOL A and B were 
interviewed in conversational and unstructured interviews, and where the most of them were 
observed, analyzed and they shared more than one instance of participation with the 
researcher. The process of data collection occurred during breaks and time agreed after 
school. Some of the teachers had great disposition to participate by answering openly and 
sincerely to questions, while others, refused to answer or demonstrated evident lack of interest 
to participate or being investigated. There were two major instances of participation, 
deliberation and conversation with teachers regarding the notions of democracy within 
education. The first one was a spontaneous discussion in SCHOOL B - the public school - 
which emerged in one of the Teachers Council Meeting which is organized every week by the 
41 
 
General Inspector, the UTP and the Principal of the school. The other one was a formal 
required presentation of the research topic, its methodology and the purposes of it in the 
SCHOOL A, also during the Teachers Council Meeting. In both schools, these instances of 
interactions between teachers and the researcher had great significance for the study because 
it translated itself into a major opportunity to collect data, to directly inquire, observe and to 
meet their ideas and thoughts about democratic education. Finally these invitations to the 
Teachers Council Meeting partially avoided the bureaucratic and sometimes tedious process 
of materializing informant consent or agreeing interviews with teachers.  
Parents as research participants  
While that is true that parents do not represent the formal portion of the daily social 
interactions that occur in the school, they do represent a major component in the life of the 
students. Thus parent’s relevance and their importance in the formation and learning 
processes of their children, plays a role in terms of the extension in which they participate, as 
an active part, within these processes. The integration and communication of parents with 
teachers and school authorities has been widely accepted by the school community and 
educational research. Parent’s involvement which concerns the academic programs and the 
social activities, where they have an active participation and influence regarding decision-
making, has a positive and valuable impact on the life of the students and the school 
community, their organizational composition and structure (Comer & Haynes, 1991). 
Therefore, for the purpose of this research, the parents of students in SCHOOL A and 
SCHOOL B were considered important and significant. Additionally 12 parents were asked 
about their perception on key concepts related with the democracy in the school of their 
children, their levels of participation and deliberate incidence in decision-making. 
Consequently the relation between parents and teachers/school authorities was observed and 
written down, by being the researcher a participant in such interactions. Also conversational 
and unstructured interview were mostly conducted and there was a high degree of interest and 
participation from parent’s behalf. The researcher assisted to two monthly Parents’ class 
meeting, one in each school, and one to the Parent’s Representative Council Meeting in 
SCHOOL A. These meeting were fundamental for data collection in this research. 
 
 
42 
 
School authorities as research participants  
Most of the theoretical sphere in educational research that handles the interactions and modes 
of power relations among the participants in school community refers to the interrelation 
between students and teachers. This issue is understandable considering that the nature of 
education, the process of teaching and learning and the historical principles of schooling relies 
on the conception that there exist a teacher and student. Hence, it is in this interaction 
teacher/student where relations of power and agency, meaning, affection and social 
constructions daily emerge. It is also common to state, from a critical perspective, that power 
within schools is exerted by teachers over students, influencing their worldview, shaping their 
ideas and motivations, or restricting their life and behavior to acquiesce to the normative and 
the authority.  Nevertheless, school interactions and its social constructions entail a more 
complex scenario which might involve other variables rather than just reducing its complexity 
to simple understanding of the relation between teacher and students. Accordingly, it is in this 
scenario where a relation of power and control might be analyzed by including other sources 
of influence or other groups of people that daily interact within the school boundaries. School 
authorities, in this case, are an important and always present part of the social sphere of the 
school; school authorities have the absolute power and control over all the other members of 
the community and they have major influence in decision-making. Thus, in consequence, 
every idea, project, modification of the curriculum or the pedagogies, any change or addition 
in the pre-established normative of the school have to be primarily handle, assessed and 
approved by the school authorities. Additionally, this group of people sits on the top of the 
pyramid of command; assessing all the members of the school, deciding the participation of 
parents in the education of their children and constantly supervising the performance and the 
behavior of teachers and students, in order to maintain control and order. Finally, for the 
purpose of this study, inquire a Chilean democratic education must consider a perspective that 
includes school authorities as a powerful influence which directly impacts the democratic 
options and opportunities of the rest of members in the school community. School authority is 
a chain of command within the school, similarly as if it was a militarized place where 
hierarchy matters at a great scale, and controls over how people are placed, treated and 
considered as a whole. 
This research study considers the school authorities in SCHOOL A as the General Inspector, 
the Superior Mother, The U.T.P who is the Pedagogical-Technical Unit in Spanish, and the 
Principal. On their behalf, SCHOOL B has, as school authorities, the General Inspector, The 
43 
 
Pedagogical-Technical Unit, and the Principal. The relationship with these authorities was 
friendly, cordial and inviting; always open to dialogue and communication. There were 
several unstructured and conversational interviews with all the school authorities in SCHOOL 
A and SCHOOL B, there were also many observations during their duty in schools and 
fieldnotes written down which reflected their behavior and their attitude toward the rest of the 
community.  
The process of data collection and its methodological techniques. 
The process of data collection of this research demanded 1 month and 3 weeks of 
ethnographic fieldwork. It initiated in February 12th in SCHOOL A and February 14th in 
SCHOOL B, when teachers and others members of the school community began the 
preparation and the planning of the school year. The process of data collection ended in both 
schools in March 27th when the researcher finalized his work at the schools and returned to 
Sweden. The researcher expended nearly three hours in each school from Monday to Friday 
with some exceptions. Therefore, the process of data collection and inquiry with a physical 
presence of the researcher in the schools concluded with around 230 hours of fieldwork. 
These hours were split for data collection in:   
• Lunch breaks and other leisure time. 
• Recreational time for students and teachers. 
• At least nine lessons inside a classroom in different subjects and levels, actively 
participating with students and teachers. 
• Assisting to two Parent’s Meeting in SCHOOL A with the presence of parents and the 
head teacher of that class. 
•  Participating and being part of one invitation to the monthly Parent’s Council Meeting 
in SCHOOL B where parents usually meet and discuss school issues. 
• Assisting to at least five Teacher’s Council Meeting, three in one school in two in the 
other. These meetings had the presence of the school authorities and all the teachers of 
the school. One of these meetings had a formal presentation in SCHOOL A about the 
research purpose and its main theme. 
The sampling of the research included participants with ages that range between 13 to 69 
years old who were categorized as students, parents, teachers and school authorities. These 
participants were randomly selected or they participated voluntarily because of their own 
44 
 
interest for being part of the process of inquiry. The intentions of randomized the sampling 
attempted to deliver a sense of equality and diversity in the research, this might have been 
reached, perhaps, by the conceivable thought that every member of the school community has 
a possible and real perception, experience or understanding on the topic of democracy  within 
education. Accordingly, it is acknowledged that the sampling might seem broad with respect 
to an ethnographic study and it might deal with the problematization of credibility and 
reliability. However, the sampling is regarded as representative of the school community, it 
covered the depth that was searched and made the process of research a more participatory 
and democratic instance. Finally, it is believed that the decision of considering the whole 
school community as a valuable and reliable source of data, gave the research an open-ended 
exploratory nature. 
In order to collect data, different procedures were adopted and used according to different 
situations and within of different instances. There were three main qualitative methods, which 
are characteristic of most ethnographic research, that were essential for data collection and its 
subsequent analysis.  Most of the process in participant observation where verbal interaction 
occurred, in addition to the data of all the interviews and conversations in the research was 
gathered by a voice recorder SONY ICDBX140 which allowed the researcher to have access 
to verbal data and to possess a register of all the interactions in digital audio files in the 
researcher’s personal notebook. The chosen data collection techniques were participant 
observation, unstructured and conversational interviews and the writing of fieldnotes. 
Participant observation  
Participant observation was part of the whole process of investigation in both schools from 
the very first days of negotiation the entry to the community, until the last day of inquiry in 
the schools. Participant observation is an important component of ethnographic research since 
it places the researcher in a stand position of privilege respect of the objectivity nature of a 
phenomena but it does not give complete exclusivity of social reality due to the disparity in 
the concepts of participation and observation. An ethnographer cannot observe objectively 
from distance as if he or she examines a subject for further description; and the ethnographer 
cannot participate entirely with a strange community as if he or she completely belongs as a 
native or knowledgeable of their social reality –despite the fact that this was the reality of the 
researcher–. Therefore ethnographers must involve themselves in a high degree of 
participation in order to grasp, through observation, the most important insights of people, 
45 
 
emerging from experiencing sociocultural empathy. Participant observation allow researchers 
to balance the positive side of active participation and the subjective side of observation by 
looking into the large and wide picture of social realities and analyzing, comparing, criticizing 
and creating their own understanding based on these experiences. Participant observation 
encourages the actors of an inquired field to actively contribute and participate, sharing 
knowledge and experiences (Murchison, 2010).  
Using this research technique for data collection, the researcher approached the field seeking 
direct interaction with the participants, grasping the meanings of their social life by 
experiencing their own life within the process of schooling. The researcher took part in every 
possible moment of group activity, formal meetings of parents and teachers and other instance 
that involved social interaction. These instances were acknowledged as essential and valuable 
chances for witness, firsthand, the spheres of behaviors, interactions, interrelations, 
perspectives, understandings and world views.  Additionally the researcher, in an initial state 
was regarded as a strange; however after a few days of fieldwork he behaved, shared and felt 
as part of the community, not only due to the intentions and purposes of the research, but also 
because of the pleasant and friendly environment that was achieved among the members of 
the community. The process of participant observation in both schools led to a relationship of 
mutual understanding, a high sense of respect for the work of the researcher and for the life of 
the participants, and finally, the researcher obtained a profound sentiment of responsibility 
toward the life of the participants within the school in two aspects: 1) To have a constant state 
of mind which include proper ethical considerations that protect and safeguard the social , 
physiological and physical integrity of the members of the school community. 2) The 
responsibility of addressing, reporting and to properly inform the state of democracy within 
education of both schools since, in the eyes of the researcher, the democratic life of school 
members must be protected and regarded as a sensitive topic of national importance.  
Interviews 
As related with interviews one might validate them as a reliable and useful resource for data 
collection because of their constant use in the methodology of ethnographic studies; and 
because interviews have demonstrated to be, as productive and necessary as participant 
observation, in the field of social sciences. Interviews are described, to a certain extent, as 
conversations governed by roles and rules. In a formal level of description and definition, 
interviews occur when “one person takes the lead and asks as series of questions of others. 
46 
 
