Escolarização, trabalho e família: concepções e perspectivas de adolescentes e familiares em busca dos exames supletivos

Abstract

The general goal of this investigation consists in identifying adolescents who take supplementary exams and their parents/guardians’ conceptions and perspectives about schooling, work and family. The study is descriptive, exploratory and based on a quantitative approach. The research was carried out at “Permanent Comission of Evaluation”- CPA, which takes place at a state school in Salvador/Bahia. The study involved 30 teenage candidates and their respective parents/guardians who chose the CPA of the mentioned school to take the Supplementary Exams. In total, 60 people participated in this survey. Data collection was based on two semistructured script of interviews: one of them to the adolescents, and the other to their parents/guardians. The study was approved by the “Committee on Ethics Research” of the Catholic University of Salvador (UCSal). The participants were contacted and interviewed in the school environment. Data were analyzed constructing categories based on the obtained replies and based on the calculation of the respective percentages. The main results were: According to the parents/guardians of all social levels, the main perspective is that the adolescent should take the supplementary exams in order to regularize the school life or to anticipate the access to the University, and to finish high school as soon as possible, since there was a gap between age and grade. In turn, some adolescents think that their perspectives were focused on obtaining the certification and, consequently, on being able to access labour market more easily. Adolescents and their parents/guardians think that school is, mainly, a place of learning and of social interaction. Besides this, school consists of a place to access a better study and a better learning. Work is seen, besides other things, as a way of survival. For the most adolescents and their parents/guardians, family is considered the basis to everything. The participants value education, but it is necessary to adopt effective public policies in order to guarantee the quality of the schooling process to everyone which is part of a society that, every day, requires more qualification of their citizens.