A aprendizagem do ofício de estudante universitário: tempos de constituição do ingressante no ensino superior

Abstract

Higher Education is a very singular moment in the life’s student regarding some aspects such as professional and personal dimension. This said, we believe that the presence and work of the school psychologist in Higher Education show us how essential it is at this level of education which, beside involving schooling and humanization processes, it is responsible for the citizen professional formation that is needed to be taken cared in their cognitive, emotional, social, ethical and aesthetic aspects. This work aims to understand how the entry into Higher Education sets up the subject’s constitution as a student, based on Critical School Psychology theoretical perspective. Also, this research aims to propose possibilities of performance of the school psychologist in Higher Education. The Alain Coulon’s book, “The Student Condition: Entry into University life”, is also a fundamental theoretical reference in this dissertation. This qualitative research is based on oral history, a kind of methodological resource to achieve our goals; it was also made a field diary. It was selected three freshmen psychology students of Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU, in portuguese). The interviews were done aiming the entry in the university and it took place in three different occasions, namely: the beginning of first period, the end of first period and the beginning of second period in Psychology course. The interviews were transcribed (“transcriadas” in Portuguese, a different way of transcription) and from the careful reading of the transcripts (“transcriações” in Portuguese, a different way of transcription) and from the theoretical references mentioned above, we elected four main axes analysis: a) Hesitation time; b) Unfamiliarity time; c) Learning time e d) Affiliation time. The doubts and concerns from participants regarding their professional choices make up the Hesitation time; we highlight here the importance of Career Guidance as a process that may help the future academic student on this choice. The Unfamiliarity time showed us the first moment of entrance of the freshmen academic students in the university, permeated by happiness of having entered and for the unfamiliarity time caused by the necessity to understand the rules and institutional norms from this brand new world. The freshmen reception activities are present with extremely importance and required to the welcome, according to interviews. The Learning time is analyzed the ways which students were dealing with rules and principles that leads the academic life and learning the student’s duty, intellectual work the will lead them to become effective components from academic community. The Affiliation time is characterized by new learnings, from relationships with colleagues, teaching body, course coordinator and by appropriations regarding issues of the University, the city, the academic rules, the bureaucracy, the different ways of teacher’s evaluation and to the scientific concepts from Psychology. Finally, we present reflections about the role of the school psychologist in the Higher Education, we take again some actions already related by some authors and we proposed others that may be made by this professional considering the peculiarity of this level of teaching. The entry in the Higher Education is permeated by many feelings, expectations, difficulties, learnings and affiliations, and, therefore, we emphasize the importance of the school psychologist to be inserted at this level of education and provide to the academic community members the opportunity to recognize the partnership with the Educational and School Psychology as fundamental so that be possible new directions in Higher Education.