ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore students’ perspectives within an urban and multicultural school context that, according to statistics from the National Agency of Education, is defined as ‘low-performing.’ The methods used were 16 video-recorded lessons and seven student focus group interviews over one school year. This chapter examines the teaching factors affecting pedagogical segregation on a local level within this specific school, the student’s perspectives on this, and how this can be understood. The analysis reveals that the students’ perspectives involve not only their views of the ways the teaching is conducted, in this case, through whole-class teaching followed by individual work, but also their awareness of when they are learning or not alongside when the teaching is conducted in repetitious and non-dialogic ways, accompanied by low expectations and messy classroom situations. Also, the students express an awareness of those better teaching–learning alternatives accessible in other classrooms in their own school and in other school contexts. To conclude, the students are, to a higher or lower degree, aware of being denied equal opportunities to access upper secondary school, preparing them for citizenship.
