Evasão de alunos em um curso de licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas: caracterização e efeitos de uma reestruturação curricular

Abstract

The evasion of undergraduate students is one of the main problems in attending the growing demand of primary and secondary teachers and has been a concern of public policies. The phenomenon of evasion is complex, conditioned by several interrelated factors, varies between areas of knowledge, between courses in the same area and over time within the same course, so that the influence of some factors is still not well Understood. In the 2000s, undergraduate courses across the country underwent curricular changes, under the National Curriculum Guidelines for Teacher Formation (“Licenciatura”), which could influence the phenomenon of student dropout in undergraduate degrees. In this context, we sought to evaluate the factors that influence evasion in the undergraduate course in Biological Sciences of the Federal University of Amazonas from 1997 to 2010, before and after a curricular restructuring in 2003. We investigated the causes of dropout of students evaded and the persistence of students graduated in different years and we compared the causes of dropout and persistence in a degree curriculum in “Licenciatura” in Biological Science compared to a new curriculum of Biological Science with “Licenciatura” as option from the beginning. Sixteen students from the course (eight evaded and eight graduated) participated in this study, to complete a questionnaire and conduct an interview. We analyzed the Pedagogical Political Project of 2003 and compared the curricular structures of 1986 (previous curriculum) and 2003 and used the content analysis method to evaluate the interviews. We verified that the reasons for avoidance in the course involved the incompatibility of the course workload and the time for personal activities, difficulties related to performance, disinterest or lack of perspective with the teaching career, including the low salary perspectives and the conditions of work of the profession, excessive emphasis on biological content in detriment of pedagogical contents, possible psychological upsets during the academic experience and financial difficulties. The curricular restructuration of 2003 contributed to give to the student the option of choosing between a bachelor’s degree and a “Licenciatura” course and allowed a better emphasis to be placed on teacher education. However, we verified it contributed little to the teaching identity and reduction of student dropout. We discussed the characteristics of dropout in this course comparing our results with other studies on dropout in undergraduate degrees and the need of complementary actions to the National Curriculum Guidelines to work on the teaching identity during the course, which could reduce dropout during the course and determine an insertion more effective in the profession.