School and life projects in 9th year Elementary School students: an ethnography based on subjective evidence

Abstract

The school can be committed to building students' life projects by offering spaces for dialogue and exchange about future perspectives. However, it is still insufficient to provide these spaces for reflection on trajectories. Therefore, the objective of this article is to analyze the relationships between social representations of school and meanings of life projects, through the experience lived in six meetings held and their reconstruction, from the students' perspective. For data collection, Ethnography Based on Subjective Evidence was used, with the participation of twelve students from a 9th grade class, from a public school in Minas Gerais. The interviews were transcribed in full, processed by the Iramuteq software, based on the Descending Hierarchical Classification and subjected to content analysis. As a result, students legitimize the importance of school, based on the study-college-work triad. Life projects are strongly linked to material issues, to work, from a recognized and socially valued profession, which allows social advancement, guaranteed through studies. The need for pedagogical interventions that allow students to broaden their vision of life projects, beyond the study-college-work triad, is emphasized. Even though they are self-centered and disconnected from historical and social issues, we observe an important process of reflection, even if initial, on the students' trajectories.