Comparative analysis of chemistry teaching in city center and suburban public schools in Brazil: how school reputation and social profile influence chemistry teaching and high school students’ performance in science

In this paper, we present our study into how teaching practices in chemistry are socially stratified under the center–suburban divide in a medium-sized city, located in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The paper mainly draws upon the Bourdieusian-inspired concepts of institutional habitus and symbolic capital to examine how institutional discourses and norms are embodied and implemented by chemistry teachers in their pedagogical practices, and the way in which this affects the distribution of chemistry knowledge in the classroom. This study is a comparative ethnographic-based investigation which employs multiple qualitative methods to investigate chemistry classes in two public schools in Brazil. The schools were selected based on their achievements in large-scale assessment tests and socioeconomic composition. Based on the results obtained from the analysis of four months of observational data of chemistry classes, school routines, 12 focus groups composed of high school students, and four semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers and staff, we argue that chemistry teaching is partially influenced by two interrelated dimensions of the school’s institutional habitus—the schools’ reputation and their students’ social profile. Students in different schools tend to have unequal opportunities for learning and identification with chemistry. For instance, in the suburban school, students are seen as having learning deficiencies and are given deficit explanations on scientific concepts during classes, while the students from the school in the city center are taught under a pervasive culture centered around academic achievements, intense competition and individuality. The aforementioned factors largely shape chemistry teaching in the two public schools investigated. We conclude by presenting our final considerations on how educational institutions play an influential role in shaping chemistry teaching practices.