Resumen:
Education can be considered one of the main pillars to build a fairer society. Nevertheless, the various problems which public schools face nowadays have progressively reduced the possibility of promoting individual and collective development of students who need these services. The main aim of this paper is to show the contribution of geographical research to educational management through an ethnographic study conducted with third graders of high school in 2009 at Ruy José de Almeida State School (CERJ), where two categories of analysis were investigated: one concerning the quality of the environment and the pedagogical dimension of the school and the other related to the socioeconomic and cultural status of those students. As this research has a subjective feature, it is intertwined with political, social, economic and cultural aspects and with the time it was performed. Therefore, the methods used were the phenomenological method, which describes the experience the way it really is, and the dialectical method, which is dynamic because it considers the facts within a broader context. The first chapter deals with the contribution of Geography to Education and presents data on students' perceptions concerning the physical, the relational and the pedagogical space of the school. The second chapter discusses the concepts of space and place and presents data concerning the communitarian, residential and family space of students. The third chapter presents aspects of care that the educational management provides for its future alumni, focusing on aspects related to the school space and the conclusion of high school. The results of this research will be able to provide the school community with basis that enables the construction of a contextualized plan and, simultaneously, the development of activities to improve the quality of the education that is offered. Thus, after this geographical research is socialized, it will contribute to the raising of collective consciousness, bringing together education and reality, educators and pupils, theory and practice, science and life, inviting all educators who share the same ideals to dream and work together to make this dream come true.
