Teacher Training, Research and Professional Development in a Neoliberal School: A Transformative Experience in Social Sciences

Abstract

In recent decades, discourse on quality, school effectiveness, autonomy, and accountability, among other topics, has been used to try to transform schools. This paper explores this situation from the teaching perspective of one of its authors. Using autoethnography as a research and formative strategy, a mixed category system is constructed by combining a central category (“Neoliberal school”) theoretically and deductively with three other subcategories of an emergent and inductive nature according to the parameters of grounded theory. The results reflect different perceptions of neoliberal educational discourse that depend on the discursive field in question (policy framework, school, department, or classroom). The conclusions underline the potential of autoethnography for understanding the current school reality and teacher professional development.

1. Introduction

Many authors have characterised the current situation of schools, which are understood as institutions or educational systems, from the influence exerted on them by neoliberalism (Conell 2013; Fernández Liria et al. 2017; Laval 2004). In this regard, we refer to a type of socio-cultural logic or order that guarantees the triumph of specific diagnoses and solutions to supposedly common problems, the consequences of which often derive, paradoxically, from the social behaviours and practices promoted by neoliberalism itself.

Olmedo and Santa Cruz (2018) defined this phenomenon as a set of “political technologies that favour processes of individualisation, risk and insecurity, the depoliticisation and financialisation of everyday spaces and the reconfiguration of the social dynamics that develop within them” (p. 43). As Gramigna (2010) saw it, “neoliberal ideology conceives the elements of its economic model as if they were inalienable structures of an objective reality, i.e., a reality interpreted in a quantitative key that describes social welfare preferentially in terms of consumption growth” (p. 55).

Beyond the economic sphere, two of the most effective ways to spread neoliberal messages are the media and schools (Laval and Dardot 2013). In fact, education as a business and as an object of consumption finds its perfect justification in the permanent economic crisis and the dismantling of the welfare state promoted by neoliberal policies (Gerrard 2015; Lipman 2013). Faced with rising unemployment, job insecurity, and more flexible dismissals, the recipe proposed to citizens is to be well trained, thus feeding the controversial “knowledge economy” (Gramigna 2010, p. 51)—a message that undoubtedly resonates perfectly in the social imagination of families who are concerned with offering their children the best possible education (Angus 2015; Vincent 2017).

In 2020–2021, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed both the strengths and weaknesses of the neoliberal educational paradigm (McKay 2021). While techno-entrepreneurs have viewed it as an opportunity for more profit, this new scenario has compounded the usual school challenges (Clarke et al. 2022; Powers and Wong 2022).

There are not many case studies on the impact of neoliberalism on schools, although it is worth highlighting some of these, such as Vasallo (2013), where the author highlighted the importance of certain teaching practices in the face of self-regulated learning, which is symptomatic of neoliberal efficiency and productivity. Sondel (2015) contextualised a “charter school”, meaning a privately managed school that is publicly funded (Pini 2003). Malsbary (2016) explored teacher activism in the face of examining the practices typical of “racialised neoliberalism”. Charteris and Thomas (2017) focused on student perspectives on assessment processes. Soto and Pérez-Milans (2018) analysed the commodification of educational resources for language teaching. Grannäs and Frelin (2021) discussed how municipal policies in a Swedish town attempted to counteract the harmful effects of neoliberal educational reforms. Particularly interesting is the research carried out by authors such as Roda (2017) or Mitchem et al. (2020), who discussed the different ways the same educational programme can impact schools depending on their particular socio-economic circumstances.

The aim of this paper, which is derived from broader research, is two-fold: on the one hand, to contribute to a better and deeper understanding of the impact of neoliberalism on today’s schools; on the other hand, to put the autoethnographic method into practice as a research and training strategy for teachers.

2. Methodology

2.1. General Characterisation

In order to carry out the Ph.D. project from which this report derives, a case study was chosen as the overall methodological design, where, opting for a verbal discursive approach, the case was made up of the converging discourses in geography and history classes in Spanish secondary education of one of the authors of this work. This structure is ideal for deconstructing didactic processes and, in general, for any “research that teachers do for themselves” (Mertler 2017, p. 4).

The choice of this case study was for several reasons, mainly: (1) it was set in a discursive and practical context, in this case, a private school in the city of Seville, whose predominant school culture itself required in-depth analysis; (2) it was undergoing a strong epistemological crisis as a result of the didactic transformations that have developed in recent years; and (3) it was a professional environment with plenty of difficulties and contradictions that had to be understood before they could be subjected to any kind of proposal for improvement.

The corpus compiled during the fieldwork brings together a total of twelve texts from four different discursive fields: the legislative framework, the school, the Social Sciences Department, and the classroom (see

Table 1. Composition and organisation of the research corpus.

Sub-Corpora	Text
Spanish and Andalusian education policies	(1) Ley Orgánica 8/2013, de 9 de diciembre (LOMCE).
	(2) Real Decreto 1105/2014, de 26 de diciembre.
	(3) Orden ECD/65/2015, de 21 de enero.
	(4) Decreto 111/2016, de 14 de junio.
School	(5) Orden de 14 de julio de 2016.
	(6) School Educational Project.
	(7) School Regulation on Organisation and Operation.
Department of Social Sciences	(8) Compilation of materials on the school’s methodology.
	(9) Geography and History subject guide for students.
	(10) Annual reports for the academic years 2017–2018 and 2018–2019.
Geography and History class	(11) Interviews with 44 students (11–15 years old).
	(12) Teacher-researcher’s diary.

). The participants in the research belong to the last of these contexts, a teacher and researcher together with forty-four ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) students, forming a convenience sample. All of the participants were conceived as educational agents, not only passive receivers and reproducers of certain pro-innovation discourses, but also as being active and capable of interpreting and generating changes in the way that teaching–learning processes are approached both directly and indirectly (Melero Aguilar 2012) through the production of their own discourses.

2.2. Methods, Techniques and Instruments

To develop this case study, the data collection and analysis methods that were chosen were autoethnography and critical discourse analysis, both of which were applied in line with the parameters of grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 2002). Autoethnography, which we will focus on here, was chosen as is simultaneously an adequate procedure to overcome some of the theoretical–methodological shortcomings detected in the literature thanks to its great narrative-reflexive potential (Adams et al. 2015; Ellis 2016; Mitra 2010; Starr 2010; Wamsted 2012); a research strategy that was perfectly compatible with the structure of the case study and with the critical discourse analysis method; and, finally, a didactic strategy that would ultimately allow for a pedagogical awareness of a reality for which the autoethnographer himself was partly responsible (Arcadinho et al. 2020).

