Evasão e retenção no curso de Licenciatura em Química do IFG, Campus Itumbiara

Abstract

The teaching profession in Brazil suffers difficult periods by to the lack of economic and social incentive faced by career professionals. Higher education courses have high rates of dropout and retention throughout the country, mostly undergraduate courses, especially those related to the exact areas. For the purpose of this study, school dropout is characterized as the interruption of the study cycle by the student, that is, students who failed to complete the course were considered as having been evaded, regardless of whether the reason for enrollment withdrawal was for abandonment, cancellation or transfers. And, retention is characterized when the student is unable to meet the curricular matrix proposed in the time determined by the Institution of Higher Education (HEI), that is, those students who did not complete the course within the minimum payment period were considered retained were enrolled in the course studied. Faced with such a scenario, an in-depth study of the causes and causes of evasion and retention became necessary. The present work aimed to present and analyze the panorama on the evasion and retention of the students in the Chemistry Degree Course, from the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Goiás - Câmpus Itumbiara, who were enrolled in the period from 2008/1 to 2012/1. Managers, technical administrative servers, teachers, evaded and retained students answered a questionnaire, seeking the collection of information about the various points of view on the subject of school dropout and retention. Data from the Academic Management System were used to outline the profile of evaded and retained students, looking for factors that may influence evasion and retention. To make the data meaningful, we used the Discursive Textual Analysis (ATD). Motivations and student demotivations were analyzed and it was verified that the affinity for the course was the most cited motivating factor. In relation to the demotivation, several situations were cited, indicating the complexity of the causes, being able to be influenced by extrinsic and intrinsic factors. It was observed that the highest rates of disapproval are in disciplines from the initial periods of the course. This difficulty can be related to the lack of basic knowledge, and the disapprovals with the evasion, since 71% of the dropout students presented disapproval in the previous semester. During the study period, 247 students entered the course, only 39 were completed, 166 dropout for some reason and 42 were still enrolled in the retained condition. Finally, proposals and ideas were collected to minimize the problems identified during the execution of the research, the main ones mentioned were the application of mini-leveling courses and the need for some teachers to rethink their teaching didactics.