DROPPING OUT AND POLICIES FOR PERMANENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: POSSIBILITIES FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE IN PSYCHOLOGYABSTRACT
We have organized discussion groups with Higher Education students, beneficiaries of policies for permanence at a Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, in order to understand the reasons that may lead to dropout or contribute to the permanence from the students’ perspective. We have used qualitative epistemology and constructive-interpretative methodology, oriented to the study of subjectivity in a cultural-historical perspective. We have verified how the dropout phenomenon takes on a contradictory character: at the same time that it appears as a problem to be overcome, it is becoming naturalized as a quality inherent to technological areas and federal educational institutions. Financial aid aimed at permanence takes a secondary place, while strategies that enable identification and belonging are emphasized. In addition, we have discussed how these aspects related to the social subjectivity of the institution, its discourses and practices. The results have led to the construction of new professional action systems aimed at other segments of the academic community.
Keywords:
school dropout; higher education; school psychology
RESUMO
Organizamos grupos de discussão com estudantes de nível superior, beneficiários de políticas para permanência em um Instituto Federal de Educação Ciência e Tecnologia, buscando compreender os motivos que podem levar ao abandono ou contribuir para a permanência na perspectiva desses estudantes. Utilizamos a epistemologia qualitativa e a metodologia construtivo-interpretativa, orientadas ao estudo da subjetividade em uma perspectiva cultural-histórica. Verificamos como o fenômeno do abandono assume um caráter contraditório: ao mesmo tempo em que aparece como um problema a ser superado, vai sendo naturalizado enquanto uma qualidade inerente às áreas tecnológicas e às instituições federais de ensino. Os auxílios financeiros voltados à permanência assumem um lugar secundário, enquanto as estratégias que possibilitam a identificação e o pertencimento vão sendo enfatizadas. Discutimos como esses aspectos relacionam-se com a subjetividade social da instituição, seus discursos e práticas. Os resultados permitiram a construção de novos sistemas de ação profissional orientados a outros segmentos da comunidade acadêmica.
Palavras-chave:
evasão escolar; ensino superior; psicologia escolar
RESUMEN
Organizamos grupos de discusión con estudiantes de nivel universitario, beneficiarios de políticas para permanencia en un Instituto Federal de Educación Ciencia y Tecnología, buscando comprender los motivos que pueden llevar a la deserción o contribuir a la permanencia en la perspectiva de esos estudiantes. Utilizamos la epistemología cualitativa y la metodología constructivo-interpretativa, orientadas al estudio de la subjetividad en una perspectiva cultural-histórica. Verificamos cómo el fenómeno de la deserción asume un carácter contradictorio: a la vez que aparece como un problema a ser superado, sigue siendo naturalizado como una calidad inherente a las áreas tecnológicas y a las instituciones federales de enseñanza. Las ayudas financieras volcadas a la retención asumen un lugar secundario, las estrategias que posibilitan la identificación y la pertenencia siguen siendo enfatizadas.
Discutimos cómo esos aspectos se relacionan con la subjetividad social de las instituciones, sus discursos y prácticas. Los resultados permitieron las construcciones de nuevos sistemas de acción profesional orientados a otros segmentos de la comunidad académica.
Palabras clave:
evasión escolar; enseñanza universitaria; psicología escolar
INTRODUCTION
In the past decades, Higher Education Institutions (IES) have become an emerging field for practice in School and Education Psychology (Marinho-Araujo, 2016; Moura & Facci, 2016). In the realm of public education, this is due to the implementation of policies that amplified access to this level of education in the country, creating and consolidating new vacancies, as well as access devices such as affirmative action that have diversified the profile of students that today attend these institutions (Almeida, Oliveira, & Seixas, 2021; Ferrarini & Camargo, 2017).
This new scenario, however, also includes a new challenge: guaranteeing the necessary conditions for the permanence of these students. The evasion rates in higher education courses at the Federal Institutions of Education (IFES) have evidenced the urgency and the complexity of this task (Gallindo, 2018), and we understand that it must be shared by all agents in the educational process.
In this sense, the National Plan for Student Assistance (PNAES) appears as a public policy with the objective to democratize conditions for the permanence of young students at the IFES and reduce the rates of retention and evasion (Brasil, 2010). The PNAES has been implemented by the IFES by means of different institutional programs with the direct or indirect participation of psychologists (Almeida, Oliveira & Seixas, 2021).
