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The Subjects of YAE in Youth and Adult Education Research

Abstract:

This paper refers to the state of knowledge of scientific productions on subjects of YAE in Brazil. The research problem was: What are the main theoretical and methodological foundations present in the productions resulting from research in the field of Youth and Adult Education in Brazil that deal with student subjects? We used the following descriptors for data collection: subjects + YAE, identity +YAE, and sociability + YAE. The analysis of 13 articles showed the interdisciplinary nature of the studies, the predominance of qualitative research, and the theoretical diversity that underlies this field of investigation. Given the limited number of publications, we perceived the importance of exploring this area of research and knowledge production.

Keywords:
Youth and Adult Education; Subjects of Education; Diversity

Resumo:

O trabalho refere-se ao estado do conhecimento das produções científicas sobre sujeitos da EJA no Brasil. O problema de pesquisa foi: quais os principais fundamentos teórico-metodológicos presentes nas produções resultantes das pesquisas no campo da Educação de Jovens e Adultos no Brasil que versam sobre os sujeitos estudantes? A coleta de dados utilizou os descritores: sujeitos+EJA, identidade+EJA e sociabilidade+EJA. A análise dos 13 artigos localizados evidenciou: o caráter interdisciplinar dos estudos; a predominância de pesquisas qualitativas; a diversidade teórica que fundamenta esse campo de investigação. Diante do restrito número de publicações, percebeu-se a importância de explorar essa área de pesquisa e produção do conhecimento.

Palavras-chave:
Educação de Jovens e Adultos; Sujeitos da Educação; Diversidade

Introduction

The article aims to present a research project referred to as a state of knowledge. Considering, for this, the productions that have chosen as the object of investigation the subjects. To cope with our proposal, the research construction is bibliographic, anchored in the quantitative/qualitative theoretical-methodological contributions based on content analysis.

This production is linked to the macro research project entitled Fundamentals and recurrent authors from the field of Youth and Adult Education in Brazil: the construction of an electronic glossary. The research has been developed in three stages and with collaborators from different higher education institutions, mobilizing groups of researchers from the five geographic regions of the country3 1 South Region: Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) - research institution; Federal University of Paraná (UFPR); State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC); University of Fronteira Sul (UFFS) - Campus Erechim; Federal Institute of Santa Catarina - Campus Chapecó; Southeast Region: Federal Institute of Espírito Santo (IFES) - Campus Cachoeiro de Itapemirim; North Region: State University of Pará (UEPA); Federal University of Acre (UFAC); Northeast Region: State University of Bahia (UNEB); Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL); State University of Southwest Bahia (UESB); Midwest Region: Federal University of Goiás (UFG). The research team also has the participation of Portuguese researchers linked to the University of Coimbra and the University of Minho (UMINHO). , including also international participation.

Thus, this paper constitutes the second phase of our research, which analyzed and interpreted the articles found on the main theme: the subject of YAE. What we call thematic axis here is one of the categories of analysis of macro research. The analytical exercise proposed on this work attempts to answer the following problem: What are the main theoretical and methodological foundations present in the productions resulting from research in the field of Youth and Adult Education in Brazil that deal with student subjects?

Having said that, our challenge was to synthesize the findings in terms of productions about the subjects and, in some way, answer the main question by also asking the following one: What conceptions underlie this field of study and research?

On the subject of youth and adult education

In discussing the subjects of the YAE, we can do so from different points of analysis. We can focus to legal issues, cognitive, generational, social class, gender, race/ethnicity, (urban or rural) conditions, historical, social, cultural, economic or political contexts in which the student subjects of YAE and their life trajectories are inserted, thinking about the specificities and diversity of these subjects.

The National Education Directives and Bases Law (LDB N. 9394/96), following the Federal Constitution of 1988, expresses in the article 37 the first base to situate who would be the subjects that compose the classes of YAE:

Art. 37. Youth and adult education should be aimed at those who have not had access to or have interrupted their basic and secondary schooling at the proper age. § 1º The educational systems shall provide those youths and adults who were not able to carry out their studies at the proper age, free of charge, appropriate educational opportunities, considering students’ characteristics, interests, living and working conditions, through courses and examinations. § 2º The Public Sector shall ensure and stimulate the access and permanence of workers in school, through integrated and complementary actions. §3. The education of youth and adults should preferably be articulated with vocational education, under the regulations (Brasil, 1996BRASIL. Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional, n. 9394. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, dez. 1996. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L9394.htm >. Acesso em: ago. 2018.
http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Lei...
).

