Obstáculos materiais e simbólicos da desistência de estudantes/PROEJA/IFRN: um estudo à luz da teoria das representações sociais e da praxiologia de Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

The dropout is a worrying reality in the Education of Young People and Adults (EJA) in Brazil, especially since this type of education is the way of access to formal education for people who had to interrupt their school paths throughout their lives. In a previous study with the population of EJA (CARDOSO, 2007), among other difficulties for the permanence in this modality of teaching, limitations were identified to learn the content taught, impossibility to reconcile work and study, and mainly, shame for not knowing how to read and write. These results allowed us to formulate the hypothesis according to which, in the reasons for the dropout of the EJA courses, there would be obstacles that would be, on the one hand, a consequence of the material conditions of life and, on the other hand, of symbolic order. Thus, in this research, we sought to identify the material and symbolic obstacles that cause the dropout of high school students from the National Program for the Integration of Professional Education with Basic Education in the Youth and Adult Education Mode (Proeja/Setec/ MEC), at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN). From the theoretical point of view, support was sought in the Theory of Social Representations, by Serge Moscovici, and in the Social Praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu. In the first case, this theory allowed us to get to know the social representations that the investigated population shares in relation to the Education and the IFRN, symbolic elements that guided their return to school life. In the second case, the concepts of place effects and symbolic violence have made it possible to highlight the material conditions of life that hinder the permanence of this population in school and the consequences of the symbolic violence exercised by the school that leads it to give up. The locus of observation was the IFRN campus located in the Northern Zone of Natal, the only one to offer Proeja at the time of the research. The main instrument of data collection was the semistructured interview conducted with "dropout" students (who interrupted their studies), teachers teaching in Proeja and IFRN managers. The research universe consisted of "dropout" thirtenn students, four teachers and five managers. The method of analysis of the interviews was the categorial analysis of content (BAUER, 2002; BARDIN, 2000; FRANCO, 2012). Quantitative data were collected aiming to characterize the population and to complement the direct observations made during the field work. The results indicate that dropout is not limited, as the IFRN data publish, to the phenomenon of evasion or simple abandonment of the course; the decision that leads to desistance involves a long, stressful and painful process, that reveals how the material conditions of life are confused with the psychosocial processes that are the basis of the symbolic suffering experienced by the researched population, due to the effects of place and symbolic violence produced in a way that is not at all conscious by the institutional mediating agents, since they act as reproducers of the legitimate school culture that classifies in a inferior way the population they seek to receive.