The other has agreed that this is to be a special form of conversation, and is prepared for his 
or her views to be continuously questioned without the usual ability to be able to return the 
question. The topics to be covered are largely under the control of the ‘interviewer’, and the 
‘interviewee’ is expected to have opinions or information on each of the questions asked”. 
(Walford, 2007, p. 147). Interviews are expected to be meaningful and to have social 
significance for the study by reconstructing and reproducing interviewees’ experiences, 
knowledge, opinions and different perceptions over daily life issues. Additionally, interviews 
are often exposed to certain conditions which make ethnographers ask themselves if answers 
truly constitute reality in their nature, core and essence. Accordingly, conditions such as 
continue lack of veracity, avoidance of particular questions, misinformation and sudden 
change of perception and opinion over an specific topic might be problematic trying to 
consider these data as worthy and reliable. However, an ethnographic interview, as Walford 
states, involves all forms of conversations: the formal, the informal, those with a certain 
structure and the ones that seems not having much importance. Through interviews, 
ethnographers are more interested to achieve previously contemplated objectives, understand 
participants’ perceptions and experiences on a particular topic and to put their efforts into 
answering their research questions. In this research study, two different types of interviews 
were used: conversational and unstructured interviews. These kinds of interviews were mainly 
used because they were considered as suitable with the ethnographic approach and its 
methodology.  
Unstructured interviews 
The use of unstructured interviews, in contrast with structured or semi-structured interviews, 
consists in asking open-ended questions to participants which, through an inductive manner, 
attempts to understand the perception of participants on a particular social issue or reality. 
Unstructured interviews do not employ questionnaires or a pre-design set of questions, 
whereas they utilize vague questions which might lead the conversation to where the 
researcher would like to go, but always leaving enough space and freedom so that participants 
might express themselves openly in front of any question (Firmin, 2012). The use of this data 
collection technique in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B was crucial in this investigation for two 
main reasons: Firstly unstructured interviews are particularly rich providing depth in the 
answers of the participants which allow them to give detailed information about a phenomena. 
Secondly, for ethnographic purposes, they are a powerful source for data collection and 
gathering information in a daily basis, in natural conversations of everyday interaction.  
47 
 
Conversational interviews  
The importance of conversational interviews in an ethnographic study is reflected as follows: 
“In making use of conversational interviews in prolonged fieldwork, ethnographic 
interviewers are better able to emulate the spontaneity of conversation in their interviewing 
practice when they pose casual questions to participants about what is going on as part of 
their participant observations. Qualitative researchers must abide by institutional procedures 
for informed consent, and the requirements for obtaining written or oral consent from 
participants for their participation in research also deviate from everyday conversation. 
Thus, conversational interviewers must work against these formal constraints by 
simultaneously orienting participants to the purpose of upcoming interaction and setting an 
informal and casual tone for extended conversation” (Roulston, 2012, p. 2).  
In this research, a conversational interview entailed the researcher elaborating briefly on what 
implies a democratic education within the school and then lead the conversation to that topic 
motivating the participant to elaborate profoundly and providing details, experiences and 
thoughts regarding that topic and all that might come to his or her mind in that moment. This 
technique of free conversation without a structure or boundaries in relation to the participant’s 
expansion over a topic permits to obtain a great amount of data which hinder, at some point, 
the process of post analysis due to its vagueness and ambiguity. However the expansion and 
openness that emerges from conversations brings major details and richer data. As Roulston 
states, this sort of conversations creates a more friendly environment wherein participants feel 
comfortable and free to expound on and share their perceptions and understandings over 
democracy in schools.   
In this ethnographic research, both kinds of interviews demonstrated to be emancipatory and 
empowered to participants due to their high degree of freedom, participation and treatment as 
equals in front of the ethnographer, who has attempted to convey his theoretical approach to 
the methodology of this research.  
 
Fieldnotes  
Fieldnotes are considered the basis of ethnographic research whereby a consensus after 
academic differences and similarities regarding its definition and utilization might be set out 
as a written record of what has been seen, heard, thought and perceived. These notes are 
deliberatively taken in respond the limitations of memory and where ethnographers write 
48 
 
down dates, time, thick descriptions of the physical space where research is been carrying 
through, also reflections and thoughts about the materiality and their perhaps existing 
meaning and significance for people. Furthermore some ethnographers utilize huge amount of 
fieldnotes while in the field and some others write the necessary under their consideration for 
further expansion and analysis. The challenges of ethnographic fieldnotes are related to grasp 
from their expansion, the most significant and valuable data for the purpose and 
problematization of the research, and create from them something structured, with an 
understandable form and fuller in relation to their function and meaning (Walford, 2009). 
Together with the data generated from interviews, the work and post-analysis of fieldnotes 
was one of the most challenging and demanding task during the process of data collection in 
this research. At least one hundred pages of writing were handled and created in a blending of 
descriptions of what was seen, heard and perceived in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B, but this 
process also included a simultaneous analysis of the situations. Thus the process of writing 
fieldnotes involved a double work and treatment of data. Firstly, fieldnotes were written as 
empirical descriptions of everyday life interaction in the schools, and secondly, fieldnotes 
were simultaneously written by managing interpretation and analysis.  
The implications of working in the field: The role of the researcher and the consequences of 
ethnographic research. 
It is important to clarify the procedures of the ethnographer during the process of research 
since this makes it transparent and gives to the investigation more credibility and veracity. 
Ethnographic research tends to provide satiating descriptions of the research procedures 
conducted in the field. This description has relation with writing accurate and interesting 
narratives of the methodological work since, for ethnographic research, the methodology has 
a major significance due to the reliance of the approach on its methods. Providing a narrative 
filled with thick descriptions of the methods and procedures of the ethnographer, in addition 
to the implications and consequences of his stay in the inquired place, is a very important 
issue to address in the methodological framework of any research study. I argue that the role 
of the ethnographer impacts not only on himself as researcher, affecting emotions, the humor, 
his previous knowledge and his personal background; but mostly have an effect in those who 
are being investigated. This role had three main stages that where part of the process. 
1) The access, in a primarily instance, entailed to compromise the identity of the 
researcher from the beginning, introducing himself as a student from Gothenburg 
49 
 
University and currently studying in the International Master program of Educational 
Researcher. It was explained that the oncoming research was part of the process of 
writing the Master thesis and the schools are the places where data collection would 
take place. In addition in both schools the main topic of investigation was revealed in 
addition with the purpose of the research. As Walcott (2009) suggested in one of his 
several articles about ethnography, the researcher carefully attempted to detach 
himself from initial prejudices or preconceived ideas over any matter or particular 
issue, always trying to learn and apply the formal rules and routines of the school 
normative, and constantly integrating respect as an essential component in the research 
process. This distance over pre-conceptions and pre-knowledge about a setting was a 
difficult task, and frequently problematic due to the condition of the researcher as a 
native of the country, an older student of the city and as an integrant of the educational 
community as former teacher in the region. It is a hard work to keep in mind and to 
exert the labor of strangeness in a known setting. Consequently the researcher 
attempted to distance himself from previous experiences that might affect the work 
which was proposed in a natural, foreign, strange and unknown setting, a place filled 
with events and new things that must be uncovered and studied. Nevertheless the truth 
says that the ethnographer in this research is part of the community, a person who has 
worked before within Chilean education in schools, by interacting with students and 
communicating with other colleagues. The social reality of the ethnographer has an 
influence in the research itself, since he has been part of the setting and the context, 
but additionally, he has actively worked with the inquired participants –he worked 
with different students but students of the same age and level–. The implications of the 
study initially start impacting the life of the researcher after attempting behave as a 
stranger but naturally belonging to the community. These implications had an 
important incidence on the research results and in the overall perspective of the 
researcher in relation to the problematization of the research, namely, the democracy 
perceived in the schools. The consequences of doing research in this setting took 
immediate significance after the access was granted and the process of data collection 
began. This is how, for example, the compulsory and imposed use of school uniforms 
in both schools evoked in the researcher personal recollections that evidenced a 
connection between the research topic, the school as a physical space and the routines 
as a form of materiality of schooling. This research consider the theoretical 
perspective of the materiality in schools as important because, as school uniforms did, 
50 
 
the objects, the spaces and the routines recover meaning in the in the life of the 
educational processes in former students. There is a life of meaning, social emotions 
and history in the memories about educational objects, routines and school spaces, 
something that had most of their significance invisible in the eyes of researchers and 
people involved in educational research, but that have been important a as a part of 
past recollections or previous experiences (Lawn & Governor, 2005). In the eyes of 
the researcher of this study, his own personal recollections about past experiences of 
schooling and the abstract character of school uniforms, their obligated use and their 
importance as subjects of inquiry which represents major forms of oppression, control 
and power exertion in educational institutions, will be important along with the 
research analysis and for answering the research questions of this investigation. The 
recollections of the researcher regarding school locations and routines altogether with 
the meaning of school uniforms and its significance in the life of the researcher and for 
the purposes of the research will be addressed as research results in the next chapter. 
 
2)  Doing educational ethnography implies the researcher to be aware of how best to be 
around people, in this case, to know what entails to be around students, teachers and 
others school members seemed to be necessary and important for the purpose of this 
educational ethnographic research. However, ethnographic work involves much more 
than simply learning ‘how to be around’ or ‘being there’ with people. The role of the 
ethnographer is to primarily negotiate access to complex social networks and to create 
social relationships with the research participants from that point. This role is certainly 
not about to befriend with subjects in any matter but rather to empathically connect 
and understand them by reading and comprehending the social situations they are 
involved in. It is important also being aware of the reciprocities that create from 
mutual agreement and understanding, in the sense that people accept being inquired 
and asked; and the researcher assume a position of respect and objectivity toward 
school members, recognizing every emerging emotion from the self as an inquirer and 
from the participants as subjects. Further, the mediating role of the researcher 
attempting to understand the social life of the participants, helping them to make sense 
of their own processes and social constructions, sharing their routines and daily 
activities, and actively participating in the process of data collection seems to be 
crucial to a successful ethnographic work in educational settings (Mills & Morton, 
2013)  
51 
 
Considering the above perspective, it is important to mention that social relationships 
were immediately created from the moment that the research initiated. At the 
beginning, the researcher was seen and treated as a stranger by the members of the 
school community. In that moment, the only thing school members knew about the 
researcher was that he is a native and that he could speak their same language. The 
initial approach to the members from and upon the researcher was prudent and distant. 
Then, as days went by, the curiosity of students, teachers and some parents became 
noticeable, making questions and observing the work of the researcher all the time, as 
if the roles were reversed.  Subsequent to the initial presentation and brief explanation 
of the purpose and presence of the ethnographer, a cordial relationship of mutual trust 
was established with most of the school members which allowed an active 
participation in different activities in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B, such as the 
presentation and speech of the Principal the first day of school and the welcome dinner 
at the beginning of the school year. The researcher had the opportunity of talk and 
share with students and teachers during every break from Monday to Friday and to 
visit several lessons in different subjects and levels inside the classrooms, directly 
witnessing social interaction between teacher and student. Moreover, with the passing 
of the days, several more students and other members of the school community knew 
the purpose of the investigation and the inquired topic of it. As consequence, the 
members of the school community were not only demonstrating curiosity and respect 
toward the work of the researcher, but rather, they showed great interest in 
participating and being part of the investigation, especially students and teachers. In 
this phase of the research the role of the ethnographer attempted to integrate the ones 
who were willing to participate and to make this research part of their own experience. 
After adopting this position, several students and teachers approached trying to have 
conversation, a revealing of their experiences, ideas and own notions of democracy 
within education. It would be precise to say that one could breathe the necessity of 
these participants for being heard and understood. In this sense, the role of the 
researcher evolved into something more similar to guider, a teacher, an adviser or a 
counselor. During this process of mutual interest of students and teachers for the 
investigation, combined with the established social relationships of trust and respect 
between researcher and participants, there was a production of plenty of data which 
was recorded and analyzed.  
 