It seems to us that not having completed compulsory education at a proper age becomes a condition of identification of this public. Other elements that appear in the same article indicate specificities of the subjects of the YAE, such as the need to ensure appropriate schooling conditions given the demands of the labor market to which those students are linked.

In this regard, it is necessary to briefly discuss the expression proper age, present in Brazilian legislation, to refer to a characteristic of the public of the YAE. According to Di Pierro (2005DI PIERRO, Maria Clara. Notas sobre a Redefinição da Identidade das Políticas Públicas de Educação de Jovens e Adultos no Brasil. Educação e Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 92, p. 1115-1139, Especial-Out. 2005. Disponível em: <http://www.cedes.unicamp.br>. Acesso em: 8 jun. 2014.
http://www.cedes.unicamp.br...
, p. 1118), that concept points towards the remnants of the compensatory conception of youth and adult education that “[...] inspired the supplementary education, seen as an instrument for the replacement of studies not carried out in childhood or adolescence”.

In agreement with the author, the paradigm in question needs critical analysis since there is no foundation in the scientific literature to support the thesis of the existence of an appropriate age to learn. Also according to Di Pierro (2005, p. 1120): “[...] the education capable of responding to this challenge is not one focused on the needs and the past […], but one that, recognizing in young and adult subjects entitled to all the rights and culture, asks what their learning needs are in the present so that they can transform it collectively”.

From this premise, we understand that the students of YAE, perceived in the dimension of subjects, are constituted by and in social relations, in life in society, through the intermediation of culture, values, and beliefs that endow these relationships with meanings. They fit into a historical, political and economic context and rehearse their life trajectories. At the same time, they move their own to interpret this world and translate it to themselves, perceiving themselves as a constituent part of one or several groups. This process of constituting themselves by themselves, Charlot calls education and relates it to the process of hominization of the human being - a process by which we share the human condition (Charlot, 2000CHARLOT, Bernard. Da Relação com o Saber: elementos para uma teoria. Tradução: Bruno Magne. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas Sul, 2000. ).

Reflecting on young people, adults and the elderly who study in YAE from this perspective means considering them beyond the cognitive dimension from which they have been thought through the historical process of schooling. Also, it implies deconstructing a homogeneous perception about who the students are, surpassing the abstract categories of young and adult for which social characteristics and a social role have been conventionalized. Thus, students come to be understood not for what they lack when compared to the representations built around the abstract categories mentioned above, but from the situations experienced throughout their lives that produce subjectivities, knowledge and different ways of existence (Oliveira, 1999OLIVEIRA, Marta Kohl de. Jovens e Adultos como Sujeitos de Conhecimento e Aprendizagem. Revista Brasileira de Educação, n. 12, set./out./nov./dez., p. 59-73, 1999.).

Analyzing the theoretical production about the subjects of YAE, it is possible, then, to identify the existence of common aspects, which would highlight a characteristic of the students of this modality of education and those that would point to the existing diversity among this same group. Among the elements that bring the subjects closer are the experience of various forms of social exclusion; the school paths intersected and marked by processes of exclusion from and in school; the condition that they are mostly workers from the popular classes; and the existence of objectives and dreams of studying and sharing knowledge systematized by school curricula, considered by them as socially relevant (Haddad, 2000HADDAD, Sérgio (Org.). O Estado da Arte das Pesquisas em Educação de Jovens e Adultos no Brasil: a produção discente da pós-graduação em educação no período de 1986- 1998. São Paulo: Ação Educativa, 2000.; Gadotti, 2002GADOTTI, Moacir; ROMÃO, José Eustáquio. Educação de Jovens e Adultos: teoria, prática e proposta. 5 ed. CORTEZ: São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire, 2002.; Laffin, 2008LAFFIN, Maria Hermínia Lage Fernandes. O Conhecimento Escolar, suas Mediações e as Atividades de Ensinar e Aprender. In: LAFFIN, Maria Hermínia Lage Fernandes (Org.). Crianças, Jovens e Adultos: diferentes processos e mediações escolares. Florianópolis: Letras Contemporâneas, 2008. P. 9-20. ; Durand et. al., 2011DURAND, Olga Celestina da Silva et al. Sujeitos da Educação de Jovens e Adultos, Espaços e Múltiplos Saberes. In: LAFFIN, Maria Hermínia Lage Fernandes (Org.). Educação de Jovens e Adultos e Educação na Diversidade. Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2011. P.160-245.).

