ABSTRACT

This article discusses the student permanence in technical courses that are subsequent to high school at the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina – IFSC – initials in Portuguese from Brazil) and presents the results of a study carried out with teachers and students of these courses. The objective was to understand the conditions related to student permanence based on the interlocution between their living conditions and institutional conditions. Living conditions are understood as a product of student participation in the process of social production and reproduction. Institutional conditions comprise institutional programs and actions developed by the courses. The results indicate compatibility and incompatibility among the mentioned conditions and indicate the priority of institutional responsibility in the production of strategies to assure that students remain on track to complete the courses.

Keywords
Student Permanence; Living Conditions; Institutional Conditions

RESUMO

Este artigo debate a permanência estudantil nos cursos técnicos subsequentes do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina (IFSC) e mostra resultados de pesquisa realizada com professores e estudantes desses cursos, cujo objetivo foi: compreender as condições para a permanência estudantil, a partir da interlocução entre as suas condições de vida e as condições institucionais. Entende-se as condições de vida como produto da participação dos estudantes no processo de produção e reprodução social. As condições institucionais compreendem programas institucionais e ações desenvolvidas pelos cursos. Os resultados sinalizam encontros e desencontros entre as condições referidas e indicam a prioridade da responsabilidade institucional na produção de estratégias de permanência.

Palavras-chave
Permanência Estudantil; Condições de Vida; Condições Institucionais

Introduction

Student permanence¹ 1 This article is a continuation of my thesis (Moraes, 2021). has been a challenge at all levels and teaching modalities over the last few decades in Brazil, given the relevant indicators and the numerous studies of school dropout in the country² 2 In 2019, around 18% of students in subsequent technical courses dropped out of Federal Institutes throughout Brazil. Research carried out by IPEC (2022) reveals that around 2 million children and adolescents aged 11 to 19 are not attending school in Brazil. . Reflecting on the subject requires considering that student permanence “[...] goes hand in hand with its antithesis: evasion (since the conclusion implies a successful exit of the student from the higher education system)” (Mendes, 2020MENDES, Maíra Tavares. Mapeando a Produção sobre Permanência Estudantil. REU: Revista de Estudos Universitários, Sorocaba, UNISO, v. 46, n. 2, p. 385-407, 17 dez. 2020. Disponível em: http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php/reu/article/view/4040. Acesso em: 11 abr. 2020.
http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php... , p. 386). Evasion and permanence are placed in permanent dialectical interaction; they are produced by the relations of social classes with the school system, and need to be understood from the divisions and hierarchies inherent in the educational system (Oliveira; Magrone, 2021OLIVEIRA, Jose Adelmo Menezes de; MAGRONE, Eduardo. Evasão Escolar: apreensões e compreensões em contexto adverso. Labor, Fortaleza, v. 1, n. 26, p. 11-32, dez. 2021. Disponível em: http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue/view/1083/399. Acesso em: 2 mar. 2022.
http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue... ).

The early departure of a student from a course, institution or education system is related to school retention and non-completion of a certain level of study and is identified in the literature as school dropout (Dore; Lüscher, 2011DORE, Rosemary; LÜSCHER, Ana Zuleima. Permanência e Evasão na Educação Técnica de Nível Médio de Minas Gerais. Cadernos de Pesquisa, São Paulo, FCC, v. 41, n. 144, p. 772-789, dez. 2011.). However, there are still uncertainties surrounding the concept; therefore, it is a disputed land (Oliveira; Magrone, 2021OLIVEIRA, Jose Adelmo Menezes de; MAGRONE, Eduardo. Evasão Escolar: apreensões e compreensões em contexto adverso. Labor, Fortaleza, v. 1, n. 26, p. 11-32, dez. 2021. Disponível em: http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue/view/1083/399. Acesso em: 2 mar. 2022.
http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue... ). The concept of “evasion” is criticized for individualizing and exclusively blaming subjects evaded by the phenomenon (Steimbach, 2012STEIMBACH, Allan Andrei. Juventude, Escola e Trabalho: razões da permanência e do abandono no curso técnico em agropecuária integrado. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) –Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2012.; Pelissari, 2012PELISSARI, Lucas Barbosa. O Fetiche da Tecnologia e o Abandono Escolar na Visão de Jovens que Procuram a Educação Profissional Técnica de Nível Médio. 2012. 225 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) – Curso de Mestrado em Educação, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2012.; Zanin, 2019ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho. Abandono e Permanência Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: olhares de trabalhadores da educação do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina. 2019. 279 f. Tese (Doutorado em Tecnologia e Sociedade) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia e Sociedade, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2019. Disponível em: https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/bitstream/1/4665/1/CT_PPGTE_D_Zanin%2C_Alexsandra_Joelma_Dal_Pizzol_Coelho_2019.pdf. Acesso em: 26 out. 2020.
https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/b... ), and, therefore, has been proposed by authors such as Pelissari (2012)PELISSARI, Lucas Barbosa. O Fetiche da Tecnologia e o Abandono Escolar na Visão de Jovens que Procuram a Educação Profissional Técnica de Nível Médio. 2012. 225 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) – Curso de Mestrado em Educação, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2012., Zanin (2019)ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho. Abandono e Permanência Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: olhares de trabalhadores da educação do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina. 2019. 279 f. Tese (Doutorado em Tecnologia e Sociedade) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia e Sociedade, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2019. Disponível em: https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/bitstream/1/4665/1/CT_PPGTE_D_Zanin%2C_Alexsandra_Joelma_Dal_Pizzol_Coelho_2019.pdf. Acesso em: 26 out. 2020.
https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/b... and Moraes (2021)MORAES, Patricia Maccarini. A Permanência dos Estudantes nos Institutos Federais de Educação: um estudo sobre as condições de vida e as condições institucionais. 2021. 327 f. Tese (Doutorado em Serviço Social) – Curso de Doutorado em Serviço Social, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2021. the adoption of the term “school dropout”. By school dropout, it is understood the relationship between the various factors that involve the student and the school, resulting from social, economic and cultural processes, since the student can drop out or be dropped out (Zanin, 2019ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho. Abandono e Permanência Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: olhares de trabalhadores da educação do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina. 2019. 279 f. Tese (Doutorado em Tecnologia e Sociedade) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia e Sociedade, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2019. Disponível em: https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/bitstream/1/4665/1/CT_PPGTE_D_Zanin%2C_Alexsandra_Joelma_Dal_Pizzol_Coelho_2019.pdf. Acesso em: 26 out. 2020.
https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/b... ; Zanin; Garcia, 2021ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho; GARCIA, Nilson Marcos Dias. Abandono Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: ideologias, concepções, tensões e disputas que o envolve. Labor, Fortaleza, v. 1, n. 26, p. 100-119, dez. 2021. Disponível em: http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue/view/1083/399. Acesso em: 2 mar. 2022.
http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue... ). According to Zanin (2019)ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho. Abandono e Permanência Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: olhares de trabalhadores da educação do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina. 2019. 279 f. Tese (Doutorado em Tecnologia e Sociedade) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia e Sociedade, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2019. Disponível em: https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/bitstream/1/4665/1/CT_PPGTE_D_Zanin%2C_Alexsandra_Joelma_Dal_Pizzol_Coelho_2019.pdf. Acesso em: 26 out. 2020.
https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/b... , this complex phenomenon is related to several factors, which can be collective or individual, internal or external to the school, and that are in dialectical interaction, whose analysis is linked to social, economic, political and cultural contexts. Dropping out of school compromises the enjoyment of the right to quality education by all students, but those whose living conditions are marked by poverty and social inequality face it more intensely³ 3 Based on these conceptual differences, in this text, the term “school dropout” will be used when referring directly or indirectly to other authors, while the term “school abandonment” will be used when referring to self-authorship. .