52 
 
3) As previously mentioned the role of the ethnographer changed over the curse of the 
investigation. Initially seen as a stranger, later one as a native member of the local 
community, as a teacher, as a researcher and finally as a school adviser. These 
characteristics of the ethnographer were not formal or real in practice but it was the 
feeling of being present in the field was what represented those changes in the role. 
The nature of the role of the ethnographer was not deliberately modified, but the 
characteristics of his work required assessment and arrangement regarding the process. 
In consequence, the role of the researcher during the investigation marks a milestone 
in the research process and the results of it, as there was a before in the general 
conception of a democratic education in both schools, and then, after the presence of 
the researcher there was an extra approach in their understandings and new 
perspectives regarding democracy inside schools. This milestone will be addressed in 
the research results. 
Data analysis 
The process of data analysis in qualitative ethnographic research entails arduous work, it is a 
delicate and complex procedure which entails great amount of data that must be managed, 
interpreted, analyzed and even cast aside due to its suitability with the process. The collection 
of data sometimes leads to the simultaneous analysis of it, putting focus on some of the data 
or disregarding some other. The absence of an analytical strategy might lead into huge 
amounts of data without a proper discussion on the data itself, this means that fieldnotes 
would not be part of the generality of the study due to its unreliability. Additionally improper 
data selection or categorization would signify questionable raw data, based on simplistic 
interpretations of social reality (Goetz & LeCompte, 1981). Indeed, data analysis implies a 
constant reflection work over data, which will facilitate the later work of organization and 
selection (Creswell, 2014). Additionally data analysis is regarded as essential for the process 
of research in terms of its credibility and involves ‘dissecting’ the data into parts and adding 
the ethnographer’s impressions, observations and real meaning to these parts (Alvarez, 2011). 
Furthermore data analysis in ethnographical studies might include descriptions, interpretations 
and explanations of social issues in the life of a group or community. This process in an 
ethnographic qualitative research must be addressed and it needs to specify the steps which 
allow “making sense of data in terms of the participants’ definitions of the situation, noting 
patterns, themes, categories and regularities” (Cohen, 2007, p. 461).   
53 
 
In ethnography, the analysis of data   involves preliminary thick descriptions of the 
participants and the setting in where the research was carried out, additionally, these 
mentioned ethnographic analysis concerns the creation and uses of themes, situations and 
issues as categories or codes in forms of description and later writing (Creswell, 2009). Most 
qualitative researchers trust the analysis of data on systematic, structured and organized 
procedures which might help to support research’s reliability. These approaches, among 
others, are grounded theory and content analysis which have been widely used in qualitative 
research and some aspects of both approaches have been regarded as useful for this research 
such as coding of GT and the inductive interpretation of data which is common in content 
analysis, nevertheless, the whole use of  this strategies for data analysis seem inappropriate 
since they demand preparation, a proper learning of these strategies and considerable amount 
of time (Bryman, 2012; Cohen, 2007). Moreover the approach that entails grounded theory 
and content analysis are, at a great extent, contradictory with the nature of the present research 
perspective and its methodology whereas the general aim is to investigate using a democratic, 
flexible and open structure whereby research data has been treated and managed as such.  
In his helpful guide for qualitative researchers, Creswell (2009) provides a description of 
general procedures that he regards as prominent for the handle of qualitative data. These 
procedures have been taken into account by the purposes of this research. Data analysis was 
carried out according the following procedures: 1) Organization and preparation of data. 2) 
Revision of data. 3) Coding process. 4) Generation of themes or categories 5) Representation 
of data.  
 
Organization and preparation of data  
Data was organized and prepared for analysis both manually and digitally in a computer. No 
computer software was used in the process of data analysis in spite of the awareness of the 
researcher of the software NVivo which might be helpful providing an organized storage 
system and the data files can be readily accessed, additionally the researcher can locate units 
of data easily and it can be coded with several numbers of codes so that data can be retrieved 
and organized in any number of patterns and themes limited only by the researcher’s 
inductive insights and creativity. However, due to time limitations and the ignorance of the 
researcher regarding the proper use of the software, the idea was rejected. As consequence, 
the researcher used the common folders of the computer as valuable option to organize, 
prepare and store data collected. Thus, all the fieldnotes were transcribed and typed up into 
Word files, all audio files were stored in folders and the interviews and conversations were 
54 
 
translated from Spanish into English – a process which resulted in one the most demanding 
work during the investigation in terms of time and difficulty – these were also typed up in 
Word files and stored in folders. 
 
 
Revision of data 
The second step involved reading and listening through all the data available. These facilitate 
the process of obtaining a “general sense of the information and to reflect on its overall 
meaning” (Creswell, 2009, p.185). At this moment researchers attempts to understand and to 
have a general idea of the tone of the participant’s answers. This second step of data analysis 
entailed listening personal audio files recorded in the field with different descriptions and 
analysis of what was heard or observed. Additionally all the transcribed interviews, 
conversations and fieldnotes were carefully read. Additional notes emerged from this analysis 
of data, a process that seems to be recurrent every time data is segmented or a piece of it is 
carefully analyzed. The analysis of data creates new data, to put in simple words. 
 
Coding process 
 The codification of data is a troublesome and complex procedure but usually employed in 
qualitative research. This investigation utilizes some of the features of the codification of data 
becoming form Grounded Theory. Grounded Theory is an inductive general methodology 
which its purpose is to generate theory emerging from data. In this, previous data collection 
and the analysis of it is regarded as systematic and acknowledges that the world of the 
participants is naturally integrated and interconnected. People create and make connections in 
everyday life and Grounded Theory systematizes those interactions and interconnections 
using systematic methodologies. The process of coding in Grounded Theory involves 
segmenting and chunking data, attempting to easily grasp a better understanding of the 
meanings in the life of people (Cohen, 2007).  
The process of coding in Grounded Theory is simplified and eased in the writings of Bryman 
(2012) and Charmaz (2006), who establish two phases of coding that have been understood 
and important for this research:  initial and selective coding. Initial coding, on the one hand, 
gives detailed codification of every piece of writing providing primary assumptions, ideas and 
impressions of the collected data. This, in an initial stage goes from the general to the specific. 
As it is in the process of this research, texts analysis are covered with written several codes 
which describes, for example, the research participants, their roles within the school, their 
55 
 
levels and age, the influence over other members of the school, their modes of participation, 
their perception over democratic education, the power relations among members, the role the 
religion, the authority as a form of repression, the extent of communication, collaboration and 
integration among members, etc.  
With the utilization of selective coding, on the other hand, the researcher put his focus on the 
most relevant, revealing and interesting characteristics of the initial coding process. The 
proper analysis and selection of the codes was fruitful for later categorization and a possible 
meaningful interrelation between codes (Bryman, 2012; Charmaz, 2006).  
 
Generation of themes and categories  
In consideration with being consequent and coherent with the approach and methodology of 
this investigation, it is acknowledged that a proposal toward a codification of data must 
differentiate itself from any rigid structure of codification that might stereotype the 
perspectives of the participants into codes, codes that might assume that the social reality of 
the participants is solely the one that has been initially categorized. The fundamental idea of 
codify in this investigation is to provide a reduction and an order of the data and, in this way, 
to facilitate the possibility of interrelate codes, groups and categories; or that through analysis 
it might emerge new codes. The codification has manifested in relation and according to the 
studied communities, in an ethnographic way; but most importantly, demonstrating 
consequence in the procedure of how they have been inquired. The labeled codes written in 
this research have not put in a frame the life meaning of the social interaction in participants, 
neither have arisen boundary lines between groups or categories because the fundamental 
intentions are to comprehend as whole and not from the constant fragmentation. For these 
reason, the inclusion of themes and categories have been important. Themes and categories 
rise from descriptions and analysis of codes, they can be part of additional and more complex 
layers of analysis within an ethnographic research, and usually, being part as a narrative or a 
major finding in the study.  
 
Representation of data   
This process entails the representation of the above created themes and categories. As a final 
treatment of data this involves the use of the previous descriptions, stating interconnections 
among themes and creating narratives of findings. The representation of the data was, in this 
ethnographic research, the whole conception in the mind of the researcher of the state of 
democracy within both schools; it also signified a major drawing of what happens in the 
56 
 
schools setting and in the social life of the participants and their relation with the school 
democracy. Representation of data translated in the facts that would be presented as research 
results.  
 
Chapter V 
Presentation of research results 
Introduction 
In this chapter the results obtained during the process of data collection in SCHOOL 1 and 
SCHOOL 2 will be presented. As it was stated in the methodological section, data was 
previously collected and meticulously analyzed by the categorization of codes and themes.  
This data was collected using a qualitative ethnographic methodology which inquired, during 
almost two months into the life and daily interactions between students, teachers, parents and 
school authorities. These participant’s interactions and social constructions were taken into 
account regarding their experiences, perceptions and understandings on the topic of a recently 
introduced democratic education proposed by the General Law of Education enacted in 2009. 
According the interpretation and analysis made by the ethnographer, the most significant and 
relevant elements have been added as research results. The process of interpretation of data 
has meant a reassessment of the current state of democracy in education, based on the history 
of democracy in the Chilean context previously stated in the problematization of this research. 
Additionally, the democratic education and values intended to be included in education by the 
LGE have been constantly compare and interrelated with the conception of a democratic 
education included in the theoretical framework of this research. The main purpose of this 
chapter is to describe and present the most significant results of this study. The results will be 
presented organized into themes according the experiences of the researcher in the field and 
the data collected.  
The compulsory use of school uniforms, militarization as a form of control and imposed dress 
code among students and teachers: unjustified formalisms. 
The first signs of democracy were inquired within both schools, and are addressed in the 
interrelation between the mandatory use of school uniform and the notions of control, power 
and vigilance exerted by the school authorities. Primarily, both schools A and B specified the 
norm about the use of uniforms at the middle of February 2018, one month before students 
57 
 
and teachers initiated the school year. The uniform norm came as a remainder for parents and 
guardians in the official website of both schools. This is one extract of the message sent in in 
the official website of SCHOOL A, reminding the compulsory norm established by the 
School Environment and Discipline Regulation Plan (PCED in Spanish):  
[Dear parents: we are glad to inform you that the PCED has already posted the rules for 
school uniform from 1st year of primary school to 4th year of high school corresponding to the 
school year 2018. Please note that any accessory such as: scarf, woolen hat and gloves must 
be navy blue color. For males: classic grey pants tight to the hip, a black belt, traditional white 
shirt, the official school tie, grey socks, black shoes, official school sweater with the official 
school insignia attached on it and white school protective apron. For females: formal grey 
skirt, traditional white shirt,  the official school tie, white socks, black shoes, official school 
sweater with the official school insignia attached on it, white school protective apron, hair 
bands and clips must be blue or black. In relation to the formal appearance of the students: 
males and females must have a regular haircut; we encourage male’s students to have a short 
a proper haircut adequate to the norms of the schools, and female’s students to wear a bun in 
the hair. Additionally, it is not allowed to have painted or long nails and the use of cosmetics 
in the school.]    
Both schools reiterated in several occasions – especially before the school year began – the 
pre-established norms and rules regarding the clothing and the appearance of the students. In 
this sense, SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B highlighted from the beginning, the obligatory nature 
of wearing school uniforms for all the students. During the stay in the field of both schools, 
the researcher noticed the strictness in the compliance of the norms, observing that several 
students who did not wear some part of the school uniform were primarily reprehended and 
sanctioned with a negative observation in their gradebook – a register book in each level 
which contains the grades, but also the attendance record, and all the information about each 
student in relation to their performance, behavior and discipline. This register is expressed in 
the form of positive or negative written observations made by the teachers –. When a student 
accumulates three negative observations, his or her parents are called to the school and the 
student is suspended for a period of three days.  
What stands out more from this situation is not only the rigidity of the schools in their 
attempts to meet the pre-established norms, but to realize that the schools do not respect a 
governmental educational law enacted in 2015 – Ley de Inclusion in Spanish – which states 
58 
 