If, on the one hand, these elements announce the similarities that exist between the subjects of YAE, others show us the diversity that permeates the classes of this modality of education: the different knowledge produced in other spheres than just the school; the interests that mobilize them to return to school; generational issues; the life trajectories influenced by the condition of gender, race/ethnicity, origin (urban or rural) and the cultural contexts that each one indicates. (Oliveira, 1999OLIVEIRA, Marta Kohl de. Jovens e Adultos como Sujeitos de Conhecimento e Aprendizagem. Revista Brasileira de Educação, n. 12, set./out./nov./dez., p. 59-73, 1999.; Di Pierro, 2005; Laffin, 2008LAFFIN, Maria Hermínia Lage Fernandes. O Conhecimento Escolar, suas Mediações e as Atividades de Ensinar e Aprender. In: LAFFIN, Maria Hermínia Lage Fernandes (Org.). Crianças, Jovens e Adultos: diferentes processos e mediações escolares. Florianópolis: Letras Contemporâneas, 2008. P. 9-20. ; Durand et. Al., 2011DURAND, Olga Celestina da Silva et al. Sujeitos da Educação de Jovens e Adultos, Espaços e Múltiplos Saberes. In: LAFFIN, Maria Hermínia Lage Fernandes (Org.). Educação de Jovens e Adultos e Educação na Diversidade. Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2011. P.160-245.).

In this sense, given the diversity of themes that are related to the subjects of Youth and Adult Education, this paper intends to analyze academic productions to identify the main theoretical-methodological foundations present in the productions resulting from research in the field of Youth and Adult Education in Brazil related to the subject analysis of the YAE category.

The Research Performed

The bibliographic and exploratory research was guided by a quantitative/qualitative approach. Based on this perspective, we used the bibliography as a research resource assuming to survey the theoretical-methodological references published in documents on a particular theme. In this aspect, the production of this type of research has its relevance to the scientific field by presenting to the academic community the “[...] existing cultural or scientific contributions on a certain subject, theme or problem” (Cervo; Bervian, 2005CERVO, Amado; BERVIAN, Pedro. Metodologia Científica. 5. ed. São Paulo: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. , p. .65). Consequently, state-of-knowledge research was carried out (Romanowski and Ens, 2006ROMANOWSKI, Joana Paulin; ENS, Romilda Teodora. As Pesquisas Denominadas do Tipo ‘Estado da Arte’ em Educação. Revista Diálogo Educacional, v. 6, n. 19, set./dez., p. 37-50. Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Curitiba, 2006. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://www2.pucpr.br/reol/index.php/DIALOGO?dd1=237&dd99=view >. Acesso em: maio 2018.
http://www2.pucpr.br/reol/index.php/DIAL...
), analyzing the productions of only one publishing sector: articles published in magazines that are stored in Capes4 2 Available at: <https://www.periodicos.capes.gov.br/>. journal platform.

In terms of comprehension and interpretation of data, we move through the methodology of content analysis, because we understand that it offers us the conditions for the realization of an “[...] objective, systematic and quantitative description of content” (Bardin, 1995BARDIN, Laurence. Análise de Conteúdo. Lisboa: Edições 70, 1995., p. 19). The pre-analysis phases, material exploration, and treatment of results, inference, and interpretation, were based on the theoretical assumptions of the author.

The articles analyzed were collected in the first phase of the research, carried out in 2017. In the pre-analysis phase, a survey of existing productions in the Capes journal platform was made using the keywords: youth and adult education. No time frame has been determined for the search. Therefore, 460 articles were located, which later the group of researchers responsible for conducting this stage organized them into 04 thematic groups.

The first group brought together the works that dealt with public policies, pedagogical proposals, literacy, teaching actions, labor and education relations. The second group organized the productions that dealt with curricular issues and YAE, popular Education, issues related to teaching and the fundamentals of YAE. The third group covered the articles that explored themes such as the subjects of the YAE, the YAE in spaces of deprivation of liberty, teaching-learning processes, gender, and sexuality. Finally, the fourth group assembled investigations on dropout and permanence in YAE, technologies, rural education and high school in YAE.

