Decidir permanecer: desenvolvimento e subjetividade

Abstract

This dissertation comprises a study with students enrolled in the Integrated Technical Course in Aquaculture at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Bahia (IFBA), Valença campus, focusing on the risk of school dropout and the decision to remain in school, considering concrete situations favorable to the interruption of studies experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research is guided by the following central question: how does subjectivity develop in the process of deciding to remain in school? The general objective is to understand how subjectivity develops in the decision-making process to continue studies, remaining in the school environment. The study is grounded in González Rey’s Theory of Subjectivity, adopts Qualitative Epistemology as its epistemological basis, and uses the Constructive-Interpretative Methodology for the development of the empirical investigation. As instruments for information production, conversational dynamics, sentence completion, the writing of an essay, and a sociodemographic questionnaire were used. Ten third-year students over the age of 18 participated in the study; they completed the course in 2023 and were exposed to objective and subjective situations of dropout risk, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the implementation of remote education, socioeconomic vulnerability, early entry into the labor market, caring for ill family members, difficulties in accessing remote education, learning difficulties, emotional distress, and the return to face-to-face classes in 2022. The thesis defended by this study is that the decision to remain in school, in the face of situations of dropout risk, requires the development of these young people’s subjectivity. The analyses reveal that, in order to understand the risks of dropout, it is necessary to analyze students’ expressions through the subjective meanings linked to the subjective configuration of dropout and the subjective meanings linked to the subjective configuration of permanence, as it is not sufficient to analyze only factors considered objective. In this study, students produced, in 2020 and 2021, many subjective meanings of dropout: psychological suffering, not learning in an adequate way, difficulty in reconciling study and work, difficulty adapting to virtual education, fear of failure, and frustration in the face of difficulties in studying. From 2022 onwards, subjective meanings of permanence were produced: making the family proud through course completion, recognition of the importance of technical education, persistence and confidence, the value of returning to face-to-face classes, course completion and future projects, the dream of a dignified future, and the desire to obtain a federal diploma. The results show that the decision to remain emerges from the development of subjectivity, a non-linear process that involves a dominant subjective configuration of dropout that begins to lose its hegemony in the face of a new configuration that becomes organized and starts to produce new subjective meanings of permanence, which may become dominant. It is concluded that the decision to remain, in contexts of socioeconomic and educational vulnerability, requires the development of subjectivity, from which students emerge as subjects of their experiences, making decisions and producing subjective meanings of effort, resilience, resistance, hope, and life projects, which allows dropout to be understood not as an inevitable destiny, but as a possibility that is tensioned and overcome within singular subjective configurations.