This methodological approach was directly inspired by previous research and teaching experiences. In particular, it is worth highlighting that the use of techniques applies to both quantitative and qualitative data and are both deductive and inductive in nature. In addition, these techniques always consider the demands of the object of study and its particular discursive verbal approach (see

Table 2. Relationship between the methods, techniques, and instruments used in the research.

Methods	Data Collection Techniques	Analysis Techniques	Instruments
Autoethnography	Participant observation		Teacher–researcher’s diary
	Structured interviews		Interview script
(Self)critical discourse analysis		Pre-analysis
		Lexicometric analysis	MAXQDA and Sketch Engine
		Content analysis	Mixed category system
		Linguistic analysis

).

The combination of these methodological elements was the key to knowing and understanding how the participants experienced the school reality and the interactions they established among themselves. We must highlight the use of the teacher–researcher’s diary, an instrument conceived as a self-report (Moriña 2016, p. 54) or “narrative documentation” (Suárez 2021; Suárez and Metzdorff 2018). We are talking about a descriptive, reflective, continuous, and systematic record of observations, perceptions, and personal analyses and refers to the facts, attitudes, and resources that are present or intervening in the Geography and History class. Thus, for example, the diary collects eventual comments on a series of school productions (exams, blogs, notebooks, projects, etc.) and everyday tools: teaching resources (digital book, interactive tools, presentations, videos, etc.), monthly activity circulars, social networks, homework diaries, programmes, etc.

2.3. Analysis Procedure

The analysis procedure, inspired by the proposals of several authors (Pardo Abril 2013; Wodak and Meyer 2003), although specifically designed for this research, comprised four complementary phases:

• Pre-analysis, where the texts of the corpus were characterised in order to discover their heuristic potential in relation to the research objectives;
• Lexicometric analysis using techniques based on textual statistics (word count, identification of key segments, recognition of co-texts, etc.), which made it possible to extract previously unnoticed information on frequencies and associations;
• Content analysis, which materialised in a system that combines both deductive categories (identified in the theoretical framework) and inductive categories (from the analysed data);
• Linguistic analysis focuses on identifying the linguistic resources and the procedures used.

This paper specifically focuses on the third of these phases, an intermediate moment between lexicometric exploration and the linguistic-interpretative deconstruction of the different levels of meaning present in the discourses under study. Using Pardo Abril’s (2013) terms, we can say that the results of this third analytical moment correspond to the textual material necessary to move from “quantitative salience” to “cultural salience” (p. 122).

In this way, the content analysis offered the most appropriate response to the challenge of managing and organising a large and diverse corpus, providing a more complete and elaborate vision of the themes, topics, contexts, and discursive connections than that offered in the pre-analysis phase. To this end, we opted for the construction of a mixed system of categories that were defined by the confluence of a series of deductive categories and that were derived from the theoretical framework of the research along with others of an inductive nature; that is to say that the categories were inspired by the meanings contained in the texts that were analysed.

In practice, this strategy involved the progressive transformation of a first version of the system that was made up of exclusively theoretical categories (T) while passing through another strategy that was derived from the first readings of the corpus texts until a definitive version was reached, where some of the original categories were abandoned or replaced by new emerging categories (E) according to the results from the data (see

Table 3. Section of the general category system on which this work is focused.

Category	Code	Subcategory	Code
Neoliberal school (T)	NEOS	For the sake of change (E)	SACH
		Values for all (E)	VALL
		A competitiveness issue (E)	COIS

). In this way, the maintenance of certain theoretical categories in the case study was justified based on the verification of the same assumptions identified in the theoretical framework. On the other hand, emerging categories exist due to the appearance of a series of attributes specific to the case study and not previously identified in the existing theory.

As the table above shows, the system of categories developed for the present research contemplates two main dimensions or levels: the categories themselves and their corresponding subcategories. On the one hand, the categories represent large thematic constructions that connect the different discursive topics that are dealt with in each subcategory. On the other hand, the subcategories find their raison d’être in the existence of a set of attributes which, although dispersed in the texts of the corpus, allow each of these topics to be characterised. When developing these topics, one of the most commonly employed strategies has been to contrast different treatments of the same aspect according to the discursive field from which the text fragment analysed originates.

Following the above logic, the denomination of each category basically responds to the thematic grouping of various subcategories, while the titles of each subcategory attempt to represent the grouping of the respective attributes that make them up as faithfully as possible. For this purpose, in some cases, expressions are taken from the theoretical framework; in others, the terms exist in the analysed texts. In others, neologisms are formed due to the variation in textual terms.

In the following sections, the results corresponding to the specific objective of this work are presented in two different sections: the first is dedicated to the central theoretical category, and the following corresponds to the three subcategories that emerged from the texts that made up the corpus.

3. Category: Neoliberal School

The neoliberal school refers to both a type of school and educational system marked by the submission of characteristics (cultural, social, organisational, etc.) that are traditional to the business, mercantile, and financial parameters of the capitalist production model in its current global version. The following sub-sections develop this general idea, separately addressing each of the four main topics or attributes involved in the construction of its meaning. In each of these sub-sections, the textual fragments that demonstrate the usefulness of this theoretical category to explain the empirical reality under study are collected.

3.1. A New Notion of Quality

Emerging against the backdrop of the socio-economic crises of the last quarter of the 20th century, the neoliberal notion of educational quality has been characterised as a benchmark or criterion that only benefits one part of society (Mockler 2014). In the face of the different historical conceptions of educational quality, we find that this new version abandons the defence for the universal right to education and generates exclusionary privileges, legitimising anti-democratic and unjust situations; private schools use it as the best possible slogan; is imposed thanks to the discrediting and degradation of the welfare state and the rule of law and through the commodification of educational processes; is closely linked to business factors such as efficiency, statistics, costs, impact, leadership, and customer satisfaction (Monge López and Gómez Hernández 2018, p. 23); and, finally, ends up becoming the exclusive responsibility of schools and their main agents, principals and teachers, who must ensure large doses of satisfaction and high academic results for families—who are also customers.

