“A partir do EJA eu pude me ver prosseguindo”: narrativas de mulheres negras sobre suas vivências na Educação de Jovens e Adultos

Abstract

The present study aimed to understand the meanings attributed by former students of Youth and Adult Education (EJA) to the importance of this educational modality in their personal and professional trajectories. Grounded in a critical perspective of School Psychology and in Cultural-Historical Psychology, the study was based on the understanding that school dropout must be analyzed in relation to objective living conditions, especially regarding inequalities of class, gender, and race. This is a qualitative study, conducted through semi-structured interviews with former EJA students, whose narratives were analyzed using the Meaning Cores method. The results show that the interruption of schooling was mainly related to experiences of exclusion experienced in different ways by the participants, such as the need for early entry into the labor market, the stigma associated with teenage pregnancy, and difficulties in the schooling process, expressing structural determinations that more intensely affect working-class women. The return to schooling was marked by new meanings attributed to education, associated with autonomy, the expansion of opportunities, and the desire for future generations and their social environment to have longer educational trajectories. It is concluded that EJA is configured as a public policy primarily aimed at the working class, constituting a space for confronting historically produced inequalities, although still marked by structural limitations. The study contributes to the field of School Psychology by reinforcing the need for practices committed to a critical understanding of educational trajectories and to the promotion of social justice.