Skills of life and pupils' social representations of state schools of São Paulo's municipality Habilidades de vida e representações sociais de alunos de escolas estaduais do município de São Paulo (Brasil)

Resumen

This work is part of a wider investigation intending to correlate the academic achievement with the performance on “Life Skills” aiming at citizen education. It was developed together with 741 students of State Public Schools of São Paulo City, Brazil. By reason of the positive correlation, noted between the performance on “Life Skills” and academic achievement (mainly in Portuguese examinations), a survey was carried out with a sample of 95 students in order to identify, analyze and interpret Social Representations about the school, the “ideal” teacher, the future, and the kind of important skills and knowledge to “winning in life”. The text discusses the conception of Life Skills and their importance to Education. It shows the methodological procedures of the empirical research, and discusses their results. The main connections observed between the content of the Social Representations and their implications for Teacher Education, and for the possibility of progress in the sense of a quality education are established in the Concluding Considerations.