Quality is the main axis around which neoliberal schools organise their discourses. The following excerpts from the LOMCE exemplify this: “Only through quality can the mandate of article 27.2 of the Spanish Constitution be made effective: ‘The aim of education will be the full development of the human personality with respect for the democratic principles of coexistence and fundamental rights and freedoms’” (NEOS-T1); or, along the same lines, “equity and quality are two sides of the same coin. A quality education system is unthinkable if it is not a priority to eliminate any hint of inequality” (NEOS-T1).

The notion of quality is even taken as the first of the regulatory concepts of the Spanish education system: “The functioning of the Spanish Education System is governed by the principles of quality, cooperation, equity, educational freedom, merit, equal opportunities, non-discrimination, efficiency in the allocation of public resources, transparency and accountability” (NEOS-T1). Some of the strategies the LOMCE proposes to apply these principles are as follows:

The educational quality actions shall be based on a comprehensive consideration of the school, which may take as a reference management models recognised at the European level and shall contain all the tools necessary for implementing a quality educational project. To this end, educational centres must present a strategic plan which includes the objectives pursued, the results to be obtained, the management to be developed with the corresponding measures to achieve the expected results, the time frame and the programming of activities. The implementation of educational quality actions shall be subject to the accountability of the educational institution.

(NEOS-T1)

3.2. School Effectiveness

The penetration of neoliberalism into education systems is primarily justified by an alleged crisis in the management of teaching and learning, i.e., by the existence of ineffective and inefficient educational processes (Slater 2015). Penalva Buitrago (2009) spoke of a “school paradigm of effectiveness” and “the model of institutional organisation that is currently the strongest” (p. 183). The educational practices of this new paradigm have their origins in new public management in the United States in the 1970s, a time of economic and institutional crisis that gave rise to a model of strict management based, among other factors, on the importance of quantifying results. This would take shape in the late 1990s during the third great historical school improvement movement, the effectiveness school improvement (Montalvo Saborido et al. 2018), which would be established thanks to the emergence and dissemination of “effective schools” (Merchán Iglesias 2010).

Applying the techniques of the business world, the management approach conditions both the overall functioning of schools and the roles of the different educational agents through measures “that are presented as technically correct and politically necessary” (Merchán Iglesias 2018, p. 30): optimising teaching and learning processes based on the search for supposed educational quality or excellence; analysing students’ academic results to identify possible difficulties and designing a shock plan made up of several phases that guarantee a disciplined working climate; raising awareness of the importance of educational leadership; or, finally, undertaking organisational restructuring processes that are typical of the digital economy and capitalist “uberisation” (Pardo Baldoví and San Martín Alonso 2020), incorporating principles such as usability, accessibility, delocalisation, immediacy, availability, service, etc.

The imposition of business discourse on political–educational discourse is perfectly visible in our case study, with arguments such as the “deterioration of competitiveness” with which LOMCE attempts to justify the need for educational reform: “The end of an expansive economic cycle and its inevitable budgetary consequences cannot be an alibi for avoiding the necessary reforms of our educational system. The cost of not assuming these responsibilities would be none other than to see social exclusion and the deterioration of competitiveness increase” (NEOS-T1). This is emphasised again in another part of the same text, stating that this reform “arises from the need to respond to specific problems in our education system that are a burden on social equity and the country’s competitiveness, giving priority to achieving a framework of stability and avoiding extraordinary situations such as those experienced in our education system in recent years” (NEOS-T1).

3.3. Accountability

In order to compete and achieve the desired outcomes, the neoliberal school distrusts the educational agents themselves, subjecting them to close surveillance (Page 2017; Rizvi and Lingard 2013). Through “performativity mechanisms” (Pascual 2019), schools and teachers are granted autonomy in exchange for information. Nothing remains more than a reformulation of the relationship between the school and administration, whereby the former loses power and the latter, increasingly attentive to market pressures, gains it (Viñao 2001).

Educational accountability is the process by which schools measure their results based on neoliberal quality criteria (Ambrosio 2013; Fernández-González and Monarca 2018; Hursh 2013). In practice, this translates into the implementation of cycles that evaluate certain achievements through perfectly precise and observable indicators. Some of the specific objectives that this is intended to achieve are publishing reports and school rankings; distributing resources through the “use of incentives and penalties” (Merchán Iglesias 2013); or using data as a justification to directly or indirectly influence teaching (Merchán Iglesias 2018). Some authors have denounced the impossibility of finding a single positive effect that can be derived from accountability practices in the literature, although negative consequences have been empirically perceived in relation to aspects such as segregation, inclusion, or the quality of life of education professionals (Falabella 2014; Merchán Iglesias 2012; Pascual 2019).

The main reasoning put forward by the LOMCE to justify its existence is focused explicitly on international tests and the academic performance of students on those tests, and what they can supposedly conclude about the Spanish education system through the results of this test: “The changes proposed in our education system by the LOMCE are based on evidence. The reform aims to address the main problems detected in the Spanish education system on the grounds provided by the objective results reflected in the periodic evaluations of European and international bodies” (NEOS-T1).

The concerns surrounding these “objective results” and these “periodic evaluations” is the direct cause of the so-called “teaching to the test” (Robinson and Dervin 2019), i.e., the triumph of a didactic approach based on the repetition of positive data and the decontextualisation of knowledge. This is an approach that, on the other hand, fits perfectly with the technocratic concept of neoliberal quality and its interest in the acquisition of specific and perfectly measurable skills. This model’s contradiction with respect to many of the slogans of current educational innovation, advocating for competency-based, active, or personalised learning, is quite remarkable. Curricular overload forces the teacher to prioritise between didactic content and objectives, and external pressures mean that he or she prioritises what is the easiest to measure.

3.4. The Globalisation of Education Policy

The neoliberal school is inspired and conditioned by a powerful international “techno-bureaucracy” that designs, advises, and evaluates national education policies (Cuesta and Estellés 2020, p. 78). The origin of these practices was originally found in the mid-1990s (World Bank 1995), at the height of globalisation. It was then that the guidelines for international educational policy began to be openly redefined according to the needs of neoliberal capitalism.

Thus, the main argument in favour of change put forward by the LOMCE, for example, at least in terms of textual extension, does not have anything to do directly with the situation of the Spanish education system but is instead related to what is happening in other countries:

Practically all developed countries are currently, or have been in recent years, immersed in processes of transformation of their education systems. The social transformations inherent in a more global, open and interconnected world, such as the one in which we live, have made the different countries reconsider the need for regulatory and programmatic changes of greater or lesser scope in order to adapt their education systems to the new demands.

