Desempenho acadêmico e retenção no curso de física: percepção de docentes e discentes

Abstract

The expansion of access to higher education observed in the last decade was not necessarily accompanied by students' permanence until graduation. One way to promote it is by combating the low academic performance, which leads to successive retentions. These are closely related to the dropout from the major, generating a high economic and social impairment for the subjects involved, for the institutions and for society in general. At the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Technical Reports points to the course of Physics (Bachelor’s Degree and Teaching Degree) as the one that presents the highest dropout rate of the institution and high retention rates in courses considered difficult. With this in sight, this study aimed to investigate the perceptions of professors and students of the Physics major of UFMG about the low academic performance in five courses of the first year of the major considered difficult and whose rates of failure have been higher than 50% over a decade (2006-2016). For this, we discuss the concepts of academic retention, performance and failure and write about the experiences of professors and students in the context of the operational university, as well as the transition processes from high school to college, from affiliation, the relationship with knowledge and integration in the first college year. The data were obtained in documents and through field research, in which questionnaires were applied to 105 students of the degree and interviews were conducted with 5 of these students and 5 professors from the classes included in the research. Data analysis showed that in the students' perception, having a low academic performance has a strong or very strong relationship with the decision to dropout the degree. It was identified as justification for retention: individual problems, such as insufficient dedication to studies, immaturity, difficulty in the transition from high school to higher education, psychological and financial issues; structural problems, such as the low quality of education in basic education and the lack of promotion of autonomy and habits of studies at this level of teaching and contextual problems, such as the organization of the curriculum, the excess of disciplines per semester, the absences of didactics of its professors and of orientation in the studies and the distance in the teacher-student relationship. In the perception of the professors, the low performance is more frequently related to the low quality of the teaching of physics and mathematics in basic education, the lack of study habits and dedication of the students, the fact of underestimating the complexity of the contents, the low frequency in monitoring classes, low demand to remedy doubts, and, in lesser proportions, the change in the selective process for higher education, from the entrance exams to the ENEM. It is concluded that multiples are the perceptions about retention in the first year of the degree and that there is a need for greater dialogue between students and professors, and between them and the institution, so that together they can develop strategies for integrating and promoting academic success, aiming at coping with retention.