The methodological procedures for the analysis of these productions were the same for all groups. Therefore, the research team shared the following steps in the material exploration and treatment of results phase:

  • Conducting a new search in the CAPES portal - Journals only with the analyzed category, using keywords referring to it;

  • An initial reading of the abstracts of the publications available in the databases in question;

  • Construction of previous syntheses, considering: the theme, the objectives, the problems, the methodologies, the relations between the researcher and the area and the results;

  • Reading and analysis of the texts in full of the findings from the corpus and their content analysis;

  • Identification of approaches, theoretical and methodological foundations and detailing of the main authors and epistemological bases that refer to the research analyzed.

On the subjects of YAE, thirteen texts were published between 2006 and 2017. The first survey in the Capes Platform found eleven productions. A second search was performed using the following keywords: subjects + YAE; identity + YAE; sociability + YAE. The use of the descriptors “identity” and “sociability” selected based on the keywords that were repeated in the articles evidenced in the first search found more than 02 articles.

For the most part, the productions did not identify the nature of those works (whether they were the result of the thesis, dissertations, course final paper or experience reports). To this end, the analysis of the collected material will be presented as follows: a) overview of the research; b) identification of the methodological elements of the research; c) identification of research themes, research objects, and related categories; d) main authors that support the identified categories.

Interweaving knowledge and practices on the subjects of EJA

Research Overview

The scientific production related to the subjects of the YAE was restricted and incipient concerning the other categories identified in the first phase of the research. Among 460 productions cataloged, only 2.41% focused on the subjects of education. The table below helps to visualize the titles, authors, geographical location and institutional link, journal and year of publication.

Table 1:
Research Identification

Although it is not possible to deal with the amplitude of national scientific production from the number of articles identified in the platform, it can, however, confirm the concentration of works in the Southeast (five) and South (three) of the country. Another relevant data refers to the institutional links of the authors of the research, which shows the presence of twelve public higher education institutions, showing the importance of these instances for the production of knowledge in Brazil. These data are similar to those panoramas perceived in Haddad’s (2000HADDAD, Sérgio (Org.). O Estado da Arte das Pesquisas em Educação de Jovens e Adultos no Brasil: a produção discente da pós-graduação em educação no período de 1986- 1998. São Paulo: Ação Educativa, 2000.) research on the state of the art of YAE research in Brazil.

Regarding the relevance of the publications related to the Education field, it is possible to note that the production on the subjects of YAE is interdisciplinary with other areas of knowledge (Social Sciences, Letters, Arts, and Language), although the most of the journals are in the area of Education and Teaching - highlighting international and national journals with greater impact and potential for dissemination, given the indexers linked to them.

Contextualization of Methodological and Theoretical Elements

At first, we identify the constituent elements in the summaries including the keywords. Then, we read each article in its entirety, to contextualize the methodological elements used by the researchers. Or because some articles did not contain data that could help us in our investigation. We found a serious problem in terms of methodological structure in the abstracts. Thus, it was possible to perform a new categorization of the works in a qualitative research approach and quantitative research approach, obtaining the following overview of productions:

Table 2:
Methodological Research Elements

To clarify to the reader about the research classified as qualitative but without specifying the methodology used by the authors on the text, it is necessary to mention the methodological elements that were possible to identify while reading the articles. The work of Marques and Pachane (2010MARQUES, Denise Travassos; PACHANE, Graziela Giusti. Formação de Educadores: uma perspectiva de educação de idosos em programas de EJA. Educação e Pesquisa: Revista da Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de São Paulo , v. 36(2), p. 475-490, 2010. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://www.revistas.usp.br/ep/article/view/28243/30077 >. Acesso em: 7 abr. 2018.
http://www.revistas.usp.br/ep/article/vi...
) did not accurately present the type of study performed. However, after reading the full text, it is possible to say that this is an experience report. At other times it seems to be a case study.