This report expresses an attempt to construct a system of professional actions in School and Education Psychology, which, by means of the realization of discussion groups with students who are beneficiaries of permanence policies in a Federal Institution of Education Science and Technology, or “Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia” (IF), could subsidize actions that extended themselves to other segments of the academic community in order to produce transformations towards the development of more inclusive processes in the institution.
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
Although the term evasion is more common in literature, our theoretical option leads us to adopt the term drop out, according to Silva, Pelissari and Steimbach (2013), because the term evasion seems to hint at a unilateral withdrawal by the student, generally expressed in numbers, whereas the term drop out invites us to reflect on a shared commitment between the student who drops out of a course but that at the same time to some extent gets dropped either by commission or omission by educational institutions.
Our attention on the higher rates of dropping out in the courses at the IFs (Gallindo, 2018) considers the complexity of this phenomenon and its multiple determinations - social, economic, political, historical, and cultural - understanding that this concrete reality also expresses a subjective dimension at the social and individual levels (Ferrarini & Camargo, 2017).
Conceiving subjectivity from a cultural historical perspective means looking at it as a peculiarly human production, which configures itself in the landmarks of historicity and of culture and therefore distinguishes itself from a universal or abstract system or concept that is above the actions of individuals or the contexts in which they take place. Thus, we understand social subjectivity as a reality that configures itself by means of the subjective productions and relations of individuals in social contexts, and that aggregates, in a recursive way, the discourses and the practices that makeup a shared, subjective, social space, produced at the moments of social interaction and at collective and institutional spaces (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017).
In this sense, there is the need for critical attention by School and Education Psychology on the dropout phenomenon at the IES, for the comprehension of one of its dimensions (the subjective dimension) and of the integration of this perspective into a larger system of institutional practices, with the objective to contribute to the comprehension of all its dimensions and work towards overcoming the problem. Conceiving School and Education Psychology from a critical perspective means: considering the political, ethical, and social commitment of psychologists in the formal spaces for education; overcoming the intervention-investigation dichotomy in that search for integration between research and professional practice as inseparable elements; and the proposed creative and diversified forms of action-investigation, that do not limit themselves to mindlessly importing and reproducing models and instruments produced in countries of central capitalism, which are naturally decontextualized from our reality (Mitjáns Martínez; 2009; Souza, 2009).
Considering the processes of implementation of public and educational policies as a privileged locus for the action of psychologists towards that direction (Mitjáns Martinez, 2009; Souza, 2009), It is possible to understand that the PNAES represents the materialization of the demands and claims by populations for the right to public higher education formation, something they have been historically denied.
Our attention to all the beneficiaries of these policies seeks to overcome a fragmented and blaming vision of these students or of their social economic and cultural realities. Contrarily, we aim at approaching that responsibility of the IES in the production of academic failure, expressed by the high rates of dropout in the courses, And the mountains the incapacity of these institutions to embrace and handle diversity, changing their practices, management models and overcoming a unilateral notion of adaptation by students to the institution (Ferrarini & Camargo, 2017; Moura & Facci, 2016).
METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN
This article is part of the results of a mastering course research that investigated the subjective productions of the students who were beneficiaries of access and permanence policies in higher education courses at an IF, by means of discussion groups with some of these students (Castanho, 2019). The outline presented here regards groups with students who are beneficiaries of permanence policies, which happened in the second semester of 2018 and it also regards the repercussions of these activities and practices with other segments of the academic community, developed throughout 2019.
We proposed the construction of systems of professional action (González Rey, Goulart & Bezerra, 2016) in School and Education Psychology, oriented by the qualitative epistemology and by the constructive-interpretative method (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017), concerning the study and the development of subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective. In this perspective, research and professional action constitute a moment that is integrated and inseparable, of dialogical and communicational character aiming at the expression of subjective meanings by individuals-participants on a certain experience they have gone through. Concerning this study, the experience consists of resorting to permanence policies and the institution and witnessing the dropping out of other students.
Some questions-issues oriented our investigative action were: how do these students regard the dropout phenomenon in their courses? To what reasons do they attribute the dropping out of other students? Which permanence strategies have they employed? Which ones could be constructed by the institution in order to minimize dropout and contribute to permanence in these courses?
We understand that in addition to better exploring the reasons for dropping out, these collective spaces could constitute an action for the strengthening of permanence, because they have been organized as moments for sharing experiences among students. Mediated by psychologists, such moments could contribute to the emergence of subjective meanings and configurations related to strategies for facing adversity through the formative trajectory of students (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017). It is important to emphasize that one of the researchers work as an educational psychologist at the institution where the research was developed and the investigation outline, therefore, was designed by means of this professional practice.
