Trajetórias no contexto de um internato: das expectativas familiares às experiências dos internos e egressos

Abstract

This study aims at understanding the trajectories that happen in a boarding school from the point of view of its actors. Considerations of the context and its role in the development took into account the conception that environment and group are foundational for the formation of the individual. In the process of searching for meaning of the institution’s space and routine, three stages of these trajectories were investigated, seeking categories that were present in each of them and that would be generalized to the others. Taking as a theoretical frame of reference the symbolic universe of the subjects of the research, the following stages were analyzed: (1) The expectations of parents as they bring their children to basic education in a confessional boarding school and what the latter can provide in replacement, complementation, or reinforcement to what children bring from their original context; (2) the experience of boarding school students and how they interpret, accept, or reject the dynamic of the boarding school and its space; (3) finally, alumni and their reminiscing experiences from the time they were in the boarding school. This work was developed by means of questionnaires applied to student’s parents, semi-structured and individual interviews with administrators and staff, students and alumni; focal group with boarding school students; description of the boarding school by its students through pictures followed by their own statements and meanings attributed to the pictures taken by them. This study brings to the fore a discussion of the relationship among family, society, and boarding school. It concludes indicating the potentiality of boarding school as an intermediate space between public and private, with positive and negative valences, that although different of family, could be considered a context of development for adolescents. This study aims at understanding the trajectories that happen in a boarding school from the point of view of its actors. Considerations of the context and its role in the development took into account the conception that environment and group are foundational for the formation of the individual. In the process of searching for meaning of the institution’s space and routine, three stages of these trajectories were investigated, seeking categories that were present in each of them and that would be generalized to the others. Taking as a theoretical frame of reference the symbolic universe of the subjects of the research, the following stages were analyzed: (1) The expectations of parents as they bring their children to basic education in a confessional boarding school and what the latter can provide in replacement, complementation, or reinforcement to what children bring from their original context; (2) the experience of boarding school students and how they interpret, accept, or reject the dynamic of the boarding school and its space; (3) finally, alumni and their reminiscing experiences from the time they were in the boarding school. This work was developed by means of questionnaires applied to student’s parents, semi-structured and individual interviews with administrators and staff, students and alumni; focal group with boarding school students; description of the boarding school by its students through pictures followed by their own statements and meanings attributed to the pictures taken by them. This study brings to the fore a discussion of the relationship among family, society, and boarding school. It concludes indicating the potentiality of boarding school as an intermediate space between public and private, with positive and negative valences, that although different of family, could be considered a context of development for adolescents.