that school uniforms are no longer obligatory in the Chilean educational system and that 
schools cannot suspend students or denote the action of not wearing school uniforms as a 
negative observation or as a lack of discipline on the students behalf (Ley de Inclusion N.º 
20.845, 2015).  In fact, after three years of promulgation of the law that incapacitates all 
educational institutions to provide the nature of compulsory to school uniforms, most of the 
schools have not entirely comply with the norm and most schools in Chilean education still 
mandate the use of uniforms. According to the later, the Principal of SCHOOL A was asked 
about the remaining use of school uniforms in his school despite of the statements of the 
Inclusive Law of 2015. He answered as follows: 
Principal: [We are informed about the law and we are reconsidering to modify the internal 
norms and rules about the use of school uniforms, maybe they might come to the school with 
the official sportswear but this is a decision that must be taken including the parents and the 
students] 
Researcher: [But it has been almost three years since the law forbid schools to force students 
to wear uniforms, why are the students still getting suspended or being sanctioned in their 
gradebook because they don’t use some part of the uniform?] 
Principal: [Take a look about how we both dress… - we dress formal clothing- , we are in a 
formal context were students come to learn and they need to wear their uniforms because they 
are part of this school. But I can give you two more other reasons why we encourage students 
to wear school uniforms. One is because we believe that their uniforms help them to behave 
according the school norms and they know that they represent an institution inside and outside 
the school, and second we want to prevent bullying among students since not everyone has a 
good economy that allow them to buy good pants or t-shirts so they don’t harass each other 
comparing their clothing.] 
The answers that the principal provides supporting the use of school uniforms are reasonable 
and justifiable, considering that wearing school uniforms are mostly conceived in the 
academic field and in the available theory as a synonym of safety, equality and discipline. As 
Sue Stanley emphasizes in her article School uniforms and safety (1996) stating that the 
promotion of uniforms has several benefits and advantages among people such as in their 
general sense of membership and belonging, contributing to their feelings of safety and 
responsibility towards the institution that the uniform represents. Stanley sates also that in the 
context of educational policies the use of school uniforms has improved discipline, academic 
59 
 
performance, student achievement and respect among the school members. Additional main 
arguments from students, parents and teachers in favor of school uniforms emerge justifying 
how they reduced discrimination due to social status and socioeconomic differences, by 
distance schools from fashion discrepancies. In this way uniforms motivate peer acceptance 
by building paths of unification among different sociocultural groups and soften the dynamics 
of tension that often involves diversity and ethnicity (Stanley, 1996; Burkemper, 2008). As 
opposite to the later, disagreement among students and teachers is shown regarding the 
benefits of the mandatory implementation of school uniforms since they might restrict self-
expression, freedom and creativity as an imposed dress code (Park, 2013). Additionally the 
lack of empirical studies supporting the benefits of wearing school uniforms question the 
positive attitude toward this kinds of implementations. Accordingly some students believe 
that wearing any sort of clothing must be a life choice rather than an enforced imposition by 
the school or any authoritarian educational policy which do not consider the rights of free 
expression, uniqueness and individuality (King, 1998, p. 34). The discrepancies that emerge 
from both perspectives made the researcher to question what is it that makes schools to oblige 
students to wear uniforms.  
Hence the value of a material-discursive perspective emerges by playing an important role in 
considering how school uniforms, in the form of an object, entail historical, sentimental and 
social meaning as a significant issue in the life of the school community. The perspective of 
materiality of schooling establishes that school spaces and objects are given meaning from the 
perspective of those who have a story, a past, a recollection or a routine which involves real 
interaction, feelings, sensations, and physical and psychological reactions with the materiality 
within the context of the school (Lawn & Governor, 2005; Rasmussen, 2014). For example, 
Björn Nolin in his the article School jailhouse: discipline, space and the materiality of school 
morale in early-modern Sweden (2016) describes how a school jail, that was introduced in 
Sweden in order to shape behavior and encourage order among students through 
imprisonment and physical punishment, evolved over time into other modes of discipline and 
approaches. His article is based on materiality of the school and describes how behind the 
incarceration of students and the use of traditional tools for physical punishment, lie 
repressive forms of school discipline, extreme isolation and hunger in students . Following his 
principal theory expressed in his theoretical framework, Nolin states that “educational space, 
materiality, objects, and social routines must be seen as interrelated, and can only be 
sufficiently understood if put in a particular social and historical context and also by 
60 
 
recognizing the discourses that activate and link them. The relational as well as the 
contextual element is thus central”. (Nolin, 2016, p.265) 
What is important in considering the materiality of school uniforms in this study is that they 
represent a whole world of social meaning that involves personal experiences, feelings, 
sensations, ideas and perceptions, therefore, they cannot be merely seen as inert objects which 
their only meaning must be perceived as functional in terms of safety, performance or 
discipline. There is a world of social meaning behind the use of school uniforms. According 
the experiences in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B, wearing school uniforms represents forms of 
power and control from the school authority due to their obliged and punishable nature which 
decrease and lessen any redeeming benefit that might come from their use. Students and 
parents were not consulted or participant in the discussion over the use of school uniforms in 
any instance. They were just informed about the obligatory nature of uniforms and what are 
the consequences regarding the omission of this decision. School uniforms can also be 
perceived as tools for shaping students’ behavior and for the encouragement of conducts that 
might be better implemented in military settings and militarization of the character rather than 
on educational contexts. In this sense, the relationship of school uniforms and an existing 
militarization of education in Chile should be further analyzed and discussed. In addition, 
extreme forms of formalism are left as a residual negative consequence of a society that 
experienced the military dictatorship; imposed formalisms that has continuously influenced 
the way teachers and students must dress and look over time. 
The materiality of school uniforms, the control, the vigilance, the formalism and the 
remaining militarization of society still present in the Chilean schools, can be better 
understood in this observation about every Monday’s mornings as a routine were all the 
members of both schools participate. 
Monday’s mornings and students are accustomed to line up in front of the national flag; 
ready to sing the Chilean national song with a stuck hand in their chest. Students wear 
impeccable uniforms, black shoes and a perfect tie; the Principal drifting around, watching 
carefully their movements, no laughs allowed. He verified that everyone wears the uniform. 
The sun reflected on the metal of the school insignias, those carefully attached to their blue 
blazers. Every insignia was shining with the exception of one of the students who apparently 
forgot it at home. She forgot the badge that bores the symbol of the school; she forgot the one 
that fills school authorities with satisfaction and pride. The Principal went to the Inspector 
61 
 
General and whispered something near him, after that, the Inspector General went to the girl 
and removed the student from the line with vehemence in the moment that he corroborated the 
absence of the insignia, and afterwards he reprimanded her. Finally the inspector wrote a 
disciplinary note in her gradebook, suspended her for three days and called her parents to 
inform the situation. (Personal note about school uniforms in SCHOOL B) 
After this situation, the researcher had a conversation with the student who still showed great 
discomfort with the measure, she was evidently sad, sobbing and angry. 
Research: [I saw what happened there, was it because of your uniform?] 
Student A: [Yes, I forgot my fucking badge, now my parents will be upset with me. I’m tired 
of this shit, I have a test tomorrow and I’ve been studying the whole week, now I’m 
suspended and I studied for nothing.]  
Researcher: [Do you think it was a fair measure? Is it always like this when someone forgets 
something from the uniform?] 
Students A: [It is always like this! Every Monday everyone must have their complete uniform 
because we sing the national song and we must line up in front of the flag, I know that! I 
always wear my complete uniform on Mondays, but today I just forgot the badge. Was it 
necessary his attitude and to get suspended?]  
Other issues related with imposition of dress coding and several comments of the physical 
appearance of teachers in SCHOOL B were not overlooked rather taken into account and 
regarded as significant. As it was noted in an observed interaction between a teacher and the 
Inspector General were the main issue of concern was the clothing of the teacher, specifically 
his red shoes and his beard. The Inspector General rebuked the teacher in front of the 
researcher and students, as if it was not the first time that he comes to the school with bearded 
face and without the formal suit of tie and black shoes that the school requires to teachers to 
wear every day.  After this situation the researcher approached the teacher and had a 
conversational interview with him. The following is an extract of that conversation: 
Researcher: [Did the Inspector General tell you something about your shoes?] 
Teacher A: [Yes, he did, but not only about the shoes but the beard as well.] 
Research: [What did he say about it?] 
62 
 
Teacher A: [He told me, basically, that the way I dress and the way my face looks, doesn’t fit 
with the norm of the school. I told him that students like my shoes and that’s why I use them, 
besides I feel more comfortable using them and the same with the beard. My face gets 
irritated if I shave it almost every day.]   
Researcher: [Did you tell him that students like your shoes or that you like to wear them? or 
did you say anything about your beard?] 
Teacher A: [Naa. Why? It is a waste of time. Even if you defend yourself and you argue with 
them, they always have the excuse of the normative and the rules and etc. It sounds funny but 
sometimes it’s better to bow your head and say, yes, my mistake. I’m sorry.] 
Research: [How does it make you feel when the Inspector General tells you how to dress and 
how to look?] 
Teacher A: [Bad, obviously, I consider myself part of those who think that my quality as a 
teacher doesn’t really change because of the way I look, I can perfectly dress in an elegant 
dress everyday but being quite shitty as teacher in my subject, it doesn’t really matter. He – 
referring to the Inspector General – will always have something to find in order to tell you 
what to do, that’s how it works here. It’s all about formalism and obedience but then we 
expect to have students who can express themselves freely and have a critical way to look 
things.]  
It was infrequent to find teachers criticizing in such manners to the school authority but it is 
rarer to realize how frequent the control and vigilance of the school authorities occur inside 
the schools and the classrooms. The interactions expressed in all the interviews between the 
student, the teacher and the Inspector General expressed forms of control, authoritarianism 
and repression. The addressed social interactions revealed that the norms established by both 
schools about the imposition of school uniforms, but specifically the reprehension and the 
suspension of the students – the negative consequences of not wearing uniforms –are opposed 
to those ideas claimed in the General Law of Education and the Inclusion Law, which 
guarantee active participation of the whole school community contributing to the process of 
decision-making and forbidding schools to suspend or negatively connote the omission of 
wearing uniforms (Law 20.370, Article 15, 2009; Law 20. 845, 2015). Additionally these 
forms of schooling have little in common with was has been established in the theoretical 
framework as a democratic education, wherein, for example, the provision of educational 
63 
 