Our option to work with groups is in accordance with the other studies that have pointed at the need to overcome individualizing practices and comprehend collective spaces as providers of experiences of exchange, circulation of ideas, the sharing of emotions and intersubjectivity (Marinho-Araujo, 2016). The term “discussion group” was chosen with the intention to stimulate commitment and engagement by the students/participants in the discussion of these problems. The idea, therefore, was to invite them to discuss the reality in which they live not only as spectators but also as the agents in the educational process.
The mediation instruments
We used mediation instruments in order to facilitate the conversational dynamics in the discussion groups. According to González Rey and Mitjáns Martínez (2017), the instruments appear as facilitators of expression for participants and must, therefore, lead them to a feeling of identification, facilitating the expression of emotions and the mobilization of subjective resources. Thus, it is important that the choice of instruments be oriented towards those individuals, their social reality, and their historical moment as well as their language and their cultural-symbolic universe.
We decided to use images that are common on social networks, memes, which are very popular among students. The term meme was created in 1976 by researcher Richard Dawkins in order to refer to a cultural unit, a behavior, or an idea that can be passed along from individual to individual, that is, which can be replicated by means of imitation. Memes became very popular in the 1990s with the universalization of Internet access, and later on with the appearance of informational social networks. Today it is common for the term to be associated to funny content, expressed by images or videos, with rapid dissemination and sharing (Torres, 2016).
We used pages that produce similar content in three different social networks (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), respectively entitled: “from IF to IF”, “IF of depression” and “obscure IF”. The contents of these pages share the fact that they are re-signified resigning fried expressions of a type of suffering produced during the formative trajectory of students, with the use of humor and irony.
An analysis that included the significations that constitute these cybernetic expressions is not the objective of this article but certainly would lead to deep reflections. We will restrict ourselves to justifying our option for the mediation instruments. Our choice was influenced by: the frequency of sharing and popularity among students in the campus; the fact that they were perfect representations by the students of the experiences lived in their formative trajectories; the fact that they are directly related to the type of institution researched (IF); the fact that they comprehend forms of psychological suffering that can lead to dropping out; the fact that they open communication windows related to the object of this research-action, but not in such a direct way leading up to a preconceived response; the fact that they lead to the expression of contradictory emotions happiness-sadness, humor-suffering) benefiting the emergence of subjective meanings associated to these emotional states.
The participants and the research social scenario
It is important to emphasize some particularities of the institution where the research was developed. The IFs are institutions of higher, technical, and the technological education that provide different levels and modes of education. They were created in 2008, by means of a federal law that incorporated and reorganized federal technical schools that already existed, providing them with new institutionality, which represented, in the words of Frigotto (2018, p. 7), “the most comprehensive and significant policy in the field of public education” ever implemented in Brazil. Thus, the IFs appear as a historical moment of expansion, consolidation, and search for democratization of higher education.
The campus where the research was developed is located in a municipality with approximately 50,000 inhabitants, in the countryside of the state of Santa Catarina. At the moment of the research, the municipality had approximately 1301 students, 151 of them were in higher education, distributed over 2 university courses of technology (CST): analysis and development of systems and food technology. The research was advertised directly by the researcher among all classes in the two university courses highlighting the importance of research for the institution (Get better acquainted with the reasons for dropping out with the intention to guarantee better conditions for the permanence of students), in addition to the fact that it is an academic research, connected to a postgraduation program in psychology. Participants were supposed to be interested in the theme and be available to participate and they were also supposed to fit into the criteria (they were supposed to be higher education students and beneficiaries of the permanent policy of the institution), and they could contact the researcher directly in the researcher’s office.
There were 16 volunteers from the two courses. We organized the groups in accordance with their availability to participate, taking into consideration the period/semester they were attending. The idea to put participants together that were in similar periods was a suggestion by the researchers. The groups, by number of participants, period in which they were enrolled, and age were respectively organized in the following way: Group 1: 4 participants, second period, aged between 19 and 25 years. Group 2: 4 participants, 2nd and 4th periods, aged between 18 and 19 years. Group 3: 5 participants, 2nd and 4th periods, aged between 20 and 22 years. Group 4: 3 participants, 6th semester, aged between 23 and 24 years.