In view of this, it is recognized that the main obstacles to permanence in educational institutions are faced by those students who experience in their daily lives the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity, social origin dimensions and etc. These obstacles are also articulated with the conditions that, historically, have marked the offer of public education in the country: social and regional inequalities, structural duality, the late universalization and obligatoriness of fundamental and secondary education, among other issues. With this, the possibilities for the enjoyment of the right to education differ depending on the context experienced by students and the influence and confluence of the various variables they encounter in their everyday lives. In this perspective, student permanence is articulated with the elaboration of strategies, which are formed from actions and movements carried out by students or institutions and are aimed at maintaining students until the completion of courses. These strategies can be informal, articulated by students, or established as policies by institutions, and both have material and symbolic dimensions (Santos, 2009SANTOS, Dyane Brito Reis. Para além das Cotas: a permanência de estudantes negros no ensino superior como política de ação afirmativa. 2009. 214 f. Tese (Doutorado em Educação) – Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, 2009. Disponível em: https://repositorio.ufba.br/ri/bitstream/ri/11778/1/Tese%20%20Dyane%20Santos.pdf. Acesso em: 25 abr. 2021.
https://repositorio.ufba.br/ri/bitstream... ; Mendes, 2020MENDES, Maíra Tavares. Mapeando a Produção sobre Permanência Estudantil. REU: Revista de Estudos Universitários, Sorocaba, UNISO, v. 46, n. 2, p. 385-407, 17 dez. 2020. Disponível em: http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php/reu/article/view/4040. Acesso em: 11 abr. 2020.
http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php... ). Bearing in mind the production of these strategies, it is defined that the interactions established between the living conditions of students and the conditions that are produced by educational institutions are a fruitful path for analyzing student permanence. That is, student permanence largely depends on the conjunction established between the students’ living conditions and institutional conditions.

In order to encourage discussion about student permanence, this article presents part of the results of the qualitative research carried out within the scope of subsequent technical courses at the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina – initials in Portuguese from Brazil) with the aim of: understanding the conditions for the permanence of its students from the dialogue between their living conditions and institutional conditions.

The research, carried out on the IFSC campuses of Florianópolis and Caçador, was guided by the dialectical critical method, of a qualitative nature, based on questionnaires, interviews and document analysis. The critical dialectical method, as a method of investigation and exposure of the movement of the real, provided the analytical categories of totality, mediation and contradiction to understand student permanence based on the dialectic established between the students’ living conditions and institutional conditions. Dialectics is the way of thinking about reality as “[...] essentially contradictory and in permanent transformation” (Konder, 2008KONDER, Leandro. O que é Dialética. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2008., p. 8), considering all things in motion and interaction, with contradiction being “[...] the basic principle of the movement by which beings exist” (Konder, 2008KONDER, Leandro. O que é Dialética. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2008., p. 47).

In view of the analytical categories, we sought to know and analyze the institutional conditions of the IFSC that are related to student permanence from institutional documents (laws, resolutions, normative instructions, ordinances and others) and programs aimed at student permanence, as well as semi-structured interviews with ten coordinator professors of subsequent technical courses⁴ 4 In Caçador, four courses participated in the survey: Electromechanics, Systems Development, Administration and Logistics. In Florianópolis, there were 6 courses: Construction Foundations, Electronics, Nursing, Mechanics, Environment and Sanitation. . To access information about the students’ living conditions, questionnaires were applied to 263 students. Data collection took place between September 2019 and March 2020⁵ 5 The research also included some aspects of living conditions and institutional conditions during the covid-19 pandemic, which will not be addressed in this article due to the deepening of the analysis that requires and because we understand that the binomial living conditions and institutional conditions is fundamental to understand and analyze living conditions in any period. .

The data from the questionnaires were systematized with the support of the Lime Survey® software, while Microsoft Excel was used for quantification and presentation in the form of graphs and tables. The analysis of the set of information obtained from the semi-structured interviews followed the operative proposal of content analysis indicated by Minayo (2014)MINAYO, Maria Cecília de Souza. O Desafio do Conhecimento: pesquisa qualitativa em saúde. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2014., which enabled the ordering of the texts - transcription, review and organization - to compose a horizontal map of the research findings, identify the central ideas and carry out the clippings, the codification of each interview in units of meaning (Minayo, 2014MINAYO, Maria Cecília de Souza. O Desafio do Conhecimento: pesquisa qualitativa em saúde. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2014.). This content analysis of the interviews was carried out with the support of the Atlas.ti software. The research, in all its stages, respected the ethical-legal aspects that guide research with human beings (such as guaranteeing the participants’ anonymity), established by Resolution 466/2012 and Resolution 510/2016 of the National Health Council.

Based on this introduction, the article is organized into three topics. In the first, there is a discussion about living conditions, seeking to situate the debate on its conception and highlighting some research results with students from subsequent technical courses. In the second topic, the same movement is carried out in relation to the institutional conditions, placing them in the IFSC, highlighting the programs and actions aimed at student permanence. Then, in the third topic, the matches and disagreements between these conditions are problematized. Finally, some considerations are made around the results presented.

The Debate on Living Conditions and the Reality of the Researched Students

Living conditions were chosen as a structuring axis to analyze the student permanence of students in subsequent technical courses at the IFSC, as they bring together different dimensions of the social totality and the impact they have on the possibilities of student permanence. In general, in Brazil, living conditions have been analyzed by study and research agencies – the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE - initials in Portuguese from Brazil), the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA), the Seade State System of Data Analysis Foundation (Fundação Sistema Estadual de Análise de Dados Seade - SEADE), among others – and by several academic researches that seek, among many other aspects, to understand how populations live and work.