(NEOS-T1)

We find ourselves faced with a signficant discursive machinery that includes declarations, corporations, banks, and international organisations “that govern without being the government” (Merchán Iglesias 2018, p. 31), generating all kinds of tension and contradictions. The most prominent element is undoubtedly the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the ideological reference point for state education policies (Cañadell 2017). One of its best-known instruments, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), is considered to be the main producer of the “post-truth discourse” (Sanz et al. 2020) that surrounds the neoliberal school.

The OECD is precisely the last of the significant international references to which the LOMCE appeals:

The chosen regulatory technique, of limited modification of the Organic Law on Education (LOE), responds to OECD recommendations based on best practices in countries with better performing education systems, where reforms are constantly proposed within a framework of general stability as shortcomings are detected or new needs arise.

(NEOS-T1)

4. Subcategories

4.1. For the Sake of Change

“I care about innovation because it is a specific part of my job. After almost a year at the school, it is perfectly clear to me that innovation is one of the most important functions that we teachers perform here. What we mean by innovating or what we innovate for in this place is another matter… I don’t think my colleagues and I are clear about that, although I would dare to speak of innovadulia as a kind of obsession to innovate without thinking about the implications or consequences… I think that my colleagues and I are not clear about that”.

(SACH-T12)

The first subcategory that can be linked to our theoretical category deals with two perspectives underlying the educational discourse reflected in the corpus: one represents the full-throated defence of change, and the other represents a suspicious attitude towards it. Through the concept of change, we should understand the action and effect implicit in any transformation process (reform, innovation, renewal, etc.), which in our case, is in school educational settings. In order to develop this content, a dialogue is established between the results from the normative framework and a series of observations and reflections collected in the diary of the teacher–researcher.

Proof of this is the contrast in the type of change advocated for by the LOMCE and that which is experienced at the school: if, on the one hand, this law advocates for “a sensible, practical reform that allows the maximum development of the potential of each pupil” (SACH-T1); on the other, it states that “it is impossible to combine the concepts of innovation and tradition that are promoted here in a coherent way. We are asked to do one thing and the opposite” (SACH-T12). The following excerpt illustrates the latter idea:

I see contradictions everywhere. The worst thing is that they are also perceived by the pupils. Perhaps not so much the families, for reasons that I do not even dare to guess. I can’t get used to the fact that we teachers have to apply an innovative methodology and use certain technological resources, if we have to use the traditional theoretical exam when it comes to assessing. In history exams, there is not even a question on procedures; at most, a black and white image of a map, such as that of the minor voyages or triangular trade, as an excuse to explain some topic.

(SACH-T12)

Likewise, another one of the international references mentioned in the text of the LOMCE is the European Union Strategy for Horizon 2020 and its “five ambitious objectives in the fields of employment, innovation, education, social inclusion, as well as climate and energy and has quantified the educational objectives to be achieved by the European Union to improve education levels” (SACH-T1). As it can be seen, the LOMCE draws a direct and natural correlation between common goals (including innovation as one) and the idea of improving education from the European discourse. Although the syllogism seems quite obvious: (a) innovation is a common goal; (b) common goals help lead to improvements; (c) innovation means improvement), the following excerpt from the diary indicates something different: “My impression is that there is no innovation here to improve something. Apart from the monthly and termly exams, the only specific diagnostics done periodically to determine what needs improvement are reading comprehension and mathematical competencies. (…)” (SACH-T12).

From this point, it moves directly to a vision of Spanish society as both deserving and at the same time guaranteeing the changes proposed for the Spanish education system: thus, if, on the one hand, it is stated that “the profound changes facing today’s society demand a continuous and reflexive adaptation of the education system to the emerging demands of learning” (SACH-T1); on the other hand, it is recognised that “(…) without the involvement of civil society there will be no educational transformation” (SACH-T1); additionally, it is acknowledged that “(…) without the involvement of civil society there will be no educational transformation” (SACH-T1).

In any case, the main feature in defence of educational change as a response to supposed social changes is undoubtedly its vague characterisation: “the educational system must make it possible both to learn different things and to teach in a different way, in order to satisfy students, who have been changing with society” (SACH-T1). It is interesting to note how, despite its semantic lightness, in the context of the school, innovation constitutes a “specific complement” that is demanded by the management team:

The most senior colleagues at the school understand innovation, not as a style or a way of working, but as a specific complement which, for relatively few years now, we have all had to incorporate into teaching (and into any of its implicit or parallel tasks: transmission, communication, management, planning, etc.), not necessarily because it improves our way of teaching a class, but, above all, because the Management Team demands it of us.

(SACH-T12)

The following fragment allows us to contextualise the origin of this situation: “The older colleagues always remember that things were not like that before, but that, with the change of owners and the progressive privatisation of the school (it used to be a subsidised school)—which began about twelve years ago, if I am not mistaken–, the obsession arose to turn the school into something different” (SACH-T12).

Following the same trend in favour of change as the LOMCE, in the rest of the regulatory texts, we find messages such as “New approaches to learning and assessment are proposed, which must involve a significant change in the tasks to be solved by students and innovative methodological approaches” (SACH-T2); “New approaches to learning and assessment are proposed, which must involve a significant change in the tasks to be solved by students and innovative methodological approaches” (SACH-T2); “the curricular revision takes into account the new learning needs” (SACH-T2); or “new approaches to learning and assessment are emphasised which, in turn, imply changes in school organisation and culture as well as the incorporation of innovative methodological approaches” (SACH-T4). The vagueness of such claims advocating for change is in contrast with the personal motivations that are intrinsic to teaching practice:

My concept of innovation is almost a reaction to the imposed concept of innovation that predominates in the school. For me, innovation means making each class a different adventure, surprising students with new ways of doing things. It is a way of tuning in with the kids and getting them to engage in active learning but guided by me. I start from a fairly intuitive diagnosis and plan, with the occasional dose of improvisation. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I don’t, but it is very clear to me that the probability of getting it right increases the more time I spend designing the classes in the few free moments I have.