In this research format (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017) it is not the quantity of the population sample that gets relevance, it is the quality of the expressions of the participants as well as their commitment and engagement in the discussion of the problems. We decided not to describe the specificities of each participant for ethical reasons (it is a small campus and a detailed description could compromise that safety of anonymity), as well as for the fact that this study is oriented towards the investigation of the relation of expressions by these individuals with the dimensions of the social subjectivity of the institution.
Discussion groups
Four meetings were realized, one with each group. The meetings lasted approximately one hour and a half to two hours each, depending on the quality and intensity of the discussions. All meetings were recorded in audio and transcribed for a more careful later analysis of the produced data.
In the beginning of each meeting we presented the research in further detail with the reading of the free informed consent term (TCLE), so we could get authorization by participants for recording, with emphasis on ethical matters and precautions, as well as the possible risks and benefits for the participants.1 After that, there was a round of presentations in which we asked participants to tell us their names, the semesters they were in, their courses and what made them decide to contribute to this research.
There was a brief contextualization of the research problem and of the objectives of the activity. Then we projected the chosen emerges as instruments of mediation (memes) in a projector (datashow), starting the conversational dynamics. According to González Rey and Mitjáns Martínez (2017) the conversational dynamics aims at giving participants space for expression without interruption or limitations by researchers’ questions. It is a moment for listening to participants without any ruptures to their constructions and interpretations on the investigated phenomenon. So they are a dialogical expression that progresses simultaneously in two branches: “ personal constructions of what is important for each participant”, and “the researcher’s construction of what is intended to discover” (p. 96).
Dialogue took place easily in all groups, and each dialogue was concluded harmoniously by participants because everyone recognized that there was nothing else to be said about the discussion proposed by the researcher.
The processes of construction of information
Generally speaking, participants mentioned several reasons, of individual and collective nature, that were related to factors internal and external to the institution such as: difficult to conciliate professional or family demands with studies; health issues; financial issues; lack of identification with the course; and professional expectations among other reasons. We wish to highlight for this construction, however the elements that we could articulate in the elaboration of an explanatory, theoretical model (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017) on the phenomenon of permanence/drop out at institutions.
For the construction of this theoretical model, we identified indicators that could help us in the formulation of hypotheses regarding the reasons for dropout and for permanence from the perspective of the participants, always observing the relations between these expressions and aspects of social subjectivity at the researched institution, with the intention to produce critical and contextualized elaborations. According to González Rey and Mitjáns Martínez (2017), the indicators are a construction by the researcher, based on the expressions of the participants, which considers the moments of greatest engagement and emotional expression, as well as topics and things that generated the most intense discussions. For the signification of these indicators, two aspects were relevant: the quality of the insertion of the researcher in the social scenario of the research and the consideration of the theoretical basis of the researchers. He articulated these indicators with aspects of social subjectivity at the institution and our theoretical basis, aiming at the comprehension of this institutional dimension and the elaboration of interpretative constructions.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
We verify how the dropping out phenomenon assumes a contradictory character in the expressions of the participants: while it represents problems to be overcome by the institution, it nevertheless gets naturalized as a quality that is inherent to technological areas and to federal educational institutions. Our hypothesis is that part of this naturalization is produced after contact with the social subjectivity of the institution, which imprints by means of discourses and practices what it seeks to represent in the social imagination: a place of quality and excellence, where difficulty is emphasized as a differential and therefore dropping out is an almost inevitable result.
In the group with the students at the initial stages, this difficulty appears mostly associated to the process of adaptation by students to new reality, which contrasts with public school, according to the following excerpt:
The most difficult thing for me is to catch up with the pace. When you come from a public school you are accustomed to a different rhythm. (Group 1).
This figurative language (catch up with the pace) seems to produce aspects that are appreciated by the institution, and that go beyond traditional methods for assessment of learning, representing a set of expected and appreciated attitudes at the IES, which seemed to refer more to behaviors and attitudes by the students who somehow needs to demonstrate their efforts to adapt to a new reality. This adaptationist is the vision of the formative trajectory, however, appears as a movement that is almost unilateral in the expression of the participants:
You have to sweat to catch up with things that we had never seen before... You really have to do your homework and learn everything you were supposed to already know. (Group 1)
In Group 4 (students at the final stages), we noticed a naturalization of the dropping out phenomenon, as a consequence of this difficulty, which seems to be inherent to some choruses. The excerpt we have highlighted provides an example of how this naturalization can be related 2 institutional discourses, which appear here in the figure of the teacher, but that can be observed among administrators and technicians as well as in institutional advertising campaigns:
I believe that some courses are really hard, which means fewer people are going to be able to graduate. There is this preoccupation with dropping out of permanence but if you think about it even the teachers admit that fewer students make it, and I think it also depends on the course (group 4).