experiences suggested by Habermas, which prioritize communication among the school 
members, might achieve mutual understandings through dialogue and the inclusion of “the 
better argument”. These mutual understandings are not influenced by power exertion or 
control but they are a consequence of social engagement and mutual agreements through 
rationality. Consequently the imposition using uniforms in the school are inconsistent with 
any sort of mutual agreement, dialogue or a consequence of good communication between the 
members of the school community. 
Perceptions over democracy in schools during the presentation in the Teacher Council 
As it was described in the methodological part of this research, one of the agreements made 
with one of the inquired schools was to prepare a presentation for teachers and school 
authorities. This presentation occurred during the process of data collection, specifically on 
Wednesday 14th March during the weekly meeting of the Teacher Council in SCHOOL A. 
The presentation explained the purpose of the research and the conception of a democratic 
education by primarily describing the work of John Dewey and his ideas about experiencing 
democracy as a way of life. Moreover his several thoughts and remarks on achieving an active 
participation among the school community and the deliberated creation of instances of 
communication, collaboration and interaction were explained. The presentation included 
briefly the theoretical and historical background that accompanied the researcher, this 
previously acquired and learned knowledge was attempted to be transmitted and to orientate 
teachers and school authorities about what the research itself entails, and the basic ideas of 
democratic education. During the comment section of the presentation, some teachers agreed 
that these theoretical orientations, or in other words, this form of perceiving education from a 
democratic point of view is something that was never taught, learned, discussed or even 
mentioned within the boundaries of the school or during their teaching formation at 
universities. One teacher went further and referred about this new knowledge: 
Teacher B: [I think that this form of education that you mention is something that faculties of 
education in universities doesn’t touch too much, because they put their energies and 
resources trying to teach future teachers about the practices and the dilemmas of the 
classrooms… but specific theories or other views of teaching is something that we must to 
learn and experience on our own.] 
Afterwards, when the researcher asked teachers and school authorities on what would it be a 
democratic education for them, some of the teachers raised their hand and said:  
64 
 
Teacher C: [For me, a democratic education is related with allowing students to make their 
own choices based on their actual needs […] we, as teachers, have the duty of helping 
students to express themselves freely and to listen what their opinions and their ideas are.] 
Teacher D: [I agree with you, but it is not easy to leave students make their own choices, as 
you say. If we let them to do whatever they want it would be chaotic, there must be a structure 
and rules otherwise teachers couldn’t do their jobs and they wouldn’t have any sort of 
authority.] 
Researcher: [Maybe it isn’t about to let them to do whatever they want or let them always 
make their own choices in the school. I think it is more related with let them to actively 
participate in their own process of formation, thinking freely and critically and being part of 
the decision-making that influences their life in the school. I must to remind you also that this 
approach to education involves not only students but the whole community, everyone 
construct the democratic experiences as a group by participating together, having a good 
communication and mutually understanding with each other. The school also, either teachers 
or school authority, must accept that students and parents have their thoughts and perspectives 
contributing to the school as well as constructive criticism and empowerment of these 
individuals.] 
Teacher E: [I believe those ideas sounds very nice, inspiring and something that every school 
might try to achieve if possible. I have previous knowledge about democratic education and 
the ideas of Dewey are familiar for me. However I think that in the practice of schooling 
everything is different. I always listen my students and I make them to participate during 
Math, but I don’t think students can influence in the way I do or I prepare my lessons or in the 
normative and the rules of the school. That’s a work of an adult and responsible people. I 
mean the people in charge of establishing the norms.] 
Teacher F: [I might have a different opinion about that, is not that simple as you mentioned – 
she says the name of teacher D–, I think everyone here in the school has the democratic 
opportunity to influence in the life of the other, as – she says the name of the researcher – 
says, the whole community have the right to participate, to create some changes and to make 
students feel that they are responsible of their own processes and important as individuals, 
that is for me a democratic education.] 
65 
 
 These reflections during the presentation on democratic education in SCHOOL A evidence 
the existing discrepancies among teachers regarding their own understanding and perceptions 
of democracy within schools. 
 
Fear and threats through religious implications in SCHOOL A 
One aspect that Frederick Erickson points out in his article What makes School Ethnography 
‘Ethnographic’? (1984) as significant while doing ethnography in educational settings is that 
religion, as part of the rituals and routines of the school community, might be regarded as 
meaningful and influential to the research participants and ethnographers must be aware about 
this situation. SCHOOL A is a private catholic school which imparts religion and the word of 
the Bible as modes of teaching and value inculcation. The Mother Superior – considered as 
part of the school authority of SCHOOL A – openly recognized that for students “their 
religious formation is equally important than their academic formation, students are assessed 
according their behavior and attitudes confronting the word of the lord. They must have a 
simultaneous progress in the formation of their religious values and their educational 
performance”. The LGE established that Chilean education is intended to be rebuilt under the 
perspectives of a democratic, secular and diverse education, tolerating and respecting 
diversity of culture and any form of religious belief (General Law of Education, article No 4, 
2009). Catholic school as completely legitimate in Chile but, according the new law, they are 
not allowed to force any member of the school to believe in religious beliefs or to 
discriminate students with different religious values. In this sense, the LGE is clear expressing 
that students have the rights to that their personal freedom, their liberty of conscience and 
their religious convictions must be protected, tolerated and respected as an integral part of the 
general educational community of the Chilean society (General Law of Education, article No 
10, section A, 2009)  
During the stay in SCHOOL A there were several instances where religion was used as a 
mechanism of social control and exertion of fear and threat by some members of the school 
community, specifically by the Mother Superior. The manners that she was referring to the 
students and teachers were proper of a former and conservative from of education that might 
be linked to the intended formalism and a militarized education mentioned above. This sort of 
education coexists under the regulations of progressive and democratic educational policies 
but remain using old-fashioned and ancient methodologies and pedagogies which are not 
66 
 
consistent with any current democratic education. As an example, it was common to hear 
school authorities threating, controlling and shaping the attitudes of smaller students with 
comments such as: [The kind of behavior you have now is not part of the kingdom of god.], 
[God is always looking at you, and he controls everything, so learn to behave properly.] and 
[What do you believe god thinks about what you’re doing now?]. Besides this forms of 
inculcated threat and fear using the religion as a form of oppression, there were several 
opportunities were students participated of mass in the school church, they were conditioned 
to pray every morning as a routine rather than a necessity or an expression of will. From the 
perspective of the ethnographer, the time expended in mass would have the same amount of 
time in other instances of active participation, improving intellectually and communicating 
with the community. These results do not represent a transgression to the democracy of 
SCHOOL A but also they have minimal in common with what was proposed by the LGE or 
the democratic emancipation of students proposed by Paulo Freire wherein the spreading of a 
critical pedagogy aimed to fill students with significant knowledge which allow them to 
release from oppressive and controlling situations that might put at risk their freedom and 
their democratic voices. 
How does democracy manifest itself within education in Chilean schools? 
Democracy is perceived in different ways and tones among the actors in the inquired schools. 
This disparity and diversity in the perceptions of participants on how democracy is 
experienced have several different meanings which are consequently significant for the 
research question. In spite of the dissimilar and scattered conceptions about democracy in 
both schools, there exists a common thread regarding its definition and understanding as a 
concept and as a way of life. In this sense the observations, together with several interviews 
with many members of the school community, suggest that students, parents and even 
teachers only think about democracy as form of government or a state of society. According 
to the own words of some actors in SCHOOL B, democracy is a political process and they 
live in a different political process in comparison with countries wherein dictatorships or wars 
take place. Several students stated that societies such as Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea are 
not democratic places and they were linked to communism and repression. Also it might be 
stated that, as a general rule, the community of both schools coincided that Chile is a 
democratic place with a democratic society. For them, the definition of democracy is 
associated with political and electoral procedures which are guaranteed through suffrage and 
the free and popular vote.  
67 
 
There exists a connection between this conception about democracy among both school 
communities and their perceptions regarding citizenship, understanding that one of the 
fundamental values of democracy relies on the capacity and freedom of the society to freely 
and democratically choosing their representatives. Accordingly, some students openly 
manifested that citizenship, or their civic responsibility, do not represent major importance in 
their everyday life due to a general dissatisfaction and disappointment toward the political 
class and because of a general strong belief that the political class is not representative of the 
ideas of students and youth in general. Whereas others, especially teachers, parents and some 
members of the school authority stated that the civic duty is fundamental in producing and 
maintaining a stable democracy along the society. According to them, it is the school 
responsibility to encourage and to foster citizenship among students, promoting civic 
education and teaching the democratic values of voting and the participative nature of 
elections.  
In a primarily instance, democracy manifests itself in Chilean schools merely as a political 
and social state, which is constantly linked to civic responsibilities of people and to political 
representations.  Despite the fact that the encouragement of citizenship and a promotion of the 
civic duty are good initiatives in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B in order to maintain 
democratic practices, it does not represent the conception of a democratic society, or more 
specifically, it does not represent the real democratic value of educational processes. As 
consequence the current notions of the schools on democratic education and the perceived 
democracy inside schools have a superficial, desultory, short-sighted and basic nature. The 
perceptions of some of the students in both schools, on basic ideas about democracy in the 
actual Chile of 2018, are quite similar to several studies performed by the Ministry of 
Education between 1999 and 2003 where the main intentions were to inquiry on the state of 
democracy inside schools after 10 years of regained democracy in the country. The produced 
results of those days of research demonstrated that, in all of the surveyed schools, there was 
remaining features of an education that was implemented during dictatorship, this means that 
the general perception in schools over fundamental concepts such as citizenship, the value of 
the vote, the suffrage, and the democratic right to participate in free elections were influenced 
by this features of education. These results dating from more than 20 years ago, in similarity 
with the results that detach from this current research, do not indicate a real major interest 
from the school community in favor of claiming democratic rights, as if their voices require 
motivation, empowerment and to be raised.  
68 
 
However, one significant difference in contrasting to those previous researches is that actual 
students, teachers and other members of the school community express an interest and a 
necessity of growing regarding a more active participation of the community inside the 
classrooms and in Student, Parents and Teachers Unions. There is a perceived general interest 
that their voices can be heard and that the thoughts and ideas of those who have been 
marginalized can be integrated. These voices are in constant struggle and resistance against 
the hierarchical power exertions becoming from the school authority, in this case, school 
authorities are implicitly ruled by the educative proposals of policy makers, attempting to 
make prevail antidemocratic normative and rules in favor of an unmeasured neoliberal 
education that reduce any democratic feature of education to formalisms, militarized 
discipline, school performance, competence and comparative results. The democratic values 
that should thrive in Chilean schools are not compatible with the current conditions that have 
major influence in Chilean education. 
Students and their democratic participation. 
The researcher made several questions to the students in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B in 
regard to their knowledge over different concepts such as their participation, collaboration and 
integration in schools, as well as their social interaction. Democracy was asked according its 
definition and purpose, and finally, the communication among students. There was especial 
interest in how they perceived the group organization of students. The answers vary between 
students but there exist a general sense in relation to how they perceive their own 
participation. The results of these questions indicate that the general definition of participation 
– as it occurred with the definition of democracy – has plain, superficial and basic orientation. 
Following the answers of the students, an active participation emerging from empowered 
experiences and aiming change and impact in decision-making was reduced to mere 
participation in school activities or workgroup. Some interviewed students referred school 
participation as a way to approach in groups and collaborate together in specific activities 
proposed by the school, rather than significantly influence on their own learning and 
formative processes or in the experiences of the schooling. This can be appreciated in this 
conversation with a student of 3rd grade of high school in SCHOOL B when she was asked 
about her thoughts on participation in her school. 
Researcher: [What can you tell me about your participation and the participation of your 
classmates inside the school?] 
69 
 