However, this production, although highly relevant, proves to be insufficient to support a broader debate that highlights the economic, social and political context of a particular place or country, since this context directly interferes with the circumstances in which the population lives (García, 2017GARCÍA, María Valeria Judith Montoya. Los Hogares en la Crisis: trabajo y condiciones de vida en México 2008-2010. Ciudad de México: Cepal, 2017. Disponível em: https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/41095-hogares-la-crisis-trabajo-condiciones-vida-mexico-2008-2010. Acesso em: 5 jan. 2019.
https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/4... ). In this study, it is understood that living conditions are the result of the dialectical interaction between production and social reproduction, linked to the central contradiction of capitalism, which is its ability to generate poverty and wealth in the same proportion and, therefore, are at the center of the conflict between capital and labor. In Brazil, current living conditions reflect the historical and social formation of Brazil, marked by racism, structural inequality and several other determining elements.

To define living conditions, the scope of production is analyzed from the point of view of the transformations of capitalism and its cyclical and constant crises. In this sense, the conditions and relations of production are related to the way of producing goods and the appropriation of labor power by capital in each historical moment. It considers the inclusion of workers in the different ways of selling their workforce, the income obtained and the particularities that circumscribe paid work, as well as those who are excluded from this scope.

In Brazil, the living conditions of workers are determined by a set of factors, such as productive restructuring, the flexibilization of labor relations, the deregulation of labor rights, unemployment, financial globalization and the neoliberal ideology, that are associated with the weakening of the State in the social sphere and the privatization, focus and selectivity of social policies, which result in the weakening of the public social protection system and hard-won social rights.

The concrete determinations of the crises in the world of work result in the reduction of formal jobs linked to factory work; in the growth of a new proletariat, manufacturing and services linked to the various types of precarious work: outsourced, subcontracted, temporary, in addition to the large number of unemployed people (Antunes; Alves, 2004ANTUNES, Ricardo; ALVES, Giovanni. As Mutações no Mundo do Trabalho na Era das Mundializações do Capital. Educação e Sociedade, Campinas, v. 25, n. 87, p. 335-351, maio-ago. 2004.). The determinations are also expressed by the expansion of work at home, made possible by the deconcentration of the productive units, by flexibility and by outsourcing, often linked to the workers’ homes (Antunes; Alves, 2004ANTUNES, Ricardo; ALVES, Giovanni. As Mutações no Mundo do Trabalho na Era das Mundializações do Capital. Educação e Sociedade, Campinas, v. 25, n. 87, p. 335-351, maio-ago. 2004.). Thus, a new morphology of work is configured, which, in addition to the various forms of informality, improves value-generating mechanisms based on new and old mechanisms of intensification and, sometimes, also based on self-exploration, also incorporating significant portion of exploitation of immigrant labor (Antunes, 2013ANTUNES, Ricardo. A Nova Morfologia do Trabalho e suas Principais Tendências: informalidade, infoproletariado, (i)materialidade e valor. In: ANTUNES, Ricardo (Org.). Riqueza e Miséria do Trabalho no Brasil II. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013. P. 13-28.). Workers face more and more difficulties to enter and remain “active” in the labor market and see social and labor rights constantly in the sights of capital, which uses the State to maintain its patterns of accumulation and recomposition. So, exhausted by changes in production conditions, or by unemployment, they seek conditions to escape salaried employment, which reveals the growth of self-employment, and of individual micro-entrepreneurs, mystified forms of the subsumption of work to capital.

The configurations of the world of work, pressured by the cyclical and constant crises of capitalism, make the effects of the overexploitation of work and contemporary expropriations (Fontes, 2018FONTES, Virgínia. A Transformação dos Meios de Existência em Capital: expropriações, mercado e propriedade. In: BOSCHETTI, Ivanete. Expropriação e Direitos no Capitalismo (Org.). São Paulo: Cortez, 2018. P. 17-62.) spread to the totality of social life, greatly affecting the forms of social reproduction of populations. That’s why this dimension will be incorporated in the analyzes of living conditions.

Social reproduction is an integrating axis of the different dimensions of reality (biological, social and cultural) that refer to the material and symbolic aspects present in the economic, demographic and political spheres (Oliveira; Salles, 2000OLIVEIRA, Orlandina de; SALLES, Vania. Reflexiones Teóricas para el Estudio de la Reprodución de la Fuerza de Trabajo. In: TOLEDO, Enrique de La Garza (Org.). Tratado Latinoamericano de Socilogía del Trabajo. México: Flacso, 2000. P. 619-643.). The issues involving social reproduction are slippery and complex, but it is a field in which much of the costs of capitalist production can be observed (Katz, 2019KATZ, Cind. Capitalismo Vagabundo e a Necessidade da Reprodução Social. Tradução de Gilberto Cunha Franca e Valeria Fontes. GEOUSP: espaço e tempo, São Paulo, USP, v. 23, n. 2, p. 435-452, ago. 2019. Disponível em: https://www.revistas.usp.br/geousp/article/view/158736. Acesso em: 30 abr. 2021.
https://www.revistas.usp.br/geousp/artic... ). Thus, the discussion of social reproduction is associated with “[…] the reproduction of the totality of the social process that involves everyday social life in all its faces” (Mioto, 2017MIOTO, Regina Célia Tamaso. Família e Proteção Social: as relações Estado e família e a intervenção profissional dos assistentes sociais no contexto histórico brasileiro. 2017. 42 f. Projeto de pesquisa (Pesquisa em Serviço Social) – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2017. Mimeo., p. 17).

Studies on social reproduction gained strength through Marxist feminism, which problematizes the daily and generational production and reproduction of the workforce and which seeks to overcome the oppression of women under capitalism from a unitary, materialist theory. Based on Marx’s categorical universe, the feminist authors problematize the production and reproduction of the workforce, understood as a peculiar commodity of capitalism, highlighting the family as the social place of production and reproduction of the special commodity (Ferguson; McNally, 2017FERGUSON, Susan; MCNALLY, David. Capital, Força de Trabalho e Relações de Gênero. Outubro, n. 29, p. 23-58, nov. 2017. Disponível em: http://outubrorevista.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/02_McNally-e-Ferguson_2017.pdf. Acesso em: 15 mar. 2019.
http://outubrorevista.com.br/wp-content/... ).

