Expectativas profissionais de alunos de camadas populares: apontamentos sobre o papel da escola pública estadual

Abstract

The object of this dissertation is the impact of the high school experience on students' perspectives for their professional future, analysed under the hypothesis that the overall school experience of students in the state schools of Rio de Janeiro has not been able to offer the necessary support for the fulfilment of their professional desires, either by training them with quality, or by informing them of the possibilities of access to higher education. To test this hypothesis, we use different methodologies: ethnographically inspired description of a school, survey questionnaires and in-depth interviews with selected students, as well as secondary data from various official sources. I make a profile of its students, in objective and subjective dimensions, with emphasis on the theme of expectations for the future. Finally, I analyse the trajectories of four students, interviewed four years apart, in 2017 and 2021, highlighting their own interpretation of their school experience and its impact on their trajectory until then. In 2021, I also carried out another interview with a former student who was not interviewed in 2017 because she was not graduating, but entered the research, at that moment, for an interesting speech about her professional expectations. It is concluded that the students incorporate the desire for plausible trajectories for them, reaffirming the findings of the “reproduction theory”, but, far from resignation, they have developed strategies of ascension.