Jovens estudantes em processo de transformação na travessia pelo ensino superior

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between being young (youth condition) and being a college student (student condition) through the experiences of young students from IFRN – Ipanguaçu Campus. The theoretical framework is related to sociology of education and sociology of youth. The study is epistemologically based in a phenomenological perspective with grounds in ethnomethodology. It is a study with a qualitative approach that had a fieldwork with various techniques and instruments, which allowed a flexible arrangement amid observation, survey application, individual interviews, photographs and testimonies, including via social networks. Assuming that the youth condition intertwines with other life contexts – giving emphasis on the condition of being an academic student – some categories where outlined to be more explored: temporality; language; spatiality; and affectivity. The discussions regarding these categories – articulating theory and experience – allowed a progress in the explanation of the thesis proposal that defends that the access to Higher Education provides experiences to young students that provoke/produce various movements of transformation in the aspects of the youth and student conditions, forming a new structural process, a new core in the life of these individuals. Therefore, presuming that the student condition is one of the aspects of youth condition and that they intertwine, the study aimed at comprehending the multifactorial meanings of the condition of being a young student, whose academic experience was developed in IFRN, a Campus on the countryside; this shows itself as one of the possible paths to unveiling a new public and a new reality of Higher Education in Brazil.