Right in the beginning with students at the final stages, a comment made by one of them drew our attention. The researcher commented, after the presentation, “ you are only in the last year then”, and one of the participants answered “yes, survivors”, the other ones laughed in agreement with the comment. The survivors, in our opinion, are those who managed to deal with adversity, conflict, tensions in the formative trajectory, using their own strategies for facing it and despite so much suffering, “survived”. This survivor place, in our interpretative construction, is a subjective configuration of permanence in the course, which can produce subjective meanings associated to the individual merit and effort (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017). We believe that, depending on the way the IESs appreciate this space (legitimate) of survivor no worthiness, other exclusion processes might also be engineered and reproduced, because the opposite side (the quitter) would be fit for those who don’t deserve it and dropped out of the course, in a blaming and individualizing conception of academic failure, expressed by dropping out of the course.
In this same direction, some methodological and assessment adaptations that are necessary for an effective inclusion process might be eventually configured subjectively as an injustice, depending also on the way they are introduced by the institution, with the chance of producing subjective meanings that intensify competitiveness among students, by means of individually blaming the ones who drop out of the course:
Nowadays it’s much easier to enter university but it’s not all about entrance ... We can see that the teachers give us a lot of chances but some students do not take advantage of such chances they feel discomfort so no matter what the help consists of some people do not want it, it’s pointless to insist. (Group 4).
According to Guareschi (2013, p. 147) competitiveness and blaming “are psychosocial aspects of exclusion”, that is, “ideological aspects … decisive for creation and perpetuation of exclusion”, the thing that allows inequality and social exclusion to be naturalized and validated by capitalist societies. In this case, competitiveness gets more appreciation because of the congratulations given to the ones that made it and to the ones that survived, and blaming in the individual responsibility placed on those that felt discomfort, the ones who “had a chance”, But did not “appreciate it”. Adaptation to the institution by students in pedagogical and assessment terms is seen as a “chance”.
We also noticed that this difficulty is associated, in the participants’ expressions, no only to the technological areas in their courses, but also to the fact that IFs are a federal institution. Ciavatta (2010) proposes this same reflection to deal with the mystique of university knowledge, in the social use of the “university” brand. In our opinion, these effects are more harmful when it comes to the IFs and the campi of expansion, in the countryside cities. We understand the importance of delimitating the public, free-of-charge character of the IFs, and what that represents in terms of their social and political commitment. However, the “federal” does not seem to us to be immersed in the perspective of the public or the free of charge. Rather, it is an indicator of prestige associated to “strong”, “quality” education. To us, there is the need to break up with these conceptions in the educational spaces, in view of the fact that a “strong”, “quality” education, as we understand it, would be the one that, instead of reproducing and perpetuating exclusion processes, could produce meanings of solidarity and mutual support.
An important characteristic of this theoretical model is the conflictiong and the contradictory character of the subjective configurations (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017): this very “difficulty”, which appears as a factor that might lead to dropping out also appears as a motivation for permanence, for those who manage to adapt to this reality, which is quite restricted, producing, at the end of their formative trajectory, some sort of subjective gratification, associated to the difficulty of this individual trajectory. The comparison between the discussions in Group 1 (initial stages) and Group 4 (final stages), corroborated our elaborations in that direction.
Concerning the strategies that might contribute to permanence and minimize dropping out, it was possible to observe how student assistance assumes a secondary position in the participants’ expression, in which they team at emphasizing their experiences as scholarship holders in other activities at the institution such as internships, research, extension, and monitoring:
I think that the most important thing is to have more internships. I got I got myself a scholarship and it made a huge difference. (Group 2).
[Regarding the scholarship for research]because you have the responsibility to attend classes, and study, so you get more involved, sometimes I had to spend the whole day here. (Group 3).
It is evident that there is a material condition (received financial resource) and a pedagogical dimension (involvement with the contents), when the participants refer to the importance of internship, research, extension, or monitoring scholarships for their permanence, but we believe that beyond that, there is also a symbolic-emotional dimension. This “involvement” and the will to “spend the whole day” at the institution somehow keep on producing subjective meanings of identification and affiliation to this new space, for students, as well as for teachers and staff members. This experience is an inseparable part of the teaching learning process, which constitutes itself also in the relations emotions and affections produced in these social spaces. (Mitjáns Martínez & González Rey, 2017).