(SACH-T12)

The pedagogical sub-discourse that best responds to the defence of change as an international and social requirement in accordance with the new times is undoubtedly that of competency-based learning. One of the fragments of the Orden ECD/65/2015, de 21 de enero, where how the competence sub-discourse ends up displacing, substituting, monopolising, and, at the same time—however paradoxical it may seem—feeding the logic of change, is best perceived is as follows:

A methodological approach based on key competencies and learning outcomes entails important changes in the conception of the teaching-learning process, changes in school organisation and culture; it requires close collaboration between teachers in curriculum development and in the transmission of information on student learning, as well as changes in working practices and teaching methods.

(SACH-T3)

The direct counterpoint to this type of normative messaging advocates for alternative formulas of organisation and teaching collaboration and is found in personal comments such as the following: “the idea of innovation which is the norm here is that of the management team and is the one imposed in all classes. Personally, I perceive this as a dense layer of make-up, purely aesthetic to cover up on the surface the same old-school dynamics. What we change is the container, not the content” (SACH-T12).

4.2. Values for All

You don’t get to understand the kind of values we inculcate in this School until you have been here for a good while. It’s only after you’ve had your fill of parades and patriotic events of all kinds, entrepreneurial competitions and fairs, masses, Easter processions and spiritual retreats, that you realise the kind of values that are in vogue here: conservative, neo-liberal and catholic.

(VALL-T12)

Our second subcategory, “Values for all”, brings together the wide range of educational principles and values that are intended to be promoted in the neoliberal school. As an existing educational context in a state governed by the rule of law, the principles and values of our case study, in particular, are based, at least officially, on “the ethical principles of coexistence emanating from the Spanish Constitution and the Statute of Autonomy for Andalusia” (VALL-T4).

Within this broad institutional framework, the LOMCE determines the more general pedagogical foundations that can be found in the corpus. One of the principles defended by the law is “the transmission and implementation of values that favour personal freedom, responsibility, democratic citizenship, solidarity, tolerance, equality, respect and justice, as well as helping to overcome any kind of discrimination” (VALL-T1). As we can see, this is a vision of educational values that seems to constitute an educational principle that is, in and of itself, an approach that, although slightly reinterpreted, is reproduced in many other lists of values that are contained in different texts. This is the case, for example, in the Decreto 111/2016, de 14 de junio, when it lists “respect for pluralism, freedom, justice and equality, as well as responsibility and critical thinking based on rationality” (VALL-T4).

The school’s Educational Project also includes its own list of values: “Our rules of coexistence promote positive values such as sincerity, hard work, punctuality, cleanliness, altruism and respect for others, among others, rather than constituting a catalogue of faults and sanctions. To this end, campaigns will be developed to promote these values, as well as a weekly hour of a coexistence workshop in all classes” (VALL-T6). The use of the concept of “rules of coexistence” as opposed to that of a “catalogue of offences and sanctions” stands out.

Fragments such as the following from the School Regulations document explicitly reflect a conception of education in values as part of the “service” that the school offers: “We will strive to project such important values as respect, non-violence, justice, solidarity, tolerance and democracy onto our pupils, to offer a high-quality educational service” (VALL-T7). Among all of these values, the Educational Project specifically emphasises the value of solidarity as follows:

A moral value of great importance in the formation of young people is that of solidarity. We will promote it through food bag campaigns for needy families in Seville, aid to the Third World, care for nature, respect and help for the elderly, etc., without forgetting the critical study of the cause of all kinds of scourges that affect our world, with special emphasis on those that affect our environment.

(VALL-T6)

Two excerpts from the diary question the effectiveness of such “campaigns”: “Every Friday, pupils must bring a kilo of food to the school. Some Fridays four pupils bring it and other Fridays one. Rarely is there a significant collection. I suppose that so much charity ends up tiring the type of families that predominate here” (VALL-T12); “awareness of social problems is reduced to a series of symbolic and charitable gestures throughout the school year, and, of course, to the daily prayer at 8.30 a.m. Each day, a pupil prays to God ‘for the poor’, ‘for the sick’ or ‘for the victims of a flood’” (VALL-T12).

In principle, the school’s discourse seems to defend a transversal approach to education in values, something that is especially reflected in the presence of such a principle in subjects such as physical education or English: “The School’s Plurilingual Plan not only aspires to linguistic immersion, but to integral immersion, acquiring values and traditions from other cultures. This does not mean, however, that pupils will be uprooted from their roots; on the contrary, we will teach them to love their country, but we will give them a global vision of what a Spaniard, a citizen of a globalised world, should be” (VALL-T6). Beyond the curricular contents worked on at the school, although in an equally transversal way, many other values, such as those related to clothing, are also inculcated through a sort of hidden curriculum: “All pupils at the School must wear, from the beginning of the school year until the end of classes, the official School uniform (…)” (VALL-T7).

In any case, the most concrete and powerful way of synthesising the school’s values that we find is in its own motto: “The values present in our ideology, ‘Honour, Glory and Homeland’, should form the axis of the transversal values that guide our educational practice” (VALL-T7). The following two excerpts from the diary provide insight into how the values of the motto, especially patriotism, permeate the subjects of the social sciences through teaching: “The general objectives promoted by the Department are in line with those of the school. In fact, the materials we are asked to work with never contradict the liberal, Catholic and, above all, patriotic values promoted by the school. In fact, they are a perfect tool in many cases, especially for nurturing patriotism” (VALL-T12). The following is an example of this last statement, which is directly related to the area of Social Sciences:

The Week of History will be held from 8 to 11 October, close to the National Day (as it could not be otherwise here…). Every year, they take advantage of the occasion to promote patriotic values, which is something I personally have to deal with as the organiser of these events. Last year, for example, I was asked to make sure that one of the guest speakers, who came to talk about the Discovery of America and everything that came after it, knew where his feet stood.

(VALL-T12)

Although it is not directly present in the school’s motto, religious education is another one of the school’s most important pedagogical principles: “The confessional nature of our school requires us to pay great attention to the religious education of our students” (VALL-T6). Proof of this is the obligation to “pray first thing in the morning” (VALL-T7), the celebration of certain local holidays (“Friday of Sorrows. No classes. The whole morning is dedicated to taking out a procession” (VALL-T12)), or the strong presence of the Pastoral Department in certain activities: “The volunteer programmes will take on special relevance in these courses and so will actively participate with the Pastoral Department in the planning and development of all the school’s social action programmes” (VALL-T6).

