Abstract

Basing our analysis upon Boltanski’s and Thévenot’s proposed paradigm in De la justification, we first question the educational goods that teachers are using in order to justify what they consider to be just in a school setting, or what seems open to criticism when reality strays too much from what an ideal school should be. We have organised 16 focus groups comprising 68 teachers in the secondary school system of the city of Santiago, privately or publicly funded or both. We found that teachers identify a school situation as “just” or “right” when it refers to a multiplicity of educational goods, among which should primarily be noted a concern for the individuality of students and for the affective and relational link between teacher and student. Since this position, evaluation policies based upon the standardisation of practices and the identifying of learning strategies aiming at obtaining specific results have been criticised, owing to the fact that they do not respect the diversity of students nor their affective and relational needs, and they only seek to equate the aims of schooling with the ability to obtain specific results. We conclude by saying that evaluation policies are generally not considered by teachers to be representative of their work. Besides, such policies sometimes force them to conform their practice to previously set goals, thus forcing them to give up on other educational goods although they value them, or to continue in agreement to what they believe to be just or right and thus having to distance themselves, when possible, from the goals set by the educational authorities.