Silva’s (2015SILVA, Janine Marta Pereira. Antunes da. O Ethos Discursivo do Aluno da Educação de Jovens e Adultos: uma abordagem acerca da identidade dos alunos do 1º e 2º segmento da EJA de uma instituição de ensino da rede municipal de Betim. Revista Memento, v. 6, n. 2, jul.-dez, 2015. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://periodicos.unincor.br/index.php/memento/article/view/2685/pdf_71 >. Acesso em: 7 abr. 2018.
http://periodicos.unincor.br/index.php/m...
) scientific paper shows that interviews were conducted with students from a public school and the data were interpreted from a qualitative and interpretative approach. Nevertheless, the research stages were not described, which did not make it possible to identify the type of study performed. Besides, we found among the analyzed articles, Anacleto and Ladeira (2010), a production in the field of Language Science that uses as a methodology the Corpus analysis from a social networking site (Orkut). They used as reference the page of three students to understand the social representations and identities of these young people from underprivileged urban areas. We understood that this is discourse analysis, although it is not explicitly expressed by the author.

When it comes to the theoretical and methodological issues, the productions comprised case studies, analytical reports or systematization of experiences/practices/projects of reduced scope, referring to one or a few school units, classroom or institutionalized program. Analyzing the very nature of these objects of study, qualitative research prevailed. Those researchers have used data collection instruments and distinct approaches to analyze the information due to the type of research performed: a) for case study research, observations and interviews were observed; b) for the bibliographic research, the richness of the collected sources is distinguished (sometimes articles, thesis, and dissertations, analyzes of official documents like school curricula) and the form of data analysis (content analysis and discourse analysis).

Search Analysis by Concepts and Categories

As stated above, reading the full articles allowed us to perform an analysis of the research objects of study, the categories or subcategories linked to them. The following tables group them into axes from which the sub-themes of the subject of YAE category are identified, namely: subjects of YAE and generation; subjects of YAE and gender; subjects of YAE, learning processes and school performance; teachers’ training aiming at understanding the specificities of the subjects of YAE; curriculum, discourses and identity constitutions of the subjects; sociological dimensions of the conception of youth; youth and career and technical programs. It is noteworthy that there is a great concern with the young subjects or the “youthnization” of YAE. A very recent phenomenon in this type of education.

Table 3:
Subthemes about subjects of the YAE and categories of analysis

The thematic group that aggregates the sub-theme subjects of YAE and generation is the research that analyzed and understood this category based on the generational factors. They conducted a study on the generation or stage of life to which the research subjects belong: youth, adulthood and old age. Others also addressed the socio-cultural aspects that pervade the generational groups: social class, urban or rural origin, gender, work, social and school exclusion, educational trajectories/pathways/processes.

In the thematic group related to the subject of YAE and gender, we have one paper whose focus was to analyze the schooling processes of women enrolled in YAE classes. This work does not connect with aspects related to the generation or age of the research subjects. Others cut across the condition of gender and are pointed out by the research: social class, urban or rural origin, family, work, social exclusion, and school. We might consider that there is an intersectionality between categories of analysis.

In the group that places the subject of YAE, learning processes and school performance, only one research dedicated to surveying the school performance of young people and adults in the process of literacy. The author proposed a relevant descriptive analysis but did not hold theoretical discussions about the listed categories. It presents the reader with a literature review, bringing research that deal with similar themes, but without deepening the theoretical bases listed.

The thematic group of articles that encompasses the subtheme of teachers’ training on the specificities of the subjects of YAE, one work that also analyzed the subject of the YAE by the generational perspective, focused on the importance of having discussions about the peculiarities of the subjects of YAE in teacher training curricula. By dedicating a section of the article to make this discussion, we understood that this work inserts another theme in the theoretical category subjects of YAE.

In the thematic group that aggregates the subtheme curriculum, discourses and identities constitutions of the subjects, two papers dealt with how the statements analyzed in official documents about the YAE, documents prepared by collectives and social movements and the statements about the subjects produced in the academic sphere produce discourses that circumscribe a notion of intercultural subject in the YAE. The third work included in this group (Silva, 2015SILVA, Janine Marta Pereira. Antunes da. O Ethos Discursivo do Aluno da Educação de Jovens e Adultos: uma abordagem acerca da identidade dos alunos do 1º e 2º segmento da EJA de uma instituição de ensino da rede municipal de Betim. Revista Memento, v. 6, n. 2, jul.-dez, 2015. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://periodicos.unincor.br/index.php/memento/article/view/2685/pdf_71 >. Acesso em: 7 abr. 2018.
http://periodicos.unincor.br/index.php/m...
) does not address the curriculum theme, however, the categories studied and the theoretical references bring it closer to the other two articles: it casts a look at discourse and discursive practices in the constitution of identity processes of YAE students.

