Processos de integração e afiliação à vida acadêmica de estudantes de camadas populares no contexto de expansão universitária

Abstract

This study aims to understand the academic trajectory of the lower classes of students in the course of Electrical Engineering, of the Universidade Federal de Itajubá, Campus Itabira, created in the context of university expansion, through the Programa de Apoio a Planos de Expansão e Reestruturação das Universidades Federais (REUNI). Theoretically, the research is based on the concepts of habitus and provisions, on the perspectives presented by Bourdieu and Lahire; in the notions of integration and university affiliation, made, respectively, by Tinto and Coulon and in the studies about unlikely school history. The study was conducted in three stages. The first, in order to understand the institutional profile, was performed through document analysis. The second, which was intended to identify the students of the lower classes, took a quantitative perspective and by the students' responses to the Questionários Socioeconômicos do Exame Nacional de Ensino Médio (ENEM), were built social the social profiles of the classes in the course, in the years academic 2012 and 2013. In a total of 99 students, nine were identified as belonging to the lower classes, of these nine students, eight participated in the third phase of the research, the construction of the "sociological portraits." This last phase aimed to understand which provisions and types of behavior of these subjects were conditions for entry and for the process of integration and affiliation to higher education. Of the eight students analyzed based on the methodology of the "sociological portraits," two reached the time of affiliation to higher education, indicator for academic success. The increase of vacancy by the REUNI, as well as the reformulation of the selection processes for entry into the institution, are structural issues that favored the arrival of these students in a course considered high social prestige, however, the absence of an academic restructuring, capable to welcome students from different social backgrounds, points as a problem for the real democratization of higher education. In addition, the completion of basic education, but allowed access to the course, seems havent gifted students of the skills, abilities and knowledge required to be a membership of the higher education. Therefore, the structural school issues, originating still in basic education, stand as an obstacle to college success. In this sense, the rational pedagogy and the pedagogy of affiliation, formulated by Bourdieu and Coulon, respectively, seem to point to a university restructuring process in an inclusive perspective.