PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING: A PRACTICE AT THE SERVICE OF DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL

This article is the result of a reflexive attitude supported together by a group of considerations which were coming up as we were studying the decision practices of the teachers in the portuguese public school and by a biographical revision which allowed us to analyse some concepts. The aim of this article was to clear up the problem of the democratic school according to concepts such as decision and participation while emancipatory practices of the agents. The statement that the central burocracy, with a long strong tradition in school which only rhetorically seems to loose strength, as the educational actors still are obligated to certain social behaviours, adapted and universally dictated by decisions of the Education Ministry, made us understand that such situation leads to non-responsibility towards the non-participation in the taking of decisions, what doesn't at all favour their emancipation. We may so come to the conclusion that this is the reason why the democratic school seems to have difficulty in establishing itself, as the centralism leads undoubtedly to a far way distance from those who live and carry out school organization, turning them into were objects in the administrative system.