The authors⁶ 6 Tithi Bhattacharya mentions Lise Vogel, Martha Gimenez, Johanna Brenner, Susan Ferguson and David McNally. who formulated the theory of social reproduction (Battacharya, 2019BHATTACHARYA, Tithi. O que é a Teoria da Reprodução Social? Tradução de Renata Vereza. Esquerda Online, 2019. Disponível em: https://esquerdaonline.com.br/2019/03/08/tithi-bhattacharya-o-que-e-a-teoria-da-reproducao-social/. Acesso em: 12 mar. 2019.
https://esquerdaonline.com.br/2019/03/08... ; 2018BHATTACHARYA, Tithi. Mapping Social Reproduction Theory. Verso, New York, 2018. Disponível em: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3555-mapping-social-reproduction-theory. Acesso em: 13 mar. 2019.
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3555-ma... ) articulate domestic and care work to the emergence and historical development of capitalism, and, by questioning the invisibility given to this type of work in discussions around the theory of value, denounce the oppression experienced by women from the appropriation of their working time by capitalism (Ferreira, 2017FERREIRA, Verônica Maria. Apropriação do Tempo de Trabalho das Mulheres na Política de Saúde e Reprodução Social: uma análise de suas tendências. 2017. 202 f. Tese (Doutorado em Serviço Social) – Programa de Pós-graduação em Serviço Social, Centro de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, 2017.). This theory considers the production of goods and services and of life as an integrated process, in which people produce themselves outside the formal economy, outside the workplace, and at a low cost to capital⁷ 7 Aruzza, Bhattacharya and Fraser (2019, p. 53) define social reproduction as a broad set of vital activities and consider that “[...] the work of producing people is, in fact, vital and complex. This activity not only creates and maintains life in the biological sense, it also creates and maintains our ability to work – or what Marx called ‘labor power’. And that means molding people with the ‘right’ attitudes, dispositions and values, skills, competencies and qualifications. In short, people’s work of production fulfills some of the preconditions – material, social and cultural – fundamental for human society in general and for capitalist production in particular. Without it, neither life nor labor would be embodied in human beings”. . It also highlights that women’s paid and unpaid work, carried out by them at home, is what keeps the world moving, highlighting the dialectical interaction between salaried work and reproductive work (Federici, 2019FEDERICI, Silvia. O Ponto Zero da Revolução: trabalho doméstico, reprodução e luta feminista. Tradução de Coletivo Sycorax. São Paulo: Elefante, 2019.).

In this way, social reproduction is based on the complexity of everyday life and, in a double movement, encompasses the various practices and social relations that reproduce the workforce, practices and relations that are linked to the production of goods. In this sense, social reproduction encompasses both the reproduction of capital and that of the worker, since the latter is essential for the reproduction of the former (Bhattacharya, 2018BHATTACHARYA, Tithi. Mapping Social Reproduction Theory. Verso, New York, 2018. Disponível em: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3555-mapping-social-reproduction-theory. Acesso em: 13 mar. 2019.
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3555-ma... ). In addition to the unpaid work of women and the family as a fundamental institution, “[…] social reproduction is ensured by a wide variety of comprehensive forms such as the categories of State, housing, capital and civil society” (Katz, 2019KATZ, Cind. Capitalismo Vagabundo e a Necessidade da Reprodução Social. Tradução de Gilberto Cunha Franca e Valeria Fontes. GEOUSP: espaço e tempo, São Paulo, USP, v. 23, n. 2, p. 435-452, ago. 2019. Disponível em: https://www.revistas.usp.br/geousp/article/view/158736. Acesso em: 30 abr. 2021.
https://www.revistas.usp.br/geousp/artic... , p. 437-438), in which the balance between them changes according to history, geography and class and has political-economic, cultural and environmental aspects.

Finally, the reproduction of social life integrates the whole of society and happens intertwined with the current development of productive forces and production relations. In this sense, social reproduction encompasses the family and the State as instances that guarantee the living conditions of the working population in the Brazilian context. The family guarantees the production, reproduction and maintenance of the workforce, not only in physical aspects, but also in ideological terms. The articulations developed by families with the State and the market, and how much they are able to do for themselves (production for self-consumption, organization of their members to enter the labor market, among others), are decisive aspects to determine the standard of living of a population. The State, on the other hand, acts in this field by interfering in the production and reproduction processes: in production, it is involved in guaranteeing the conditions for exploiting the workforce in its organic link with capital; in social reproduction, the State’s participation is operated mainly through social policies by providing access to benefits and services that are fundamental for the reproduction of social life.

Thus, the analysis of social reproduction becomes a fundamental axis in the research carried out due to its centrality for the reproduction and maintenance of life, in its biological and social aspects, and for emphasizing the importance of the family and the State in defining the conditions in which populations live. Incorporating social reproduction in studies on student permanence helps to bring to the fore aspects of students’ social life that cannot be hidden, such as care for themselves and dependent family members, unpaid domestic work, dependence or not on services and benefits state, and the negotiations established in the family sphere to sustain student permanence. It is important to emphasize that the connection with those aspects is not an option or possibility of choice for students, but are inherent to the reproduction and maintenance of life and are part of their everyday lives. From this perspective, the approach to living conditions proposed in the research is articulated with the social totality, which is fundamental for the analysis of complex contexts such as the Brazilian one, which expresses the generalized precariousness of social life.

Taking these fundamentals into account, the research carried out seeks to capture, through questionnaires, aspects of the students’ lives that indicate their living conditions, especially in the dialectic of the movement of production and social reproduction. In the research carried out, most of the students participating in the research are men (68%) and young (74% of them are up to 30 years old). In Caçador, most are under 25 years old and, in Florianópolis, most are older than this age group. White-skinned students predominate (62% in Florianópolis and 73% in Caçador).

The living conditions of these students are marked by their insertion in paid work, most of them with formal contracts in the private sector (68% in Caçador and 35% in Florianópolis). In Florianópolis, around 20% work as informal, self-employed and self-employed professionals and another 20% declared themselves to be students. Forty-seven percent of those who study in Caçador and 30% of those in Florianópolis work more than 41 hours a week.