Another aspect that contributed to our elaboration is the fact that some participants that concluded a technical course at high school level at the institution before entering higher education emphasized that it was a decisive factor for their “adaptation”:
It’s just that we study a lot of things in technical courses too and it helps a lot. When you arrive here you know what it feels like you know the rhythm you don’t get slow. I have noticed that the ones that have gone to technical courses like I did have less difficulty. (Group 4).
The theoretical model presented here does not aim at exhausting the matter it intends to study. Its explanatory character aims at producing new zones of intelligibility about the subjective dimensions that need to be reviewed, interpreted, and elaborated (González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2017). Our interpretive construction aimed at comprehending the particularity of the object of our study (dropout/ permanence) in its subjective dimension, seeking a contextualized perspective that, although it has the expression of the participants in the group discussions as a starting point, does not limit itself to them, but rather aims at finding its signification in an institutional context that is larger and helps to think, in the perspective of critical School and Education Psychology, and its institutional interconnections, so that these reflections can make sense in the integration with other professionals.
Other systems of professional action
Our results subsidized discussions with the pedagogical coordination, department where the researcher psychologist is located - this which is made-up of a pedagogue, a social assistant and an educational technician - and they were able to constitute elements to be considered in the activities for reception and supporting our new students, which are realized by the pedagogical team in the beginning of every semester. In this case, the reflections on adaptation, identification, and affiliation constituted themes to be discussed in these activities with new students.
Concerning the continued formation of teachers, we used our elaborations, which are the result of information produced by the groups, for some reflections with the teachers, in the spaces reserved for providing better go to call advice for higher education courses, based on the following reflection question: how to build educational spaces that are more solitary and less competitive? In order to do that, we used the conflicting, contradictory poles: social inclusion vs justice; right vs merit; quality vs difficulty.
Another important action was the participation of the psychologist in the entrance Commission, which organizes every semester activities for advertising at public schools in the municipality and guided visitations with the students on campus. We understand the need to contribute to this advertising process and take some of our elaborations to the conversations with the Commission in order to think over the following questions: how to go for an advertising that does not delimitate a difference that produces exclusion? How to present the IFs as a space for social inclusion rather than academic elitism? The psychologist also participated by directly in the advertising actions of the Commission At some public high schools and realized conversations with students who came to the campus for the guided tours.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
School and Education Psychology at the IES cannot be reduced to punctual, palliative interventions. Neither can it be limited to the application of instruments and the reproduction of techniques that are decontextualized from the cultural and historical reality where it is inserted. Rather than that, it can contribute with creative and diversified actions that target the different ages in the educational process. The report presented here aimed at establishing a starting point, a means, and an end, which are necessary to make this report fit into an article format. However, the actions reported here are elements from a praxis that goes on articulating itself in a continuous, processual, and interdisciplinary way.
We want to emphasize that the size of the campus facilitated the development of this professional research-action. The proximity with the students that the physical structure provides, the convenience and the insertion into commissions and working groups, and the presence of an interdisciplinary team were game-changing aspects. Maybe practices like these are not so feasible at larger institutions, with organizational structures that “isolate” psychologists in a department for punctual assistance to mental health demands.
The greatest difficulty is that we found in the development of this research consists of the central point in our discussion: how do excluding conceptions express themselves in discourses and institutional practices targeted at the students? The process of submission and approval for research works of this nature in the competent instances is usually slow and might produce a delaying effect and the practice of psychologists that are oriented towards action-research from a qualitative perspective.
The effort so far has been directed at making possible the construction of intelligibility zones on subjective processes related to dropout and to permanence from the participants’ perspective, emphasizing that these productions emerged in a singular institutional context and were consequently pervaded with the educational practices, conceptions, and processes that constitute it. However, we believe that thinking of dropping out-permanence in the higher education courses in the IFs, by means of this study, can contribute with other reflections aiming at the possibility of comparison with other contexts and institutional spaces.
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This paper presents results from a mastering research and discusses the repercussions of this and other professional actions that were realized by one of the researchers after the dissertation defense. There was no financing for the realization of this research, which was approved by the Ethics Committee for Research with Human Beings of the UFPR under number 902378679087 and had the express approval of the IFSC, where it was realized.
So how is college going?- Too tired to go on but resisting because there is no other choice