Academic Formation and Performance in Social Psychology and the Brazilian Postgraduate Policy

Abstract

This article refers to the results of a research initiated in 2014 that mapped the researchers of Brazilian Graduate Programs (PPG) in Social Psychology and in Psychology that identified social psychology as a working area in the Lattes curriculum and presented scientific publications on political issues. Based on this mapping, we present an overview of the universities that provide master’s and doctorate studies and of the work of these researchers, articulating it with some considerations on the construction and consolidation of PPGs in Brazil. We selected 169 researchers from 37 different PPGs situated in all five regions of the country: The data were organized according to academic formation and work universities of the researchers per period. The built panorama converges with a notable historical aspect in the development of Brazilian graduation: concentration in the Southeast region. USP and PUC-SP constituted 45% of the 169 professors. The researchers who most oriented the professors of the research had active participation in the construction of Brazilian critical social psychology. The results show the importance of conducting new research on: a) the impact of the operational displacement of researchers trained in the Southeast to other regions; b) the consequences of changes in the evaluation of the regional asymmetries proposed in the VI Planos Nacionais de Pós-graduação (PNPG); c) the consequences of the Federal Government’s limitation of expenditures on regional inequality related to scientific investment in graduate studies.

Keywords:
Graduate Programs; Social History of Social Psychology; Scientific Policy; Regional Inequality; Political Issues