ABSTRACT.
This paper brings a case report regarding the project Estudar também se aprende (Brazilian Portuguese for "Studying can also be learned"), developed as an activity for the supervised teaching practice in educational psychology carried out by graduation students of the fifth year of Psychology in 2013. That project has been performed since 2008 in a public school; it is based on the theoretical and practical assumptions of Historical-Cultural Psychology. In this perspective, education is determinant for human development, for it influences and is responsible for guiding it, restructuring the elementary functions towards the higher psychological functions. The project aimed to teach students studying techniques that could allow the development of higher psychological functions, changing the process of concept formation, as well as improving school performance. In this perspective, the educator’s role is to organize the social environment, i.e., the educator uses concrete and symbolic mediating resources in order to promote knowledge appropriation by the students. Thus, the proposal was to encourage the students' habit of studying, with systematized strategies for the appropriation of school contents. During the project execution, it was noticed that there was a gap between the students and the social meaning of the activity of studying. From the methodology used in the project, it was possible to notice a change in the meaning of that activity. The results indicated that the students who previously attended school as an obligation realized the need of systematized studying as a way to develop psychological functions.
Keywords:
Historical-Cultural Psychology; educational practices; school problems