This article summarizes two research studies carried out in the University of Cantabria and the University of Sevilla with young persons at risk of social exclusion (underprivileged socio‐economic groups, ethnic/cultural minorities and disabled people). We uphold the need to study exclusion as a socially constructed process, which allows us to discuss barriers to social participation (following the social model of disability) while ruling out the essentialist and psychological explanations of inequality and social oppression. We aim to know the barriers young persons have encountered in social and school participation through their own words. We have used several biographical/narrative techniques which have an emancipating interest. Such techniques allow us to learn from the discourses of the young women or men that participated in the research and to discover the fundamental milestones that have shaped their excluded identities.

‘Tell me in your own words’: disabling barriers and social exclusion in young persons

REICE. Revista Electrónica Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación Red Iberoamericana de Investigación sobre Cambio y Eficacia Escolar

Resumen es: El trabajo expone algunas reflexiones y dilemas que tienen que ver con las posibilidades y los limites de los modelos biografico-narrativos en el marco d...

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Dar la voz en la investigación inclusiva. debates sobre inclusión y exclusión desde un enfoque biográfico-narrativo

In this article we analyse the construction processes of female subjectivities by studying the self‐descriptions that various young women give about their own image, their satisfactions and dissatisfactions and their project for life. A conclusion is drawn that the construction of these female identities cannot be separated from the discursive practices in which they are immersed, by virtue of being from an underprivileged social class, belonging to a minority ethnic‐cultural group, or to a disabled group. We can fully appreciate that the hegemonic model of femininity is both accepted and questioned by the girls in a non‐linear way. On the other hand, schools, as reference institutions for the youngest generations, must check to see what extent their teaching practices nurture these processes or not. This work forms part of a more extensive ongoing research project started a number of years ago by two Spanish universities (Cantabria and Seville).

Becoming a woman: the construction of female subjectivities and its relationship with school

This article describes the research carried out in Cantabria, Spain, aimed at reconstructing the history of women's education in Spain during the twentieth century, based on the school life histories of three women from the same family. The work is developed in two stages. The first one required drawing up the schooling accounts and placing them in their social and historical context. In the second stage, we carried out a critical and comparative analysis of the accounts based on six intergenerational dilemmas: the creation and development of the graded school, the change in the model of childhood, the feminization of the curriculum, the role of religion in the women's lives, the access to the labour market, and lastly the influence of the teaching staff. We have sought to develop a first person account by means of retrieving the women's own experiences.

Susan Weisser

Papers

La invención del yo: la autobiografía y sus formas