The thematic group that assembles the subtheme school curriculum, discourses and identities constitutions of the subjects, we found two work that dealt with how statements in official documents about the YAE, documents prepared by collectives and social movements, and statements about the subjects produced in the academic sphere create discourses that circumscribe the notion of an intercultural subject in the YAE. The third work included in this group (Silva, 2015SILVA, Janine Marta Pereira. Antunes da. O Ethos Discursivo do Aluno da Educação de Jovens e Adultos: uma abordagem acerca da identidade dos alunos do 1º e 2º segmento da EJA de uma instituição de ensino da rede municipal de Betim. Revista Memento, v. 6, n. 2, jul.-dez, 2015. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://periodicos.unincor.br/index.php/memento/article/view/2685/pdf_71 >. Acesso em: 7 abr. 2018.
http://periodicos.unincor.br/index.php/m...
) does not address the school curriculum theme, however, the categories studied and the theoretical references bring it closer to the other two articles: it casts a light on discourse and discursive practices in the constitution of identity processes of YAE students.

The thematic group related to the subtheme sociological dimensions of youth conception gathered the productions that reflect on certain dimensions of youth from a sociological perspective. They analyzed the issues concerned with the constitution of the youth category. And their relations with the school and guarantee the legal right to education. Also, taking into account cultural, social specificities, and the policies in which young people and educational organizations move and operate. They sought to understand the pedagogical implications of working from the specificities of those subjects’ learning processes.

The thematic group that indicates the youth theme, career and technical programs is composed of a paper that discusses the theme of career and technical training of young participants of Projovem do Campo, concerning the technical certification of professional and social qualification. It is noteworthy that the focus of the research is on the specific policy, using the YAE as a form to understand this program.

Analysis of research by Research Object

We also analyze on this articles the research objects described in each work. Given the diversity of themes and specificities that involve the subject category of YAE, we realize the existence of thirteen distinct objects of analysis, namely: sociological dimensions of youth; construction of the student’s social identity from social networks; “youthnization” of YAE; young people from rural areas; young subject; cultural references and youth identities; senior students at YAE; women’s schooling processes in YAE; multidimensional subjectivities in the curriculum; adult students of YAE; school performance profile of YAE students; imaginary social discursive produced by subjects of the YAE, and sociological understanding of youth in contemporary times.

From the analysis of the objects of investigation, we can see that the research focused on the details that give the heterogeneous character to classes of YAE. This did not mean ignoring the existence of common factors that permeated the subjects’ life and school trajectories (processes of exclusion, the relationship with the work, and belonging to popular classes).

The discovery of diversity in the paradigms that underlie the national policies for the YAE, analyzed by Di Pierro (2005), presents itself when the abstract category student is not enough to understand the specificities brought by the subjects to the space of the YAE. Since scientific production is permeated by the historical and social contexts in which it develops, in the 1980s, during the reorganization of civil society, the participation, and constitution of the field of citizen rights, the emergence of the worker category breaking with the homogeneity of the student category in the research and policies directed to this modality of education. From the early 2000s onwards, the strengthening of collectives and civil society organizations pressured to expand the dimension of the working subject category to cover other demands placed on the educational scenario:

[…] The emergence of movements that demand political and cultural recognition of unique social identities (women, blacks, youths, indigenous people, landless); along with the diffusion of the authors’ ideias oriented to interculturalism and/or linked to the ‘paradigm of identity ‘ favored the recognition of the diversity of subjects of youth and adult education. In principle, the perception of students’ ‘youthnization’ of youth and adult education highlight, but gender and field specificities are also beginning to emerge, and studies addressing the ethnic-racial condition are rare and recent (Passos, 2004), even when diagnosis indicates that the black population is the majority among illiterate young people and adults with low education. Even more remarkable is the scarcity of knowledge about people with special educational needs, as well as the identities and religious practices of young people and adults inserted in schooling processes (Di Pierro, 2005DI PIERRO, Maria Clara. Notas sobre a Redefinição da Identidade das Políticas Públicas de Educação de Jovens e Adultos no Brasil. Educação e Sociedade, Campinas, v. 26, n. 92, p. 1115-1139, Especial-Out. 2005. Disponível em: <http://www.cedes.unicamp.br>. Acesso em: 8 jun. 2014.
http://www.cedes.unicamp.br...
, p. 1121).

