European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

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212 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYPortuguese children now settled in London appears to be below that oftheir British peers” (cited in Estrela, 2001). Unfortunately, Ana Santos’voice seemed to have been lost for about a quarter of a century.However, it was not totally silenced. In 1999 Paulo Abrantes, Directorof the Portuguese Department of Basic Education (Lisbon), decided tocommission the current project based on the Portuguese teachers’views that a substantial number of Portuguese children wereexperiencing difficulties in their mainstream schools. When we startedthis project in 1999 one of the aspects that astonished us was the lackof research conducted with the Portuguese community in Britain. Thisabsence is in a sharp contrast with the vast amount of researchconducted with other migrant groups, even when they are relatively ofa similar size. This is an issue that deserves serious reflection. The lackof written documentation on the Portuguese population was notexclusive to academic work. The same situation applied to statisticsabout education. In these statistics the Portuguese are grouped asWhite Europeans. In fact, they can be counted in two categoriesdepending upon whether they classify themselves as White or OtherEthnic (Abreu, Silva and Lambert, 2001a).As one can expect in these situations, the statistical data weanalysed did not paint a unique and homogeneous pattern. The gapsbetween the Portuguese students and other students varied between,between schools in the same area, and within schools (detailed inAbreu, Silva and Lambert, 2001a). So, of course, there were alsostudents achieving the targets for their age group. However, it wasclear that the major trend across all areas was one that pointed outunderachievement. Nevertheless, the specific socio-cultural conditionswhich could help us to understand this dominant pattern (and also ofthose who deviate from it by being successful) were totally unclear. Wemust confess that we were not prepared to accept the cultural“deficit” explanations often mentioned by teachers in our visits toschools. This was totally against the socio-cultural approach to learningthat we have been developing from our previous studies (see forinstance Abreu, 2002).Though educators tend to argue that the problem is temporary andmainly due to lack of language fluency, studies with the Portuguese inCanada seriously question this assumption. The case of Canada isparticularly interesting because it provides an insight into the future ifthe problems of under-achievement that remain invisible and neglected.Similarly to England, the community has been largely invisible. However,they have recognised the need to look at the situation of the Portuguesestudents more than a decade ago. The reports of the Toronto Board of
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURAL IDENTITY(IES) OF PORTUGUESE ... 213education indicated the low performance of the group and high dropout rates. When place of birth was examined it was found that «thosewho are Canadian-born had slightly higher levels of achievement», butwere still below average. The pattern was also the same when socioeconomicstatus was controlled for (Nunes, 1998). This researchsuggests that the problem is not a simple one that could be explainedsolely in terms of language competence or social class. More recentstudies started exploring issues related to cultural identity development(Nunes, 1998). This is the direction we followed in our investigationand befits current conceptualizations of learning and human developmentas a process involving the construction of social identities (seeAbreu, 2002).How new cultural identities are developed in the contextof schooling and family life in EnglandInterviewing Portuguese students, their parents and their teachersprovided insights into how cultural differences of «being Portuguese»and «being English» are contested in the contexts of family and schoollife. It is also in these contexts that particular types of cultural identitiesmay be fostered or hindered. Next we examine some of our dataillustrating (i) how family needs shape the new cultural identities; (ii)how these needs create identities that are different from the Englishpeers. Then we will explore (iii) the extent to which these newidentities are supported in schools and (iv) conclude with someimplications for teacher training.Family needs and their children’s construction of new cultural identitiesOne key finding of our empirical work is that the family’s need toengage in specific activities that require competencies a child (or youngperson) acquires faster than an adult shapes the new identities both ofthe parents and their children. This particular aspect of identitydevelopment was revealed in interviews with six girl students and threeparents of a secondary school 6 . The students’ place of origin was6A total of seven students were interviewed in the secondary school. One wasexcluded from this analysis because of her very distinct background. Though she wasPortuguese and lived in Portugal till the age of eleven her mother is English. Herupbringing was bilingual in contrast to the other six girls, who have Portuguese as theirfirst language.
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Inés María Gómez-Chacón (ed.)Eu
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European Identity.Individual, Group
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ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . .
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CONTENTS 914. The Construction of E
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12 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, G
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Opening AddressCamino Cañón Loyes
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OPENING ADDRESS 29throughout histor
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OPENING ADDRESS 31—To gather expe
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OPENING ADDRESS 33European nature a
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1.What do we Mean When we Say Europ
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 39W
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 41O
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 43u
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 45e
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 47A
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3.Europe, from the Institutional Re
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EUROPE, FROM THE INSTITUTIONAL REFE
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4.The European Dimension of Educati
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THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION OF EDUCATION
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100 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL,
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6.European Programmes from SpainEnc
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 113(
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 115S
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 117s
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 119A
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7.Is the European Model Being Rejec
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IS THE EUROPEAN MODEL BEING REJECTE
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IS THE EUROPEAN MODEL BEING REJECTE
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8.Boderline Europeans:Nationalisms
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BODERLINE EUROPEANS: NATIONALISMS A
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9.Difference as Destabilizing Facto
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DIFFERENCE AS DESTABILISING FACTOR
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IMAGES OF EUROPE: THE PERSPECTIVE O
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22.The Construction of European Ide
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN IDENTI
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