Student F: [The participation? […] Well I think it depends of what kind of participation you 
are asking about. We participate in the classrooms with the teachers in different subjects and 
we participate in the school through different activities.] 
Researcher: [So, let’s say the participation in your school with activities.] 
Student F: [Emm…we participate in certain events such as preparing everything for the 
anniversary of the school every year; we participate in the parade of the 21th of May and 
many other different activities like the Teacher’s day, where we celebrate teachers with acts 
and dancing, then we have a Science week and an English week where we have to prepare a 
project or something to present.] 
Researcher: [Do you have another kind of participation or experiences, for example, in the 
discussion about how teachers and students should interact with each other, or in any sort of 
experience that allow you to participate in, for example, the decisions that the school make 
over norms and rules?] 
Student F: [No, I have never participated on something like that before neither they have done 
it – pointing out to her classmates –. That is something that the Student Union does but they 
are just there because they want to skip classes, besides, the Inspector General never take their 
ideas seriously, so I don’t know really.] 
Consequently from the conversations and interviews with student, two main modes of 
participation in students were identified a denominated as internal and external participation.  
Internal participation 
The first mode of students’ participation, named internal participation, is the one that students 
have inside the context of the classroom in everyday subject and with different teachers. This 
form of participation is important due to the great amount of hours that students expend in 
classrooms and subjects related settings. In fact, this mode of participation emerges directly 
from the interaction between teacher and students, socially merging in complex everyday 
interrelations of power and agency, thrust, agreements and understandings of the same world. 
The first observations made inside the classroom point at teachers constantly motivate 
students to participate during the lessons. However this understood participation is 
exclusively confined to give opinions and to answer questions regarding the subject or any 
other relevant issue related with learning. As a matter of fact, students are periodically 
70 
 
assessed by teachers according to their participation during the classes, providing monthly and 
biannual reports to parents and school authorities about student’s personal and academic 
progress and formation. It can be acknowledged as a positive issue that most of the teachers in 
SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B are constantly encouraging students to listen and to respect the 
opinions, ideas and thoughts of their equals. Thus, as a primary instance of participation, it 
might be argue that the participation of students inside the classrooms, in both schools, is 
expressed under a base of tolerance and respect, these are lessons in accordance with 
democratic processes that, to a certain extent, harmonize and correspond with some of the 
features of democratic education proposed by Dewey. Concretely, a participation based on 
respect and tolerance would promote the instances for generating proper experiences and 
environments upon a more active participation of students and, in the same way, it can be 
effectively linked to the Habermasian thoughts wherein learning and knowledge are produced 
through communicative action by transforming the social interrelations and everyday 
interactions between teachers and students into something highly significant.  
Nevertheless some democratic features within the classrooms, in this case, a more insightful, 
transformative and active participation for all the students was, in several occasions, 
perceived as limited, restricted and excluded by hierarchical relations of power in the 
interaction student-teacher.  According to Dewey, in his theoretical perspective about 
democracy in education, the integration of an active participation must be deliberated and 
oriented to the student’s flourishing and empowerment through participative experiences as 
individuals, and altogether with the school community. Considering the latter, students do not 
participate actively because they do not possess the power or a provided thrust that allow 
them to create and administrate, jointly with the teacher, their own learning process or being 
part of the planning and design in the subjects that are taught during these processes.  As it 
was observed, teachers delimit in advance, organize and design the contents, the methodology 
and the learning strategies that will be used during the school year. As consequence, students 
are confined to be part of a process and a pre-established plan in which they had no 
contribution or opportunities to influence significantly as an integral component of their 
schooling.  Some inquired students manifested their concerns when they were asked about the 
attitude of teachers in confront of the students’ needs. Students were observed and heard 
several times demanding to being listened and evidencing their malaise because they felt 
silenced and excluded. Informal conversations with one student from SCHOOL A and another 
one from SCHOOL B altogether with a registered fieldnote inside a classroom of SCHOOL B 
71 
 
revealed student’s discomfort regarding their participation within the classrooms and toward 
the teachers’ attitudes: 
Student G from SCHOOL A: [Just a few days ago I was talking with my Math teacher on 
behalf of my classmates, trying to negotiate with him if he can change the way he makes his 
lessons, the contents he teaches and the activities we do during his subject, I mean… we are 
always working with guides but he never explains better in order that everyone can 
understand that, but then then he continues with the another content and we are like… What? 
He always tells us what to do and we always listen to him and we are very respectful. Why 
can’t he do the same for us? This is not the first time we try to talk with him.]  
Student H from SCHOOL B: [Many times we have tried to talk with the science teacher 
because we have being doing monotonous things and, honestly, we don’t understand too 
much. We usually complete activities from the book or we are writing from the whiteboard or 
from her PowerPoints, I asked her if we can do more fun stuffs and I suggested her to watch 
Interstellar, the movie, because it has to do with science, right? She said that she respects my 
opinion but, at the end, is she the one who decides. Then, she said that she will put the movie 
but that never happened.] 
Fieldnote written from SCHOOL B: Tuesday 11th March. English subject and classroom. 
Morning lesson with 8th graders. One student raises her hand trying to ask something to the 
teacher. The student asked if they could watch a movie in English but with Spanish subtitles 
so they could learn more from reading subtitles. According to the student, this was something 
that the teacher assured to do some days ago. The teacher refused her question and said that 
it is impossible to do what they want because she has already planned the lesson and said that 
that day they were meant to do something else. Surprisingly, the teacher said that she does 
not understand the point to tell her what to do, that they cannot tell her how to do her job.   
Although it is true that students are mostly excluded from active participation and decision-
making in subjects or norms, there were also instances where students from SCHOOL B 
participated in creating something new, learning form the experiences and by doing in 
community as Dewey reflected on his thinking about schooling and learning. The students 
were part of their own learning process and established a relation of thrust and confidence 
with the teacher. In this instance of active participation and extensive communication between 
students and the teacher, the initial tensions reflected from repressive or power influences 
72 
 
observed in the use of uniforms or the avoidance of teacher in confront of the students’ needs 
and ideas were not perceived. This instance of experimentation is reflected in this fieldnote: 
Fieldnote from SCHOOL B: The teacher created a project in the English subject named the 
week of the lesson plan – La semana de la planificacion de clases, in Spanish – during this 
week the students read the Chilean curriculum for compulsory school in year 8 and then for a 
whole week they have to work in groups planning the content, the methodology and the 
activities for that week. Students were active during this project and they took part in the 
design of their own learning process. In addition to the creation of the lessons in the English 
subject, they do the lessons playing the role as teachers. The teacher is, in every moment, a 
motivator, a guider and a provider of experiences who empowers students and makes them to 
think critically and as a group. This project is something unique that might be related with a 
democratic education due to, firstly, the thrust, faith and responsibility that teacher gives and 
demonstrate to the students so they feel comfortable organizing, planning and designing 
something that might seems the work of an adult. And secondly, because this initiative 
involves that students communicating upon action by doing activities, collaborating with each 
other and discussing mutual agreements which, as final outcome, overcome the boundaries 
established by the authority or the menace of repressive power.  
The sort of implemented democratic education in everyday school context goes hand-in-hand 
with the ideas of Hilary Putnam, who agree in several terms with the democracy in education 
elaborated by Dewey, but who also recontextualized Dewey’s’ work by incorporating the 
empowering conception in education for all the students allowing them to intellectually solve 
problems that are self-experienced in the social context of schooling (Putnam, 1990; Putnam, 
1993). Additionally this initiative addresses a more contemporary idea of a democratic 
education, which not only regards the introduction of experiences for active participation in 
the school community, but also reconsiders the value of inclusion and diversity as essential. 
Thus having several students with different ideas and perspectives demands to transform their 
individual wants, personal ideas and thoughts into collective needs (Biesta, 2010; Noddings, 
2007). 
External participation 
The second mode of participation in this study is named external participation, and belongs to 
the significant participation of the students in the school in a general context. This type of 
participation emerges from the instances that students have in order to significantly influence 
73 
 
within the administrative, normative and regulation processes. In this context, the Student 
Council is the entity that must represent the voice of the students and establish the link and the 
connection between the students, teachers and school authorities. The Student Council 
demonstrated constant involvement and interest to participate significantly and served as 
representatives of each student in both schools. According to the president of the Student 
Council of SCHOOL A, their duty involves that everyone respects and recognizes de 
democratic values and rights of the students. As it could be observed and perceived in both 
schools through the research process, the Student Councils are well constituted with 
representatives in each level and a president who worry about assisting to the meetings with 
other representatives deciding and scheduling further meetings where his or her presence is 
required. Through the participant observations of the researcher in the procedures of Student 
Unions in school A and B, and the held conversations with the participants of this meetings, it 
might be argue that the participation and influence of the Student Union – as it occur with the 
internal participation of the students during their classes – has a mundane, superficial and 
rigid nature. As consequence, Student Unions do not represent an utility for change, for 
transformation or restructuration of internal policies, norms and rules established by authority. 
The president of Student Union in SCHOOL B reflects over the several efforts of many 
students in order to convene and to exhibit their concerns and interest in confront with the 
excluding character of the school authorities based on a strong stance of power and 
hierarchical exertions.  
Researcher: [What kind of influence do you think the Student Union has over the decisions 
that the school makes? Do you consider that the Student Union plays a role in planning of or 
in addressing the interests and perceptions of the students?]   
President of Student Union in SCHOOL B: [We meet punctually with the representatives of 
every class every week. In these meetings I give them the opportunity to everyone to expose 
their problems, proposals and ideas to improve our life as students and in the school, in a 
general sense. However, every time we need to put the results of our meetings on display, we 
don’t have the instances and chances that allow us to express ourselves as we want, we are not 
being listened, and only few teachers give us the opportunity to be more involved. Even when 
our proposals are heard, they are rarely considered or carried out, I personally don’t feel 
myself included and I know that the same happens to many of us.]  
 
