This study, developed in a Portuguese school, identifies several guidelines, practices and experiences in which performance and diversity seem to be polarizing topics of the meanings of teachers and students' testimonies. Trying to interpret the reported processes, it is suggested that the edification of an exigent school? according to the referents underscored by the actors of the case under study ? seems to represent a negotiation in presence and an answer found by that school, taking into account the capacity of performance required and the conditions of diversity of the public attended by the school, in face of the scholar institution democratization, as it has occurred in that context. On the dimensions approached, that identity construction (an exigent school) testifies some particular angles of current facets of the Portuguese democratization of the scholar institution processes lived during the last thirty years.
Schooling democratization; School performance and diversity; Secondary school