These data indicate that it is not possible to state that we found full-time students among the research participants, even though 5% of those studying in Caçador and 19% of those enrolled in Florianópolis declared themselves as such when asked about their occupation. However, when questioned about their work situation, this group considered themselves unemployed, indicating that they were dedicated only to their studies at the time of the research, because they were excluded from paid work. In some period, paid work and studies have been or may be carried out concomitantly. There is also the possibility that the study is combined with other forms of work, even if without remuneration, such as support in family activities, domestic work, care for dependent family members, among others. It is important to keep the adjective worker in the characterization of these students because the search for a technical course is directly linked to the situation of being working, with the desire to be or have been a worker (in the case of retirees). Thus, the wide insertion in paid work allows identifying them as student workers, that is, they are workers who study and divide between two equally demanding activities and, therefore, have peculiar characteristics (Foracchi, 1977FORACCHI, Marialice Mencarini. O Estudante e a Transformação da Sociedade Brasileira. São Paulo: Companhia Nacional, 1977.). Student workers have their own identity and a unique heritage of experiences and knowledge (Fischer; Franzoi, 2009FISCHER, Maria, Clara Bueno; FRANZOI, Naira Lisboa. Formação Humana e Educação Profissional: diálogos possíveis. Educação, Sociedade e Culturas, Porto, CIIE, n. 29, p. 35-51, 2009. Disponível em: https://www.fpce.up.pt/ciie/revistaesc/ESC29/29ClaraFNairaF.pdf. Acesso em: 9 maio 2020.
https://www.fpce.up.pt/ciie/revistaesc/E... ); for this reason, their relationships with the world of work are essential to analyze the relationships they establish with courses and teaching institutions.

Most of the research participants study at night, precisely because of the possibility of conciliation with paid work. They are night passengers, as stated by Arroyo (2017)ARROYO, Miguel. Passageiros da Noite: do trabalho para a EJA: itinerários pelo direito a uma vida justa. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2017., who, at the end of the afternoon, are in the bus queues to move from their work to the courses and, at the end of the night, they are in the same queues, going from schools to their homes. These are the same dawn passengers who leave their homes very early to go to work (Arroyo, 2017ARROYO, Miguel. Passageiros da Noite: do trabalho para a EJA: itinerários pelo direito a uma vida justa. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2017.).

The condition of passengers at the beginning of the day and at the end of the night brings them closer to identities of gender, class, race, work, among others, and represents a search for a change in their living conditions, surrounded by hopes and uncertainties. Thus, “[…] moving around these spaces and times around the city, across the fields, going and coming back to work and to EJA is a struggle to move as a class, gender and race” (Arroyo, 2017ARROYO, Miguel. Passageiros da Noite: do trabalho para a EJA: itinerários pelo direito a uma vida justa. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2017., p. 24) and break the hierarchies so present in the school system and in the ways in which social, racial, sexual and spatial hierarchies are reproduced (Arroyo, 2017ARROYO, Miguel. Passageiros da Noite: do trabalho para a EJA: itinerários pelo direito a uma vida justa. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2017.).

Family income is fundamental for defining the living conditions of a population and for understanding how these hierarchies are expressed in the school context. The distribution of students according to family income in Caçador was as follows: 3% with income up to 1 minimum wage; 28% with income between 1 and 2 salaries; 17% with income up to 3 minimum wages; 23% with income between 3 and 4 salaries; 28% with income above 4 minimum wages. That is, 48% with a family income of up to 3 minimum wages. The scenario found in Florianópolis was the following: 12% with income below 1 minimum wage; 26% with income between 1 and 2 minimum wages, 24% with income between 2 and 3 minimum wages, 15% with income between 3 and 4 minimum wages and 23% with income above 4 minimum wages. It appears that 62% of those who study in Florianópolis have a family income of up to 3 minimum wages. Among the survey participants, 50% are the sole or main source of income for their families.

Thinking about the hierarchies of class, gender, race and ethnicity that structure Brazilian society, and the search for displacements that the resumption or continuity of studies represents, information on family income will be analyzed under the prism of race and skin color of the participants, seeking to give visibility to black, brown and indigenous students, even though they are a minority among the surveyed public (36% in Florianópolis and 27% in Caçador). Such information is shown in Graph 1 below.

Graph 1
Family Income by Campus and by Color/Ethnicity

It is observed the reproduction of historical and structural inequalities of Brazilian society in the school context. Blacks, browns and indigenous people are the majority in the strata with the lowest family income on both campuses, making color/ethnicity an important criterion for guiding institutional policies, such as student assistance.

With regard to sex/gender divisions, it was found that, in Florianópolis, 68% of participants are men, 31% are women and 1% declared their gender identity as non-binary. In Caçador, the trend was similar, where 67% of participants are men and 33% are women. In total, 179 men and 82 women participated in the survey. In view of these divisions, we sought to capture the nuances of social reproduction experienced by students. To do so, questions were asked about family composition, marital status, their involvement with housework, childcare, important decisions for family maintenance and whether they are assisted by services and benefits to support social reproduction.

It was observed that 67% of students do not have children. For those who do, the age of the children, of those studying in Caçador, coincides with the youngest profile of students on this campus, as 54% have children up to 10 years old. In Florianópolis, there is a significant number of students who have adult children: 22%, the same percentage of those who have children aged between 5 and 10 years. The family network stands out in the care of children, since while they are at the IFSC, 58% of students from Florianópolis and 70% from Caçador leave their children with their father or mother.

The general trend in the distribution of domestic work among residents indicates a balanced division, but women recognize themselves as the main responsible, and men consider that activities are evenly distributed or that they collaborate little. A similar trend was found in the care of children: those who consider that responsibilities are shared and those who consider themselves to be primarily responsible predominate. These responses indicate that men, especially those who are married and live with their partners, tend to consider the division of domestic work balanced. Women, however, follow another trend and consider themselves primarily responsible, even when they live with their husbands/partners. This trend corroborates the understanding that social reproduction takes place within the family (Mioto, 2017MIOTO, Regina Célia Tamaso. Família e Proteção Social: as relações Estado e família e a intervenção profissional dos assistentes sociais no contexto histórico brasileiro. 2017. 42 f. Projeto de pesquisa (Pesquisa em Serviço Social) – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2017. Mimeo.) and is almost exclusively the responsibility of women.

With regard to the decisions that need to be taken to maintain the home and the family (which member of the family participates in paid work, including or not the children in extracurricular activities, managing the financial resources obtained, who does the housework and others services necessary for maintaining the place of residence, among others), it was found that students are responsible for the most important decisions (30% of respondents) on both campuses. These decisions are shared with other family members for 57% of those who live in Caçador and for 51% of those who live in Florianópolis.

