Desenvolvimento vocacional e escolhas profissionais: o olhar dos estudantes do ensino médio sobre a participação da escola

Abstract

Choosing a profession is a complex process that generates many uncertainties, especially in adolescence. This stage of development coincides with the last stage of basic education, when students need to manifest themselves for a professional choice. Before making this choice, the young person goes through stages of Vocational Development, a process that accompanies the life cycle. In this sense, career guidance contributes to the student's life as an instrument to help with professional choices. The research arose to deepen the knowledge of this theme in the Amazonian context and aimed to analyze, from the student's perspective, how the school helps in the construction of professional projects in High School. The locus of study was a state school located in the urban area of Humaitá-AM. The participants were 234 students enrolled in the three grades of High School. We adopted the Mixed Method research and used the Vocational Development Exploration Scale - EEIV- BR-2014, a sociodemographic questionnaire and the Focus Group for data collection. The results indicate that several factors influence the choice of a profession, among them: the lack of information of students about the variety of options of higher education courses and technical/professional courses; the absence of self-reflection; doubts in the professional choice; financial difficulties; the educational level and support of parents, family, friends and teachers. Regarding the Vocational Development stage, the students of the 1st grade are in the Exploration dimension, those of the 2nd are still confused, varying between the Diffusion and Foreclosure dimensions. Those in the 3rd grade are in Investment. The survey highlights the little or no participation of the school in the construction of the professional project. If the school participated more actively in this process, it could help students explore possible alternatives for study and/or work, based on self-knowledge. Some students highlight the great importance of career guidance at school and point out that they need this help in choosing their profession. The school offers little stimulus to professional life, which ends up making it difficult to build professional projects. Thus, the absence of professional guidance programs in Basic Education is noted. Thus, many students leave bewildered about their professional future, without direction or even with many doubts about what to do.