The analysis of the research objects of thirteen articles reinforces the growing demand for the understanding of the young, adult and elderly students from the most diverse perspectives as observed within the paradigms that underlie the policies of/for the YAE. The production of knowledge made in this intertwining between emergencies of social demands, the production of knowledge that guides the understanding of the same object of analysis, and the research that re-elaborates this knowledge from the realities experienced by teachers and students, this is a constantly changing field.

Analysis of key authors by categories issue

This last block sought to identify which authors were cited in depth to develop the categories and themes that exist in each work. The following table presents this survey:

Table 4:
Most cited authors in research in the field of young and adult education

The identification of the principal authors support the research allowed us some analysis:

  1. we realize that some studies have stated theoretical categories without, however, defining a definition for them. Nor did they substantiate the work with authors who deal with these categories in the field of academic and scientific production. The cases apply to adults; literacy; school performance;

  2. we emphasize that, although there are works that deal with adult subjects, there was no theoretical foundation on this generational segment. Adulthood was presented by the situations that relate to it, such as family, gender, work, social exclusion, social class. The adult-centered perception of the world does not favor a theoretical production that explains it as a generation or stage of life or as a sociocultural construct (Oliveira, 1999OLIVEIRA, Marta Kohl de. Jovens e Adultos como Sujeitos de Conhecimento e Aprendizagem. Revista Brasileira de Educação, n. 12, set./out./nov./dez., p. 59-73, 1999.). We know about adults in a tangent way to the social situations that become the condition of YAE student subjects of a certain age group;

  3. On the productions that studied the youth category, we verified that the main objective was to present the students’ vision about the school. The meaning of the school in the process of formation of each individual, their life as a whole, and, especially, the relationship with the labor market. There is also a concern about the impact of school experience on personal, family, and the professional sphere of the students’ life. We believe that the YAE relationship with youth is still a contemporary phenomenon that needs studies and research on “youthnization” of YEA (phenomenon pointed out by Haddad, 2000HADDAD, Sérgio (Org.). O Estado da Arte das Pesquisas em Educação de Jovens e Adultos no Brasil: a produção discente da pós-graduação em educação no período de 1986- 1998. São Paulo: Ação Educativa, 2000.; Di Pierro, 2005; Durand et.al., 2011DURAND, Olga Celestina da Silva et al. Sujeitos da Educação de Jovens e Adultos, Espaços e Múltiplos Saberes. In: LAFFIN, Maria Hermínia Lage Fernandes (Org.). Educação de Jovens e Adultos e Educação na Diversidade. Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2011. P.160-245.). We observed that when addressing the youth as a sociocultural construction, the papers sought to demarcate authors who became a reference in the field of studies of young subjects, namely François Dubet, Danillo Martuccelli, Paulo Cesar Rodrigues Carrano, Juarez Dayrell and Jaqueline Moll. However, the work of the authors mentioned earlier are not limited to the field of Youth and Adult Education;

  4. the texts that addressed the themes about the curricula, the identity, and intercultural constitutions, brought outstanding authors in this field of knowledge, such as Tomaz Tadeu da Silva, Alfredo Veiga-Neto, Thomas S. Popkewitz. The work mentioned also do not fit into the universe of research and theoretical productions in the field of YAE;

  5. to address the constitution of identities, the following theoretical references stand out: Michel Foucault, L. P. Moita Lopes, Flavio Fortes D’Andrea, F. A. Goffman. On the other hand, they do not address the work produced in the area of YAE;

  6. Some authors recognized in the theoretical field of research in Youth and Adult Education mentioned in the articles deserve to be highlighted: Marta Kohl Oliveira, Miguel Arroyo, Paulo Freire, Moacir Gadotti. The categories and concepts to which they relate were mentioned in the previous table.

From the data analysis, we realize that the interdisciplinarity of the theoretical field of Youth and Adult Education is strongly present when approaching the subjects of this teaching modality.

There is a challenge proposal in these productions that we need to reevaluate the issue of the centrality of subjects and that students are inseparably unique and social human beings. In this environment, perhaps the mark and specificity of the YAE may be constituted as a policy of the law. This challenge is consistent with the perception of subjects initially pointed out in this text and, therefore, allows us to understand why the themes related to this category are diverse, multiple, and interdisciplinary.