It is observed that the family is a key element for social reproduction, from whom it is expected the ability to produce services internally (care and housework), the organization of efforts to manage expenses, guarantee income and carry out coordinated actions for access and management of services offered by the State and the market. Equally important for understanding living conditions are the ways in which students organize themselves around family life, since “[...] the individual is evaluated much more by the conditions of his family than his individual status in society” (Cioffi, 1998CIOFFI, Sylvia. Famílias Metropolitanas: arranjos familiares e condições de vida. In: ENCONTRO NACIONAL DE ESTUDOS POPULACIONAIS, 9., 1998, Caxambu. Anais […]. Caxambu: ABEP, 1998. Disponível em: http://www.abep.org.br/publicacoes/index.php/anais/issue/view/31. Acesso em: 30 jun. 2019.
http://www.abep.org.br/publicacoes/index... , p. 1041). Also because the family functions as a unit of production of goods and services and organizes a collective effort in favor of articulating survival strategies by deciding who and when its members participate in the labor market (Montali, 1991MONTALI, Lilia. Família e Trabalho na Conjuntura Recessiva. São Paulo em Perspectiva, São Paulo, v. 1, n. 5, p. 72-84, jan.-mar. 1991. Disponível em: http://produtos.seade.gov.br/produtos/spp/v05n01/v05n0111.pdf. Acesso em: 21 mar. 2019.
http://produtos.seade.gov.br/produtos/sp... ) and, by extension, the qualification professional.

In this sense, knowing the participation of students and their families in public or private services is significant as it will indicate the possibilities of help and support that are being accessed beyond the family (Moraes, 2021MORAES, Patricia Maccarini. A Permanência dos Estudantes nos Institutos Federais de Educação: um estudo sobre as condições de vida e as condições institucionais. 2021. 327 f. Tese (Doutorado em Serviço Social) – Curso de Doutorado em Serviço Social, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2021.). Access to state social protection through public services is an important factor for the living conditions of a population and allows capturing the State’s participation in social reproduction. Among the students participating in the research, there is an emphasis on access to education services (considering their enrollment in the IFSC) and public health and a low incidence of families assisted by services and benefits of the social assistance policy.

Social security coverage is guaranteed for those who have a formal employment relationship. Informal workers experience a situation of lack of social protection, as most of them do not contribute to social security and, therefore, are excluded from social security and labor rights. It appears that the social reproduction of students largely depends on private initiatives developed within families, bearing in mind the low access to public social protection services.

The dimension of social reproduction proves to be relevant to understanding the permanence of students due to their contribution to family support and their involvement with childcare and housework, as well as the inexpressive support obtained from public services. The students’ reports are illustrative of the implications of this dimension for student permanence:

After presenting an overview of the students’ living conditions, we move on to the analysis of the IFSC conditions that proved to be relevant for the students’ permanence.

Institutional Conditions of the IFSC and Student Permanence

The institutional conditions for student permanence are expressed through a set of documents, programs, projects and actions carried out at the IFSC that aim to encourage or guarantee the permanence of students in courses. Given the breadth and diversity of this field, which is both theoretical-documental and practical-operative, two main sources of data were selected: institutional documents related to the theme and the professional work of course coordinators.

The mapping and analysis of the programs through the consultation of Federal Government and IFSC documents (laws, resolutions, normative instructions, ordinances, etc.) made it possible to identify the programs implemented that focus on student permanence. Among these, the following stand out as fundamental: Student Assistance Programs, which grant financial assistance to students with gross per capita family income of up to two minimum wages⁸ 8 Decree No. 7.234/2010, which provides for National Student Assistance Program (Programa Nacional de Assistência Estudantil, in Portuguese from Brazil), in art. 5 establishes that priority will be given to students from public schools with a per capita family income of up to one and a half minimum wages (Brazil, 2010). The IFSC, seeking to make the program more inclusive, adopted a per capita family income of up to 2 minimum wages and, when granting aid, maintained the prioritization rule established by the decree. ; National School Feeding Program (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar – PNAE – initials in Portuguese); internship and young apprentice programs aimed at socio-professional insertion; Educational Accessibility Centers (Núcleos de Acessibilidade Educacional – NAE – initials in Portuguese); and Specialized Educational Service for people with disabilities, autism spectrum disorder and people with high skills and giftedness, among other actions that can be carried out by the campuses individually⁹ 9 The mentioned programs can be consulted on the IFSC website (2022). .

The Permanence and Success Plan (Plano de Permanência e Êxito – PPE, initials in Portuguese) (IFSC, 2018IFSC. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Santa Catarina. Resolução CONSUP nº 23, de 21 de agosto de 2018. Aprova, ad referendum, o Plano Estratégico de Permanência e Êxito dos Estudantes do IFSC. Florianópolis: IFSC, 2018. Disponível em: https://sig.ifsc.edu.br/sigrh/public/home.jsf. Acesso em: 12 mar. 2019.
https://sig.ifsc.edu.br/sigrh/public/hom... ) is also an important action to analyze obstacles and possible paths to permanence, as it indicates the need to implement, monitor and evaluate specific actions to minimize evasion indicators. To this end, it suggests the creation of Monitoring Commissions for Student Permanence and Success Actions (Comissões de Acompanhamento das Ações de Permanência e Êxito dos Estudantes – CAPE – initials in Portuguese), in the rectory and on the campuses, with a work plan containing steps, deadlines and people responsible for building local plans for permanence and success on all campuses (IFSC, 2018IFSC. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Santa Catarina. Resolução CONSUP nº 23, de 21 de agosto de 2018. Aprova, ad referendum, o Plano Estratégico de Permanência e Êxito dos Estudantes do IFSC. Florianópolis: IFSC, 2018. Disponível em: https://sig.ifsc.edu.br/sigrh/public/home.jsf. Acesso em: 12 mar. 2019.
https://sig.ifsc.edu.br/sigrh/public/hom... ). Campus Caçador implemented CAPE, carried out the diagnosis and identified dropout factors, planned permanence and success measures, but had not yet begun to implement them. In Florianópolis, there is a commission that deals with the matter, but it was not possible to access the materials. Thus, although the IFSC has built the PPE, there are some disagreements in the execution of the works. However, considering the “[…] historical absence of actions to support permanence in Brazilian Professional and Technological Education, this document enables and offers conditions for possible debates and changes” (Zanin, 2019ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho. Abandono e Permanência Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: olhares de trabalhadores da educação do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina. 2019. 279 f. Tese (Doutorado em Tecnologia e Sociedade) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia e Sociedade, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2019. Disponível em: https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/bitstream/1/4665/1/CT_PPGTE_D_Zanin%2C_Alexsandra_Joelma_Dal_Pizzol_Coelho_2019.pdf. Acesso em: 26 out. 2020.
https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/b... , p. 211), and it is necessary to improve it and, above all, carrying out planned actions so that it actually reaches students and becomes a tool to support student permanence.

