A extensão universitária na faculdade de formação de professores – FFP/UERJ: pensando a inclusão dos estudantes universitários de origem popular

Abstract

This research analyses the new undertaken dynamics, in the public college sphere, considering the expansion in the numbers of the College Students from a Popular Origin (EUOP) and its relevant participation in the extension activities in college. The EUOP prominence, each time more inserted in the university extension, creates new opportunities of qualification, knowledge production and articulation of resistances, inside the universities intending to cooperate with the ongoing process of its transformation and the democratization process to the access and the continuity of the students that historically were kept away from the college education. The results are presented based on research guided by two main sources of information: one with quantitative purpose, leaning on to the questionnaire answered by the scholarship holders from the extended graduation course from the Faculdade de Formação de Professores (FFP/UERJ); and a deep analysis with the reported data in the interviews with those students, looking to understand their vision about the role of college extension in the qualification and inclusion of the EUOP students. The research allows us to ponder over the challenges of rethinking and reformulating the practices in the academy in a context where political and social changes dialogue with each other and produce different results in the experience of those individuals. In dialogue with Paulo Freire, Florestan Fernandes, and Boaventura de Souza Santos we search to reflect upon the current Brazilian social context articulated to the new demands of society when it comes to the public college in Brazil, to allow a better understanding on the contemporary purpose of the university expansion.