Democratize education from Knowledge and practices of youth participation in educational institutions of Neiva 2018-2019

Abstract

The article presents the results of the doctoral thesis whose objective was to analyze the knowledge and participation practices of young people from the public institutions Inem Julián Motta Salas and Promoción Social de Neiva-Huila. These young individuals exercise their youth citizenship within the framework of school democracy during the period 2018-2019, in a local context marked by conflict and authoritarianism in schools in southern Colombia. The methodology employed was qualitative with a phenomenological and biographical approach. Eight workshops, 30 interviews, and participant observation were conducted with a sample of 20 students. The results indicate that these youths place greater value on the knowledge they have about themselves in terms of culture, symbols, and territory than on knowledge constructed amid prejudices and contexts of precariousness. Their knowledge of school democracy extends beyond the academic realm, where participation and communication form a “real” democracy. Transformative communicative practices in their daily lives stand out. They hold fragmented and limited perspectives on educational public policies. It is concluded that youth narratives expressed through knowledge and practices redefine the communicative aspect within the school as a setting for encounters, conversations, and the intersection of their subjectivities with participation and democracy. This configuration establishes a communicational map of possibilities for the exercise of these rights and oral, written, audiovisual, and digital communicative practices that build links and communicative networks as dimensions of social being.