From the results obtained with the documental analysis, a dialogue was sought with the course coordinators, professors who are elected or indicated for the function, and considered as key informants of the research due to the attributions they exercise (follow-up of the students and the processes of teaching evaluation, the organization of differentiated teaching plans for students with disabilities, the organization of class councils, among others). In short, it is up to the coordinators to organize and manage the courses. For this, they mobilize a set of theoretical and practical knowledge and, sometimes, create and adopt strategies that may be more or less favorable to student permanence and that are not always formally registered.

It was observed that many course actions are mobilized based on the demands presented by the students, which are directly related to their living conditions. The main permanence actions informed by the coordinators were: change in the Course Pedagogical Projects (Projetos Pedagógicos de Curso - PPC – initials in Portuguese) ; tutoring and tutoring classes; provision of space and infrastructure for student meals; encouraging students to play a leading role during classes and valuing the knowledge gained from work experiences; student assistance programs and internships; interdisciplinary teams to assist students (pedagogical coordination and NAE); differentiated strategies for contacting them; laboratories and emphasis on practical classes; teachers’ ability to bring experiences into the classroom; teaching and learning strategies workshop; strengthening of links between course coordinator and student, which enables the coordinator to know the reality of students; diagnosis at the beginning of the course to identify the profile of the classes; adaptation of the methodology of the classes so that they become more dynamic and attractive, etc.

Documentary research identified student assistance programs as a landmark of programs aimed at student retention and were also cited by almost all coordinators as an important part of institutional conditions. However, it was observed that approximately 60% of students from Florianópolis and 70% from Caçador do not participate in any of these programs. Only 10% of students in Caçador and 17% of those studying in Florianópolis receive financial aid from PAEVS¹⁰ 10 The Assistance Program for Students in Socially Vulnerable Situations (Programa de Atendimento aos Estudantes em Situação de Vulnerabilidade Social - PAEVS - initials in Portuguese from Brazil) is made up of the following financial aid: permanence aid (granted to students who have an active Social Vulnerability Index (Índice de Vulnerabilidade Social - IVS); compulsory aid (for students enrolled in the Single Registry for Social Programs (Cadastro Único para Programas Sociais - CadÚnico), those enrolled in courses from the National Integration Program of Professional Education with Basic Education in the Modality of Youth and Adult Education (Programa Nacional de Integração da Educação Profissional com a Educação Básica na Modalidade de Educação de Jovens e Adultos - PROEJA) and those enrolled in courses that are part of actions aimed at strategic audiences); admission allowance for quotaholders with income of less than 1.5 minimum wages and emergency aid (IFSC, 2022).. . Approximately 10% of all of them have active IVS¹¹ 11 The Social Vulnerability Index is the criterion for granting IFSC permanence assistance and provides access to other institutional programs, such as research grants, extension grants, housing assistance and financial support for participation in academic events. The IVS is composed of variables such as per capita income, housing, access to social programs, work and employment, which together characterize the student’s situation of social vulnerability (IFSC, 2022). (that is, they are within the program criteria), but do not receive the benefits. Despite this low participation, PAEVS and IVS assistance were the two programs most accessed by research participants. The low percentage of students with IVS is noteworthy, even without receiving aid, since 31% in Caçador and 38% in Florianópolis have total family income within the criteria for access to IVS. As the IVS adopts the per capita family income criterion, it is assumed that an even greater number of students would be able to register for it.

Following the analysis of the actions mentioned by the coordinators and the students’ access to these actions, it was found that the extra class service provided by the teachers, the service by the interdisciplinary team of the pedagogical coordination) and by the NAE, despite being emphasized by the teachers, has low student participation. It is believed that the very condition of student worker of the public who attends subsequent technical courses poses obstacles to participation in those actions. Extracurricular assistance, for example, is usually offered after classes, or during the same period as classes, but on non-school days, or even before classes or breaks, which depends on the availability of teachers. It was observed that the living conditions of the vast majority of those who attend these courses are marked by the combination of paid work, studies and, often, family responsibilities, which reduces the time available to participate in extracurricular activities. Sometimes, this participation takes place during class hours, thus hampering access to the course content at that specific time. A similar situation occurs with the service at the NAE and at the pedagogical coordination. In summary, the information provided by the coordinators and students show the low participation of students in what is cited by the coordinators as the core of the student permanence policy at the IFSC.

Some coordinators reported only the institutional actions of the IFSC and did not indicate specific actions of the courses, the situation of those who have been in office for a few months and are still building a set of specific knowledge, and, perhaps because of this, they exclusively mentioned the institutional programs. Another point to highlight is that there is no standardization of actions by course or campus, as they depend on the way the course is conducted, the professors’ profiles, the practices that are already built and validated by the servers, which can be both more inclusive the more meritocratic.

Thus, it is observed that the coordinator’s experience and the time spent at the IFSC influence the set of actions carried out in the courses. This is a point that requires deep and cautious analysis, because, as institutional responses depend on each coordinator individually, it can generate inequalities and reinforce school dropout. It is also interesting to note the absence of flows and institutional parameters for the coordinators’ work. What exists is a set of attributions, which are also peculiar to each campus. In this context, the production of institutional conditions favorable to the permanence of students in courses depends on adequate working conditions and the offer of initial and continued training to workers in Professional and Technological Education (Educação Profissional e Tecnológica – EPT – initials in Portuguese).

The group of teachers who participated in the research has a high level of academic training: four are doctors, four are masters and two are specialists. These trainings were carried out in courses linked to the technical areas of activity. Only two people reported having taken a specialization course at the lato sensu postgraduate level in the field of Education. Considering the complex context of teaching at EPT, the management of courses and the importance of this for the permanence of students, coordinators were found who did not feel qualified when they assumed the role of coordinator. Some highlighted that they still do not feel fully competent to manage the courses, especially those who have been in the role for a short time. They also informed that they did not participate in training focused on the exercise of coordination and that the preparation for the function was mediated by previous experiences, theirs and that of colleagues, by observing the performance of colleagues and by administrative support from other servants.

In addition to the lack of specific training for the position, aspects of the coordinators’ work routine are added, such as the excess of bureaucracy related to the use of control systems and institutional processes, and it is important to consider the teacher’s condition as a worker, and that his performance it is part of the contradictions between capital and work, mainly due to the purchase and sale of its workforce (Moura, 2014MOURA, Dante Henrique. Trabalho e Formação Docente na Educação Profissional. Curitiba: Instituto Federal do Paraná, 2014.). It is the responsibility of the institutions that offer Professional Education to offer in-service training to their servers, which is a fertile field to reflect and create mechanisms favorable to student permanence.