It is interesting to note how religious education allows certain contradictions to be justified. Thus, for example, in the School Regulations document, we find the following two adjacent points: “-It is expressly forbidden for pupils to wear bracelets, rings, pendants, painted nails, mobile phones, cameras… The wearing of a pendant with a religious motif is permitted” (VALL-T7). Another slight peculiarity would be the following: “(…) this confessionality should not prevent young people from adolescence onwards from taking the initiative to make the final decision on religious matters” (VALL-T6).

One way or another, it is certain that no text in the corpus provides a concrete justification for the fact that we are dealing with a denominationally Catholic school. However, some statements openly recognise this nature: “Religious formation will continue at this stage with preparation for confirmation for those pupils who wish it and Christian values such as friendship, gratitude, responsibility, tolerance and, above all, helping others, will be present at all times in their formation” (VALL-T6). The case described below, however, denounces the possible ineffectiveness of this type of training: “For me, a good example of the failure of religious indoctrination is that the three most fervent pupils in 3rd ESO—two of them altar servers with the priest who officiates mass at the school—and the most studious, make life impossible for a new classmate with serious cognitive and relational difficulties (…)” (VALL-T12).

Returning to the LOMCE, the formula that best summarises the integration of all of the values mentioned so far and, indirectly, the global objective of education in values is the “preparation for active citizenship and the acquisition of social and civic competencies” (VALL-T1). In relation to this premise, another part of the same text calls for a “critical and responsible attitude with the capacity to adapt to the changing situations of the knowledge society” (VALL-T1). In more colloquial language, although there is the same desire for synthesis, the school’s Educational Project states that “our challenge is to train men and women who, above all, are good people” (VALL-T6).

The following discursive fragments, in this case from the School Regulations document, demonstrate the link between the concept of the good person, the supposed core of the model of education in the values proposed by the school, and the principle of order: “We consider it fundamental that our school has an optimum climate of coexistence, which facilitates school work, where everyone feels safe and respected” (VALL-T7); “when leaving and entering the classroom, they will line up in a single file line. When moving around the school corridors, silence will be observed and perfect order will be demanded” (VALL-T7); “pupils must remain seated and have rules of discipline for getting up and addressing the teacher” (VALL-T7). The following excerpt from the diary questions the strategy developed at the school to achieve this type of objective:

For me, education in values should be the basis of everything that should be learnt at school. Unfortunately, I see that not all my fellow teachers think the same way: some are only concerned with teaching conceptual and procedural content; others, on the contrary, only with attitudinal content, forgetting to prepare their own subjects seriously and dedicating their classes to debating the divine and the human.

(VALL-T12)

The relevance placed on all of the values mentioned so far leads to what we can call the ideal person being defended in the educational discourse present in the corpus of the research. This can be seen in the LOMCE, which calls for the training of “autonomous, critical people, with their own thinking” (VALL-T1); the need to “acquire from an early age transversal competencies, such as critical thinking, diversity management, creativity or the ability to communicate, and key attitudes such as individual confidence, enthusiasm, perseverance and acceptance of change” (VALL-T1); and the training of “active people with self-confidence, curious, enterprising and innovative, eager to participate in the society to which they belong, to create individual and collective value, capable of assuming as their own the value of balance between effort and reward” (VALL-T1).

In line with these kinds of attributes, the Educational Project also offers its own ideal of the individual for the 21st century: “Our pupils will be cosmopolitan citizens who are passionate about their work, principled, strong-willed; and we will work to ensure that they are willing to place the collective interest above their own. We will try to sow these seeds in them and provide them with the tools that will strengthen their emotional intelligence so that they will be able to overcome the many obstacles that day-to-day life offers us” (VALL-T6).

One of the strategies for “sowing” seeds would be, for example, the so-called “house system”, which consists, according to the School Regulations document, of “giving points to pupils for positive behaviour. Passing the points obtained by the pupils to the general classroom scoreboard” (VALL-T7). In theory, this system would correspond to another one of the school’s pedagogical principles, which is explained in the following fragment of the Educational Project and is perfectly consonant with the logic of the reform represented by the LOMCE: “Motivation will be the indispensable component in our pedagogical activity, using the mentoring model or tutorial system to strengthen individualised itineraries, so that pupils in their ESO stage (…) begin to offer the best version of themselves, that they aspire to the highest horizon, to truth, goodness and beauty and all this inspired by the foundations of the school” (VALL-T6).

4.3. A Competitiveness Issue

The third and last subcategory indicates that many of the discursive aspects that have been discussed so far are lacking. Justifying the need to compete in the educational sphere is based on the particular notion of quality that neoliberal educational discourse carries. This is a concept that, in the LOMCE, is linked to the same internationalist arguments used in the text to justify its own existence: “The current system does not allow progress towards improving the quality of education, as evidenced by the results obtained by students in international assessment tests such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), the high rates of early dropout from education and training, and the small number of students who achieve excellence” (COIS-T1).

As we can see, one of the criteria for diagnosing the quality of the education system is the idea of “excellence”, which is established as the objective of public schools. This fact coincides with the discourse defended in our private school: “According to the slogan on the school’s website, here innovation goes hand in hand with what the heads call ‘educational excellence’. For them, however, excellence is far from being the fruit or product of innovation but rather a reflection of the high academic performance of the students. In my opinion, this is a rather old-fashioned idea of excellence, the basis of the school culture of the heads” (COIS-T12).

At this point, we find a clear connection between the term’s quality, excellence, and performance, whose respective meanings are never specified in the texts. What we do find, however, is a broad range of economic vocabulary in which these terms find their natural place. It is literally stated that “One of the objectives of the reform is to introduce new patterns of behaviour that place education at the centre of our society and economy” (COIS-T1). Additionally, even more specifically, we note that this objective, in turn, consists of: “improving employability, and stimulating students’ entrepreneurship” (COIS-T1). In reality, the arguments that contribute to consolidating the place of economics in the discourse of the LOMCE are numerous and varied. The following (see

Table 4. Selected excerpts on the topic of economic arguments in favour of change in the LOMCE.

Excerpt	Code
“Improving the educational level of citizens means opening doors to highly skilled jobs, which is a commitment to economic growth and a better future”.	COIS-T1
“These circumstances, in today’s economy, which is increasingly global and more demanding in the training of workers and entrepreneurs, become a scourge that limits the possibilities of social mobility, if not leading to the unacceptable transmission of poverty”.	COIS-T1
“The attainment of this level of education has become a key issue for education and training systems in developed countries and is also included in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Education Indicators Project, which stresses the need for young people to complete at least ISCED level 3 in order to enter the labour market with sufficient guarantees”.	COIS-T1

) is just a selection of these arguments:

Special mention should be made of everything related to the competence “sense of initiative and entrepreneurial spirit”, which is included in the Orden ECD/65/2015, de 21 de enero. As we can see in

Table 5. Selected excerpts on the topic of competence, sense of initiative, and entrepreneurship.