74 
 
Parents and their influence in both schools 
The inclusion of parents in Chilean education has been historically seen as informative and 
economic level. After the application of the LGE and its attempts to include parents more 
efficiently in the discussion of the internal normative of schools, parents have constantly 
waiting for the opportunity to participate for change and to be able to include their ideas, 
demands and interests facing the norms and rules that influence the life their sons and 
daughters. The results of this research reveal that in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL B parents 
participate in the discussion of what seems to be better for their own kids, however, this form 
of participation works as an individual stage, and the benefits of an insightful and collective 
participation of parents in order to achieve changes and new approaches as institutional level 
are completely excluded and ignored by the school authorities. Parents usually gather in the 
monthly Parent’s meeting organized by the lead teacher of each year and level, but this 
instance function for informative purposes and to organize different activities where usually 
parents are required to contribute economically in benefits of their kids and that are associated 
with the leisure time of the students. The president of the Parents Council was asked about 
what are the functions and influences of the parents at an institutional level.  
President of the Parents Council in SCHOOL B:  [We have two opportunities to participate in 
the school; the first one is when we are called by the UTP or the Inspector General to inform 
us about the situation of our kids in the school, their grades and how they progress in the 
school. There we can work with the teachers thinking about what is better for them and what 
can we do as a family in order to improve their performance at the school. Then second one is 
that some parents offer themselves to organize different events and sometimes they participate 
in those events like presenting, dancing or as part of a stage play or celebrating the 
anniversary of the school.] 
Teachers and their democratic influence within the schools 
Maria Meza, a Chilean Professor of the Catholic University wrote in her article What does 
democratic education means? (2013) that the role of the teacher in a democratic education 
entails the provision of necessary participation for the all the member of the school 
community aiming to solve conflicts, allow communication and integration of all. Educator 
must serve as motivators, a guide and a supplier of democratic experiences which allow 
students to take actions over their own educational process. This means, as teachers, to put 
their efforts directed towards the empowerment of students, the make them flourish according 
75 
 
their intellect and to regard their agency as essential for individuals. However, as it was 
previously stated in this study, the participation and communication of students in SCHOOL 
A and SCHOOL B have, to a large extent, a superficial, plain and monotonous character 
which does not represent a real empowerment or an intellectual emancipation of the students. 
These differences between the theorization of democratic education and the current state of 
Chilean schools might partially be explained by considering the role that the teachers fulfill in 
this problematic.  
As it was previously mentioned, there exists a constant relationship of power in the interaction 
between teachers and students which directly affect the active participation and the 
communication in the students during their classes in different subjects. It has been observed 
that students can participate and to have a lower level of influence while they interact with the 
teachers, nevertheless when it comes to try to express themselves freely and at their own will, 
making their voices clear and active, the value of their proposals and ideas is diminished and 
oppressed just by the mere presence of the teacher as a form of authority. This means, that 
most teachers only recognize the superficial and trivial nature of participation but lay unaware 
of the significant and democratic value of it. Moreover the power and the hierarchical 
influence that teachers exert over students reflect a scant confidence on them and a lack of 
trust in all their actions. One teacher of SCHOOL A acknowledged the influence she has over, 
for example, the Student Union of the school, as she was part of the designed teachers in 
charge of monitor students. The teacher commented in this conversation with the researcher 
as follows: 
Researcher: [What do you think about the influence of the teachers in the active participation 
of students? How do you think teachers help or affect students in their decisions and the way 
they should face their schooling?]  
Teacher G: [I can tell you my own experience as former coordinator of the Student Union but 
I cannot talk on behalf of other teachers. The representatives of the Student Union are elected 
by the students and the head teacher of each level. The head teacher always picks that one 
student who stands out most because of his grades or good behavior. Generally is this student 
who keeps teachers informed regarding what happen in the meeting of the Student Union. I 
guess that they like to have a sort of informant inside the Student Union and, in that way, 
control if there is order, or emm… if the rules are respected, if they behave properly mostly… 
you know. I have never agreed with this because there are disputes and problems between the 
76 
 
students because of this, the group work breaks up and then it is segmented so the purpose of 
Student Union changes.   
Researcher: [So you actually think that teachers significantly influence in the Student Union?] 
Teacher G: [Yes but this isn’t totally the teacher’s influence that impact in the Student Union. 
– She originally says the name of the Inspector General– designated in the last meetings of the 
Student Union, one teacher that acts as a guide or counselor that supervise the work of the 
students in these assemblies. But to be honest, is that designated teacher the one who takes 
decisions and influences the proceeding of students’ representatives and administration.]  
As it might be understood from the last interview, the behavior of teachers facing the 
guidance of democratic experiences in the school, does not mainly represent an intentionally 
or voluntary will to dismantle and undermine the active participation of the students and their 
social and functional influence within the classroom. Rather, the little contact and the 
ignorance of teachers over fundamental concepts in a democratic education occur because the 
inner character of teaching as a profession, is also strongly influenced by hierarchical and 
power relations coming from the school authority, but mostly restricted and limited by the 
compulsory allocations expressed in the governmental programs and curricula. Thus the 
obligatory character of the educational programs and curricula constrains teachers to fully 
comply with the standard norms in education, its expressed structures and conceptions that 
might be contrary to the values and perceptions of teachers. Correspondingly, any sort of 
educational intentions becoming from teachers in order to democratize the schooling process, 
might be considerate as incompatible with the required governmental programs and curricula. 
The following extract of a conversation between the researcher and a teacher from SCHOOL 
A reflects on the disparity regarding the attempts of teachers to take control over their own 
teaching process and the governmental normative that exert pressure over the application of 
their own-designed programs and curricula. 
Researcher: How do you see, from your perspective as teacher, the influence of authority and 
over the school? And how do think this affects the democratization of students’ participation 
inside the school?  
Teacher J: [That’s not an easy question to answer, but I like it because I can reconsider my 
ideas about teaching while I reflect on your question…emm…as teacher I have to recognize 
that sometimes I play the role more as an authority with my students instead of guider or a 
77 
 
builder of democratic experiences, as you mentioned it yesterday. Unfortunately we as 
teachers must to adapt ourselves and our will, to the things that the school expect from us to 
do, but this goes beyond that because the school is governed by the state and it will arrange 
and set everything to fulfil the state’s requirements. This is something like a lineal process 
involving those who demand and those who obey, where the ones who demand put their own 
objectives over those without voice, unfortunately the only disadvantaged from this situation 
are the students.] 
In addition to the latter, the hierarchical organization of Chilean education and the premises of 
the school authority taking care of the interests and intentions of ‘outsider’ policy-makers who 
regard teachers as simple object of employment of educational programs and curricula, seem 
to be the overall tone in the inquired schools. The following conversation with one teacher of 
SCHOOL B evidences this vertical hierarchical relation affecting the performance of teachers: 
Teacher G: [During the meeting of the Teacher Council some days ago, the theme in relation 
of the influence of the teachers over the content and the flexibility of the curricula was treated 
because students are not responding positively over certain contents in subjects and the way 
we approach to them as teachers, certainly this is the responsibility of teachers and authorities 
in general. So that day, - she gives the name of the another teacher - proposed in the Teacher 
Council some other alternatives to, you know, make the lessons more interesting or fun, so 
she proposed outdoor lessons in the backyard and to try to use the spaces of the school more 
efficiently, she said that it might be a good idea to have more fun and less dreary, monotonous 
alternatives and that we should tackle this as an institution level. The Principal asked us to 
please stick with the pre-established plans and programs, that is really difficult to do out of the 
norms of the schools and to authorize something like because it requires the parent’s consent. 
He finally said that he would evaluate the proposal since he believed that it is important, but 
the evaluation never came and everything remains as always. The teachers? We don’t have a 
say in this school.] 
 
 
 
 
78 
 
Chapter VI 
Discussion 
In this chapter the results obtained by the researcher inquiring in SCHOOL A and SCHOOL 
B are further discussed and analyzed. Although since the previous result’s chapter was 
merged, at a certain extent, with discussion of the findings and post-analysis it is necessary to 
delve more into the discussion of how democracy was perceived according the participants of 
this research study by relating their perceptions on democratic education and what how it 
influences their everyday interaction. The results are examined regarding the research 
questions and the problematization previously highlighted in the introductory part of the 
research.  
The Chilean State and its policy-makers 
The research results demonstrated that the participation, collaboration and communication of 
the members of the school community in SCHOOL A and B are influenced and dependent of 
a hierarchic and vertical line of power relations. What was a appreciated during the stay in the 
field is that, at a certain extent, education still remain captured under the consequences of 
militarized and oppressive forms of power and control, characteristic of a period of 
dictatorship, forms that this time, are undermined by the excuse of living in democracy. Here, 
the top of this hierarchical vertical line is shared by the State and policy makers who have 
constantly influenced education since the return of the democracy with their neoliberal 
policies aiming individualism, production, privatization, performance and competence. These 
neoliberal strategies serve as a tool for legitimation of imaginary quality in education, that 
instead of reinforcing teaching, learning and the value of the social sphere in schools, have 
deteriorated pedagogy and disconnected the social participation of the school community by 
adding the economic value to the equation and enhancing the neoliberal discourse in 
pedagogic settings (Puiggrós, 1996, p. 6). The power relations are reflected in the neoliberal 
character of policy-makers designing the programs and curricula for every private or public 
school in Chile. Policy-makers and the Ministry of Education exert pressure and power to 
force schools to follow their designed programs and, thus, perpetuate the neoliberalism in 
education.  
 
 
79 
 
The School Authority 
Thereupon the vertical line of power relations follows by having the school authority as the 
second level of power. At the school, authorities play a hierarchical role over the community 
and their main function is to foster, implement and safeguard the application of the programs 
and curricula. The school authority in its embedded and, perhaps, unintentionally eagerness to 
conduct the neoliberal application of these programs, have implemented repressive and 
controlling rules and norms that attempt to shape behavior and impose disciplinary sanctions. 
The repressive features of the school authority can be perceived in the imposition of school 
uniforms and the control over the physical appearance of the students, additionally this 
control extends over the mind of teacher and students, when the values of fear, threats and 
religion are applied. The school authority need obedient, submissive and silenced students, 
parents and teachers that go hand in hand with the conservative, productive and competitive 
nature of the their intended schools.  
Teachers 
Teachers occupy the third level of influence in this hierarchical line. Teachers have a 
controversial role due to their dominance as subjects that exert power over students, but also 
by being influenced by higher levels of hierarchy where obedience and the confrontation with 
their own values are reflected in the results of this research as conflictive. This perspective 
upon teachers responds over their current influence within the classroom and in conflict with 
their own plans or methodologies. The levels of forced acceptation were observed and heard 
in the discourse of the teachers facing the antidemocratic structures imposed by the school 
authority. To emphasize, when the social interaction between teachers and the school 
authority was observed, it was determined that teacher’s significant participation, their active 
communication with students and the total integration of teachers in their place of work was 
simplistic, controlled, questioned and declining. In this sense, the labor of teachers obey 
norms and educational policies which foment production, performance and the incorporation 
of neoliberal policies that have, as conception of education, the quantifiable objectives and  
competitive and comparative international standards. However, the democratic value of 
teaching and the experiences of participating actively in community are not compatible with 
the neoliberal thought which abound in both Chilean schools. The current situation affecting 
the procedures of teachers puts individualism and production ahead of any form of democratic 
80 
 
education and it vanquishes the value of group collaboration, collective participation and the 
empowerment and production of critical thinking in students.  
Students and Parents 
Finally at the bottom of the vertical line lay the students and the parents as the last level of 
agency and without the necessary empowerment to leave from constant repression and 
control. Students have the Student Union as the only form of representation and voice within 
the boundaries of the school. However their function is exclusively limited to inform over 
external decisions, changes in the school program as well as organizing extracurricular 
activities for the rest of the students. Student and Parent Unions are a mere informative entity  
which do not represent a major group of force that allow students and parent to work along 
with teachers, collaborating with other members of the school community or to reinterpret and 
modify the normative, rules and the decisions promoted by the school authority. The 
democratic right of students and parents to exert influences within their own process of 
education, participating actively and significantly in school, was relegated to a social entity 
which does not represent the needs and interest of the marginalized and does not empower or 
raise their voice in order that they can be listened and considered as a meaningful part of the 
school community. The marginalized actors in the Chilean school have several predetermined 
roles which are not modifiable or interchangeable:  
1) The teachers perform their duty as deliverers. They display, describe, dictate, dispose, 
mandate and organize. Therefore their perception as subject of inquiry in this research 
was partially regarded as repressive and controlling, in opposition with the 
characteristics of a democratic educator that might motivate, create, build, guide, 
dialogue and include.  
2) Parent fulfil their roles as ‘the person in charge’ of the students, they are seen as 
economic contributors of the school and they are usually informed rather consult over 
any issues in the school. The relation of the parents and students is not seen from the 
family perspective, as a constituent component and fundamental for the development of 
the students in their educational process, therefore the family is not properly integrated 
to the discussion for decision-making or to participate actively together with school 
authority in order to make the school a more democratic place. 
81 
 
