Portugal

The school in which the pilot will be implemented is located in the parish of Gulpilhares and Valadares, in the Municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia (VNG). VNG is on the south side of the Douro River, next to Portugal’s second largest city, Porto. In 2023, more than 300 thousand people lived in VNG. Despite its ageing population (22.7% of its population was over 65 years old), it has attracted residents from neighboring municipalities in the Metropolitan Area of Porto, with the parish Gulpilhares and Valadares increasing its population by 1.4%, between 2011 and 2021. People living in VNG are generally well-educated (in 2021, 26% of working residents had completed higher education and 32.2% upper secondary education) and have seen their income increase and unemployment rates decrease over the last five years.

About the organization

The pilot will be tested in a public school called Dr. Joaquim Gomes Ferreira Alves. The school has modern infrastructures, including auditorium, library, experimental laboratories, computer rooms and photography studio, and ample outdoor spaces. In the school year of 2022-2023, the school had over 1500 enrolled students in lower and upper secondary classes (ISCED 2 and 3) and regular and vocational courses, as well as in a special foreign language and arts course. It also had over 170 members of teaching and non-teaching staff. The school environment is very dynamic, with teachers and students frequently taking part in various internal projects, such as themed student clubs, school newspaper and think tanks, and in external projects, such as Erasmus and eTwinning research and exchange projects. The school also has a multidisciplinary inclusive education support team and a learning support centre, whose mission is to guarantee every student’s right to an inclusive education and to support their potential, expectations and needs within the framework of the school’s educational project. In terms of inclusivity and intersectionality, the school is heavily engaged in promoting every student’s sense of belonging and participation, focusing on supporting democratic values of social and educational inclusion and equity.

For more information about this school

visit https://www.esdjgfa.org/

Pilots

The implementation of the pilot will include students – both majority and minority groups – in Intersectional Participatory Action Research-and-Deliberation (I-PARD) phases:

Phase 1

A participatory process to activate students’ capacity for engagement and counter power imbalances concerning adults within the school environment (teachers, administrators, staff)

Phase 2

An inclusive decision-making assembly (application of a mini-publics format) aimed at transformative change in school governance that accounts for intersectionality. Implementation will last 10 months (September of 2025 to June of 2026), and the contents of the intervention will use the toolkits developed as a result of the project’s research phase. The aim is to reach out to and empower youth, especially those with experiences of marginalisation, to regain sense of efficacy and influence in contexts of decision-making (thus promoting the perception of democratic practices as safe spaces and raising the likelihood for engagement in deliberative processes), but also to foster critical consciousness and advocacy among non-marginalised youth. Within schools, the implementation will mainly focus on power relations between students and with adults (teachers, school administrators, staff)

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Upcoming activities or events

Preliminary meetings with school staff will soon be held to coordinate recruitment and implementation procedures. Implementation is expected to start in September, at the beginning of the school year of 2025-2026.

Contact
information

Isabel Menezes

(PI, University of Porto): imenezes@fpce.up.pt

Sofia Marques da Silva

(Co-PI, University of Porto): sofiamsilva@fpce.up.pt 

Filipe Piedade

(Investigador, University of Porto): fpiedade@fpce.up.pt 

Meque Samboco

(Investigator, University of Porto): msamboco@fpce.up.pt