Excerpt	Code
“These skills are very important for fostering the emergence of social entrepreneurs, such as intrapreneurs (entrepreneurs who work within companies or organisations that are not their own), as well as future entrepreneurs”.	COIS-T3
“The skills required for the competence sense of initiative and entrepreneurship include the ability to recognise opportunities for personal, professional and commercial activities”.	COIS-T3
“For the adequate development of the competence (…) it is necessary to address: -Creative and innovative capacity: creativity and imagination; self-knowledge and self-esteem; autonomy and independence; interest and effort; enterprising spirit; initiative and innovation”.	COIS-T3

, this competence is in perfect harmony with the economic principles that permeate the discourse of the LOMCE:

Not only do the aforementioned competencies reflect the economic component of the regulatory discourse, but they also reflect other curricular content that, while associating innovation with all kinds of economic principles and values, propose this as a type of knowledge in and of itself that secondary school students must acquire. This is explicitly stated in “Article 6. Transversal elements” of the Real Decreto 1105/2014, de 26 de diciembre:

The curricula of Compulsory Secondary Education and the Baccalaureate will incorporate curricular elements aimed at the development and strengthening of the entrepreneurial spirit, the acquisition of skills for the creation and development of different business models and the promotion of equal opportunities and respect for the entrepreneur and the businessperson, as well as business ethics. The Education Administrations will encourage measures for pupils to participate in activities that allow them to strengthen the entrepreneurial spirit and business initiative based on skills such as creativity, autonomy, initiative, teamwork, self-confidence and critical sense.

(COIS-T2)

These aspects are integrated into various curriculum subjects, including in the Geography and History curriculum, in many different ways. This can be seen in the description of the subjects, in the titles of some content blocks (e.g., “Block 1. Personal autonomy, leadership and innovation” (COIS-T5)), or in the formulation of some assessment criteria and assessable learning standards, such as how they appear in the Real Decreto 1105/2014, de 26 de diciembre and in the Orden de 14 de julio de 2016. Some excerpts from both texts are reproduced below (see

Table 6. Selection of excerpts on the topic of economic content in secondary school subjects according to the Real Decreto 1105/2014, de 26 de diciembre and the Orden de 14 de julio de 2016.

Subject	Excerpt	Code
Geography and History (1st–4th ESO)	“To argue about the importance of entrepreneurship and the skills associated with it, knowing how they have contributed to the human, economic and political development of social formations throughout history and at the present time”.	COIS-T5
Initiation to Entrepreneurship and Business Activity (1st–4th ESO)	“Risk-taking, innovation, persuasion, negotiation and strategic thinking are also among the competencies that need to be mobilised in young people to contribute to the development of entrepreneurial citizens”.	COIS-T5
Philosophy (4th ESO)	“Valuing freedom as a basic condition for innovative creativity, the connection of pre-existing ideas with each other and competitiveness”.	COIS-T2
Technology (4th ESO)	“Throughout the centuries, technological development has been motivated by the needs that the society of each era has demanded, by its traditions and culture, without forgetting economic and market aspects. Innovation and the search for alternative solutions have facilitated advances, and the need for change has always been linked to human beings”.	COIS-T2
Business economics (2nd Baccalaureate)	“To study and analyse the impact of the incorporation of innovation and new technologies in company strategy and relates it to the ability to compete globally”.	COIS-T2

):

In any case, what is the most interesting about the way in which market principles and values are integrated into the official secondary curriculum is undoubtedly the ability of a purely economic discourse to bridge the gap between the two main visions of education (as a right and as a service):

The modern school is the champion of education as a utopia of social justice and well-being. In accordance with this function, this Organic Law orients the school to the service of a society that cannot assume as normal or structural that a significant proportion of its pupils, those who leave the classroom before they have the basic knowledge, competencies and skills, or those whose level of education is far below international quality standards, start their working lives in such disadvantaged conditions that they are doomed to unemployment or to a job with limited added value.

(COIS-T1)

As seen with regard to school efficiency, the definitive argument that the economic discourse is based on political–educational discourse is the “deterioration of competitiveness”, against which the LOMCE proposes the following strategies: “increasing the autonomy of schools, reinforcing the management capacity of school management, external end-of-stage evaluations, rationalisation of the educational offer and the flexibilisation of educational pathways” (COIS-T1). Of these measures, special emphasis is placed on the first of these: “It is necessary for each school to be able to identify its strengths and the needs of its environment, in order to be able to make decisions on how to improve its educational and methodological offer in this area, in direct relation, where appropriate by nature, with the strategy of the educational administration” (COIS-T1).

With regard to the discursive topic of school autonomy, it is appropriate to highlight the particular interpretation and practice of competitiveness made by the private school that is the focus of the research to conclude this session. In this sense, perhaps the most interesting and revealing content found in the diary are the descriptions of all of the marketing and advertising strategies that the school uses to try and conquer the competitive school market of the city in which it is located compared to the other private and state-subsidised schools (see

Table 7. Selected excerpts on the topic of the school’s competitive strategies from a teacher–researcher perspective.

Strategy	Excerpt	Code
Image as a reflection of order.	“More than once, we have been literally told by the management: ‘You have to think that here we live on image’. For example, when at some point parents have entered the School and some pupils were not lining up correctly”.	COIS-T12
The use of innovative educational tools.	“It is clear that, in this school, innovation is an advertising gimmick within a marketing strategy in which anything is presented as an innovation. This is greatly helped by the use of resources such as tablets or Clevertouch and, of course, the—in my view—overexposure of pupils on social networks”.	COIS-T12
Intellectual and physical distinction as criteria for selecting students to appear in photographs shared on social networks.	“At the slightest opportunity, there is an update to announce the students who have won a prize or, directly, an announcement about the virtues of the school. I have always been struck by the profile of the students chosen to represent the latter: tall, good-looking, slim and with perfect smiles”.	COIS-T12
Frequent celebrations of the school’s own recreational events to entertain the pupils.	“Today, during one of those internal events at the school that forces us to stop all classes to go to the playground to celebrate something, with bouncy castles everywhere, one of the most veteran colleagues at the school gave me one of those phrases I will never forget: ‘Diego, this is not a school; this is a theme park’”.	COIS-T12
The preparation of big shows for families.	“This kind of musical, with choreography, live voices and several complete sets, is another level. Like last year, families will be talking about it on social media. This is the best possible publicity, and the school is perfectly aware of it”.	COIS-T12
The beauty canon as a criterion for personnel selection.	“In view of the latest additions to the teaching staff, one could say that this looks very much like a modelling agency”.	COIS-T12