Final considerations

The analysis of the works related to the subject category of YAE allowed us to draw a brief overview of these scientific productions in Brazil. We observed that the studies that focus on understanding the subjects of YAE are still few when compared to other themes related to this type of teaching. Thus, we understand that there is still a field of investigation to be explored by researchers in the area.

In the analysis of the thirteen papers, it was difficult to identify the type of scientific production. The information in the articles was sometimes inaccurate, sometimes was not present in the texts. Some abstracts did not contain the basic elements of the research process, therefore, from the first moment, it was necessary to read the complete texts. It was only possible to identify the type of production in two works: one from a master degree thesis and another from an undergraduate final paper.

The analysis of the articles allowed us to identify the research objects and the research themes. From these data, it was possible to highlight categories related to the subjects of the YAE. All works point to studies on young people, adults and the elderly enrolled in YAE. Although it seems obvious, it is important to mention that a category named subjects of YAE could cover in addition to the students, teachers and other professionals who work in this type of teaching, which, however, did not occur in the research found.

In this sense, we can affirm that the constitution of this field of knowledge is based on studies of particularities, school trajectories, demands and learning processes, and representations of the self that concern students in YAE.

During the research we identified and organized seven groups of subthemes related to the subjects of the YAE: subjects YAE and generation; YAE subjects and gender; subjects of YAE, learning processes and school performance; training of educators to understand the specificities of the subjects of the YAE; curriculum, discourses and identity constitutions of the subjects; sociological dimensions of the conception of youth; youth and career and technical programs.

The authors or theoretical currents that underlie these productions are diverse and are not limited to the area of scientific production of Youth and Adult Education. When dealing with the specificities of the subjects of the YAE, we observe that the research supports studies developed in the field of Psychology, Sociology, Education, Philosophy, and Health to address the themes about generational groups, identity processes, discursivities, social representations, curriculum, career and technical programs.

This data allows us to state that the production on the subjects of the YAE is interdisciplinary. At the interface with other areas, it becomes a theoretical framework about the students of Youth and Adult Education.

Regarding the theoretical-methodological approaches guiding the research, we observed that twelve of the thirteen productions followed a qualitative approach. Research strategies are diversified into bibliographic or documentary research and case studies. Other types of research that identified themselves as qualitative for data analysis did not situate how they conducted the empirical phase of the investigation. Only one research used the quantitative approach.

This scenario indicates that using this type of research ensures the perception of the heterogeneity of the public in youth and adult education. We then perceive the realities about the subjects of YAE from particular cases, which indicates the importance of conducting a study in the effort to make connections between these research and their theoretical categories to constitute a theoretical foundation about the subjects of YAE.

Given the limited number of works that focus on the subjects of YAE, we realize that this is still a vast field for research and knowledge production. The analysis of the articles emphasized some themes that were not mentioned and that is in the field of the diversity of the subjects of YAE, such as studies on race/ethnicity, the access of students with specific needs, and the expressions of religiosity. we understand that these are necessary views and present themselves as a possibility to expand the investigations in this area. In this sense, the socialization of research results through magazines and periodicals is essential for the dissemination of knowledge produced in the academies. We observed that this category has been more used to designate the student of this modality of education. Therefore, we still need to move forward in terms of problematizing all the subjects involved in this modality of basic education.

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Notes

  • 1
    South Region: Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) - research institution; Federal University of Paraná (UFPR); State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC); University of Fronteira Sul (UFFS) - Campus Erechim; Federal Institute of Santa Catarina - Campus Chapecó; Southeast Region: Federal Institute of Espírito Santo (IFES) - Campus Cachoeiro de Itapemirim; North Region: State University of Pará (UEPA); Federal University of Acre (UFAC); Northeast Region: State University of Bahia (UNEB); Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL); State University of Southwest Bahia (UESB); Midwest Region: Federal University of Goiás (UFG). The research team also has the participation of Portuguese researchers linked to the University of Coimbra and the University of Minho (UMINHO).
  • 2
    Available at: <https://www.periodicos.capes.gov.br/>.

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    22 June 2020
  • Date of issue
    2020

History

  • Received
    23 Sept 2019
  • Accepted
    03 Dec 2019
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