3) Students, in their role inside the classroom, receive and store information, they barely 
process and analyze, and additionally students obey and comply with the norms and 
rules.  
A real democratic education in the Chilean context would involve the Habermasian discussion 
over the development of critical thinking and the motivation of students to act for change 
behaving as influential and emancipated beings.  The kind of required critical thinking in 
education would be achieved if the school community could harmonize their inner 
interrelations toward an active communication and mutual collaboration. Thus, through active 
communication in the interaction between students, parent and teachers mutual agreement 
might be taken and it would facilitate a better comprehension of the experiences of each other. 
The democratic nature of the Chilean education should be seen merely as a set of processes 
with predetermined roles, instead it should provide the required experiences for active 
participation and different pedagogical structures which might allow to bringing up proper 
values and principles of a democratic education. One of the school missions is to make 
emphasis in the labor of the collectivity, the democratic consciousness formed around no 
oppressive interrelations.  
The hierarchical relations of power and control infantilize and stigmatize students’ 
participation by assuming that children and youth are not mentally prepared to confront 
educational problems. Schools do not know how to democratically respond facing the 
student’s needs. Therefore when students are in their classrooms are constantly exposed to 
decontextualized subjects, dictation and memorization of content. Moreover the procedures of 
assessment created by teachers usually include school texts, questionnaires and instructions; 
these modes of assessing students are part of a routine and monotonous according to the 
students and do not include neither deep reflections on the analysis of their own formative 
process nor the utilization of critical thinking, debates, discussions on central issues for 
education and issues for change. There exist evident stresses in schools for building an 
education based on a rigid structure, obedience and an authoritarian discipline where the 
reiterative and normative discourses of teachers, in addition to the repressive and exclusive 
practices in the classroom, do not represent a propitious environment for an active 
participation. In this manner students’ voices are not recognized, and what constitute their 
thinking and their feelings about their own educational process is not considered in decision-
making. Contrarily, the same studies demonstrate that when students have had the right 
experiences to participate, they have proposed different activities to collaborate and discussed 
82 
 
different aspects linked to daily lessons or about disagreements in the contents of subjects. 
Undoubtedly students know how to interchange ideas and opinions with their equals, with 
their teachers and the members of the educational community in an organized, respectful and 
deliberative way; however, in the present they constantly demand participation within a 
deeper and wider context, they require opportunities for reflection and proper assessment, a 
critical and inclusive revision of curricular content and objectives which contribute on 
building social relations based on dialogue, respect, collaboration and active participation for 
the whole Chilean educational community.  
 
Chapter VII 
Ethical considerations 
Ethical consideration in educational ethnography  
On one side, doing ethnography research implies to take several ethical considerations before, 
during and after the fieldwork due to the close and complex interaction with the social life of 
individuals. On the other side educational ethnographer come into the life of the research 
participants and place themselves in the practicality of everyday school context. Under these 
considerations, doing education ethnography regards difficulties and it often represents 
dilemmas in ethnographer on how to behave ethically while performing research, especially if 
one might expect to follow the rigidity of institutional guidelines or structured ethical self-
impositions. However most of the ethical considerations are taken into account by 
ethnographers even before they gain access to the field by endeavors of constant reflexivity 
over the principles that might safeguard and secure the integrity of research participants and 
the integrity of them as researchers (Dennis, 2010). One of the first ethical considerations that 
were taken in this study regards the protection of the trust negotiated with school authority 
which granted access to the field, and the trust gained with the participants through mutual 
respect, participation and confidence. It must be acknowledged that to respect the initial 
agreements and promises made with the school authority was a difficult task. The research 
outcomes were not beneficial or fair for all the members of the school community, especially 
for school authority. The researcher attempted to not misrepresent or exacerbate any local 
tension in order to not cause harm, deceive or to hurt any member of the schools. However 
facing the current manifestations of power and hierarchy in school and the fundamental 
83 
 
purpose of the research, it was the duty of the ethnographer to collect the voices of the 
individuals who had been marginalized, excluded and deliberately silenced by the authority. It 
was the duty of the ethnographer to expose the causes, the responsibles and the consequences 
of that their voices were repressed. In this sense, the initial negotiated trustworthiness with 
school authority was not properly managed by the researcher and authorities were unethically 
exposed by the subjectivity of the ethnographer according his previous thoughts and values. 
Nevertheless the trust and confidence gained in the field with parents, students and teachers 
were considered as a sensitive issue and protected during the whole process of research In 
order to avoid deceiving participants, and they were constantly reminded of the voluntary, 
willing and participatory nature of the research but also the purpose of it as a subject of study.  
The sensitivity of trustworthiness was reflected according the respect the ethnographer had 
regarding the constructed meaningful relationships with the participants rather to put their 
signatures in a contract as symbolic compromise. Accordingly, the whole process of data 
collection was allowed by willingness to participate and to express freely during the 
conversations instead of propose pre-established consents. (Bresler, 1996)  Two other ethical 
considerations were taken into account during the course of the research. The first one was 
related with the lack of equilibrium existing in the relationship between researchers and 
researched, where one might influence over the other by unbalanced levels of power and 
agency or represent biases. Moreover during interviews, this lack of equilibrium might result 
on stressful or uncomfortable situations where participants might feel forced or that their 
principles and values are distant from the researcher’s questions, therefore the relations of 
power were considered important and there was a proper reflection regarding the questions 
posed during the interviews. The second ethical consideration was that exploitation of 
participants was avoided. In this sense reciprocity and respect of the life and privacy of the 
individuals were essential (Creswell, 2014). Research participants of both school communities 
kept the conception of what entails a democratic education and they could actively participate 
and express themselves through the process of research. The reciprocity of their collaboration 
was the provision of a voice and a careful listening of their needs. Participants were heard, 
included and regarded as significant beings. Finally the ethics of confidentiality and 
anonymity were also considered as important in this study. On the one hand anonymity of 
participants was impossible to achieve due to the nature of the research, its methodology and 
the strategies utilized for data collection. On the other hand, the confidentiality of participants 
and the non-disclosure of their answers were partially achieved. Intending to address real, 
84 
 
empirical and honest perceptions of the participant’s social world, some of the interviews 
were explicitly exposed in the result’s section without the whole consent of, for example, all 
the students and several parents. This decision has been appreciated from an ethical 
perspective and not made without considerable thinking and concern to possible 
consequences. Nevertheless the identity of the physical context – namely the city where the 
research was carried out and the names of the two inquired schools – was protected with code 
names. The same occurred with the names of the participants, who were only identified 
without individual or personal names, using capital letters in order to protect their identity and 
not cause harm, pain, embarrassment or any other possible consequence that might negatively 
influence the life of the members of the school community. 
Conclusion 
In comparison with previous studies, the emerging results from this research indicate that the 
understanding of what might be seen as a proper conception of democracy vary among the 
interviewees. Democracy is still conceived as a sociopolitical state of the society which 
influences the culture and the way people live in Chile. Nevertheless the features of an 
education centered in democratic values and the virtues of participating actively and 
democratically remain unknown for both school communities. According the observed and 
the answers of the participants, the imposition of school uniforms, dress coding and the 
extreme formalism in both schools represent clear forms of power exertion, control and 
remaining attempts to militarize the character of students and teachers. There were several 
attempts in both schools from some teachers to democratize their lesson by trying to include, 
empower and motivate students to make their voices valid and significant, something that was 
linked to the expressions of tolerance, democracy and respect expressed in the LGE and in the 
Deweyan perspective of education. However the perceived overall participation, 
communication and collaboration between students, parent and teachers was regarded as 
miserly and scant. Additionally participation is influenced by hierarchical relations and 
exertion of power preventing student's empowerment and agency by impeding the 
participation of student and any meaningful collaboration and influence of parents in 
decision-making. Additionally by generalizing the findings in SCHOOL A it might be argue 
that, in contrast with secular public schools, private Catholic education in the Chilean context 
function over exertion of fear, thread and conservatism, Catholic schools use religion as a tool 
of power by favoring the word of the Bible over democratic choices and deliberate 
participation of students and teachers. Freedom of expression is undermined and the voice of 
85 
 
the students is restricted and silenced. The findings in SCHOOL A represent major forms of 
transgressions to what entails a democratic education and the proposals of the LGE. The 
participation in Student and Parent Unions was not considered as significant, efficient or 
meaningful because they function at an informative level rather than a consultative or decisive 
level of active participation. Parents are usually seen as economic contributors and students 
lack the necessary thrust, confidence and responsibility from teachers and school authorities. 
Finally, the presence of the ethnographer in the field and the research study itself marks a 
turning point in the life of school members of both schools. Teachers became more aware 
about the democratic value of teaching. The benefits of an active participation and an 
education centered in democratic processes were appreciated by students and parents. The 
school authorities recognized the positive engagements of group communication and mutual 
collaboration. It is essential that during the formation of teachers and other agents that will 
work in a nearly future in educational settings have an appropriate education based on 
democratic concepts and the theory of what might be now perceived as a democratic 
education, beginning with the importance of Dewey and the relation of the school with 
democratic processes. In confront of the several perceived influences of power, control and 
hierarchy impacting the life of students and other members , it would be important that 
student might be able to learn the sort of critical pedagogies and seen in the works of Freire 
and Habermas respectively. These perspectives would orientate the school community to 
develop critical and constructive thinking in a deliberate and constantly way. Accordingly, the 
application of concepts related with a real democratic education might be fundamental for 
obtaining an active participation, collaboration and communication.  The present investigation 
might serve as a basis for future research in the study of school participation and democracy 
as well as it might be the initial point of departure of an action research project attempting to 
democratize education involving different methodologies or theoretical frameworks. 
 
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