):

5. Discussion and Conclusions

The results obtained in this research contribute to a better understanding of the impact of neoliberalism in today’s schools, confirming the main theoretical features that have been identified and the discovery of many others that present a similar logic. According to the extracted data, the neoliberal school represents the triumph of pedagogical principles that are in line with a small group of people (politicians, management teams, families…), regardless of whether these principles are coherent and beneficial with respect to the needs or priorities of others (pupils, teachers, society…). The autoethnographic experimentation of this educational model invites us to characterise its attributes as symptoms or indications, that is, as empirical situations that allow us to confirm the existence of what the theoretical framework points out: an interpretation of the school reality as being a key economic resource (Gramigna 2010; Laval 2004; Laval and Dardot 2013; Merchán Iglesias 2013), which, in our case, sought to justify the very need to reform the Spanish educational system (Olmedo and Santa Cruz 2018; Penalva Buitrago 2009).

As reflected in the subcategory “A competitiveness issue”, the economic characteristic of the discourse explored in the present work is guaranteed by the use of vocabulary that is as varied as it is explicit (e.g., “employability”, “high qualification”, “economic growth”, “labour market”, “entrepreneurship”, etc.). “Deteriorating competitiveness” was its ultimate expression, a diagnosis whose referents were not found in Spain but in the international arena: the OECD and its PISA instrument (Cuesta and Estellés 2020; Cañadell 2018; Rizvi and Lingard 2013; Sanz et al. 2020). The strength of this economic logic and all that it implies even allowed for the fusion, in discursive terms, of the old paradigm of education as a universal right and the neoliberal paradigm of innovation as a service: a product that is sold, consumed, and, above all, economically profitable, through significant sacrifices. From the competitive strategies mentioned above, we can deduce that the latter model is undoubtedly the one that best represents our case study.

Against this economist background, a series of discursive tensions stand out, which are worth bearing in mind: the defence of “social equity” versus the demand for “national competitiveness”; competency-based learning versus the quantification of learning outcomes; the autonomy of schools versus their efficient management; the allusion to “evidence”, “objective results”, and “periodic evaluations”; and the absence of data (beyond the reference to PISA). As the results indicate, the possibility of this coexistence between opposites coincides with a total absence of definitions that concretise the meaning of the terms used or, in other words, with a great deal of semantic imprecision or vagueness behind the core signifiers (e.g., “quality”, “improvement”, “excellence”, “good person”, etc.).

To this same discursive void, we can attribute the normalised coexistence, in the school context of our case study, of numerous and apparently contradictory pedagogical principles and values: hence the name of the second category: “Values for all”. As an example of these “unwelcome truths” (Charteris and Thomas 2017), it suffices to point out the integration of progressive principles, such as “personal freedom”, “pluralism”, “critical thinking”, or cosmopolitanism, into a pedagogical model that is explicitly centred on “patriotic values” and “Christian values”. The aim of this combination, which is very much in line with “conservative and neoliberal equality” (Escudero 2019, p. 161), is none other than to “offer a high-quality educational service”. Some of the comments in the newspaper refer, in any case, to certain unexpected effects of “indoctrination” as well as situations of ideological censorship in the preparation of certain events.

Indeed, many of these attributes are closely linked to the special circumstances of the educational context of our case study: a private Catholic school. As an educational business, this context probably has more neoliberal features than those that might be found in a public school, where we would encounter different problems (Mitchem et al. 2020; Roda 2017). However, some authors point out that, in certain aspects, both models are increasingly similar, e.g., the fact that “parents, as users or customers, are the ones who choose the school they prefer for their children, thus shaping, with their choices, who should remain in the market and who should not” (Viñao 2001, p. 69). In any case, the information gathered here reveals the existence of certain sub-discourses that, similar to those of “quality” or “excellence” (Mockler 2014), are real sources of slogans to capture the attention of families (Angus 2015; Vincent 2017). This was, of course, demonstrated by the school’s Educational Project.

On the other hand, it is necessary to recognise a number of important differences between the different interpretations of the school reality present in the texts, which is dependent on the nature of each of them (in this case, normative organisation of the school or teaching). This gap, which is proportional to the distance between the discursive and physical place occupied by the respective authors and discursive producers (legislators, management and teaching staff) and the classroom context, is significant enough to confirm the lack of correspondence between the educational practices that the texts aim to generate and those that actually end up happening (Merchán Iglesias 2013, 2018).

Although present in all three subcategories, this gap was most clearly perceived when addressing the topic of innovation. In this respect, major discrepancies were noted between what is stated in the normative and organisational texts on the one hand and what is expressed in the observations recorded in the teacher–researcher’s diary on the other, e.g., “I see contradictions everywhere” (SACH-T12). One of the innovative aspects that shows the most notable gap between what is stated in its normative sub-discourse and what is apparently then achieved in practice is undoubtedly that of “competence learning”, through which, although it requires “important changes in the conception of the teaching-learning process” (SACH-T3), “what we change is the container, not the content” (SACH-T12).

Finally, we must highlight the significant usefulness of autoethnography as a method of observation and analysis of the teaching practice itself (Arcadinho et al. 2020; Starr 2010; Suárez 2021; Suárez and Metzdorff 2018), as it allowed us to take an in-depth look that was intended. Its extreme fidelity in the collection of information but also the possibility of merging the subject and object into a whole encouraged us to claim it as an important tool for understanding educational realities. On this occasion, autoethnography allowed us to delve deeper into some of the work circumstances teachers currently suffer (Merchán Iglesias 2013; Pardo Baldoví and San Martín Alonso 2020; Pascual 2019). However, we consider it necessary to complement the work presented here with other methods and new studies, perhaps those focusing on other cases, teachers, areas of knowledge, fields, or educational levels, which, when supported by long-term fieldwork, help us to discuss the results and contextualise the conclusions obtained more completely.