Research evidence indicates that an important part of institutional conditions are the negotiations established between professors and coordinators with students. From these negotiations, unfold a set of practices produced in the daily life of the courses and which are fundamental for the construction of permanence strategies on the part of the students. Bearing in mind these negotiation possibilities that arise between students and civil servants, students were asked if their demands regarding work and family are accepted by the professors and civil servants of the IFSC. In Florianópolis, 56% agreed with the statement, 12% disagreed, 17% were indifferent and 15% did not respond. In Caçador, 53% agree, 22% disagree, 18% were indifferent and 7% preferred not to inform. The answers indicate the presence of inequalities between the different courses and campuses that require further studies.

It appears that the IFSC develops programs and actions that have a positive impact on student retention, but it is essential to expand student access to these programs. Also noteworthy is the importance of the role of civil servants in the construction of permanence strategies, with emphasis on professors who are in the coordination of courses who, due to their set of attributions, assume the mediation between the demands of students, civil servants (professors and sectors service to students, managers) and institutional processes.

Compatibility and incompatibility between the Living Conditions of Students and Institutional Conditions: fundamental elements for student permanence

The research results make it possible to know aspects of students’ lives that can influence their ability to produce strategies for student permanence, at the same time that they present the programs and actions carried out within the scope of subsequent technical courses that can favor permanence. It appears that there is a dialectic between living conditions and institutional conditions, since the ability of students to develop permanence strategies, whether material or symbolic, depends directly on their living conditions and is directly associated with the institutional conditions encountered. However, the examination of this dialectical movement between the referred conditions points to encounters and disagreements/compatibility and incompatibility.

In summary, the students’ living conditions indicate that their trajectory is marked by paid work, in such a way that their school trajectory does not depend exclusively on themselves and their abilities, but it is permeated by the possibilities found in the spheres of work and family, by the credible negotiations that can be established between these spheres, and it takes place in the tangled context of articulations between production and social reproduction. It was observed that, in some courses, the actions carried out correspond to the living conditions of the students, as the experiences lived by them in the world of work are incorporated into the planning and daily life of the classes, giving protagonism to the students, they also appear in the flexibility of schedules, the methodology of classes and evaluation activities. Those courses that are coordinated by women and in which they are the majority among the students were more understanding with regard to family demands, incorporating social reproduction as an important dimension for the planning of courses, which is verified in the reception, in the understanding in view of the care demands of the children and the students’ family dynamics. However, in many courses, social reproduction remains invisible, and is not even recognized among the demands presented by students.

The results also indicate the presence of ambivalences regarding the postures of the servants, mainly the professors. It is noticed that some teachers adopt more flexible postures, are more tolerant with schedules and deadlines, others are not. This ambivalence was also perceived in the teachers’ reports, when some highlighted the importance of welcoming, bonding and acting closer to students, while others made no reference to these issues.

Another highlight is the inconsistencies between programs aimed at promoting existing permanence and student access to these programs. Currently, the IFSC prioritizes the granting of financial aid, upon prior registration and compliance with various criteria and stages until receiving the aid. The access of research participants to IFSC student assistance was low, which indicates that the institution needs to improve its mechanisms for dissemination and access to programs to expand assistance to students of subsequent technical courses. In addition, the importance of promoting universal access programs provided for in Resolution CEPE/IFSC 001/2010 is noted¹² 12 The list of universal programs provided for in that Resolution can be consulted in IFSC (2010). (IFSC, 2010IFSC. Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Santa Catarina. Resolução CEPE/IFSC nº 001/2010, de 30 de novembro de 2010. Regulamenta a Assistência Estudantil do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina. Florianópolis: IFSC, 2010. Disponível em: http://cs.ifsc.edu.br/portal/files/CEPE2014/resolucao_cepe_001_2001_assistencia.pdf. Acesso em 25 de fevereiro de 2019.
http://cs.ifsc.edu.br/portal/files/CEPE2... ) and the creation of others that meet the needs of a larger contingent of students, such as the School Meals Program, as the various requirements for the registration and selection stages of current programs, focused on the public with an income of up to 1.5 salaries -minimum, demands time and attention and can discourage student workers from participating in the programs.

In view of this, observing the correlations established between the living conditions of students with access to institutional programs and practices established in the daily life of courses, there are many convergences, but also the presence of divergences, which conform unequal contexts between courses and campus and can reiterate school dropout. However, these divergences can be explored in the institutional routine to produce student permanence strategies and thus reduce school dropout indicators and, consequently, increase student permanence. One of the possible ways for the institution to explore these divergences and ambivalences is the promotion of continuous actions of formation and qualification of the servers, which has as assumption the living conditions of the students and the social, economic, political and cultural context in which each campus is located. inserted and that addresses topics such as welcoming, student worker, family demands and responsibilities, among others, given that professional improvement mediated by experience has proved to be insufficient to base practices favorable to student permanence.

Knowing and problematizing these divergences and ambivalences is one of the ways to face school dropout, whose evidence is present in the researched reality, since 36% of those who study in Florianópolis and 45% of those who study in Caçador have already thought about giving up their current course at any moment. There is, then, a dialectic between permanence and abandonment, showing that the permanence in the courses was or is threatened for a significant portion of the students. The risks of dropping out of school are linked to several factors, such as paid work, reduced time for extracurricular study and excessive activities, family demands, housework, demands for caring for children and dependents, transportation to the IFSC, class start and end times, insufficient financial resources, course content and learning difficulties; distance between the place of residence or work and the IFSC, among others. This multiplicity of factors corroborates what he pointed out (Zanin; Garcia, 2021ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho; GARCIA, Nilson Marcos Dias. Abandono Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: ideologias, concepções, tensões e disputas que o envolve. Labor, Fortaleza, v. 1, n. 26, p. 100-119, dez. 2021. Disponível em: http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue/view/1083/399. Acesso em: 2 mar. 2022.
http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/labor/issue... ):

Therefore, coping with school dropout becomes possible from the perspective of totality, considering the dialectic interaction between different contexts and between individual and collective factors of students, internal and external to the institution for the production of contexts favorable to student permanence. That is, it is not a question of the result of the particular and individual characteristics of the subjects, nor of making individual sectors or servers responsible, but of considering the multiplicity of their objective and subjective conditions, as well as the economic, political and cultural conditions involved in institutional planning (Zanin, 2019ZANIN, Alexsandra Joelma dal Pizzol Coelho. Abandono e Permanência Escolar na Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: olhares de trabalhadores da educação do Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina. 2019. 279 f. Tese (Doutorado em Tecnologia e Sociedade) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia e Sociedade, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2019. Disponível em: https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/bitstream/1/4665/1/CT_PPGTE_D_Zanin%2C_Alexsandra_Joelma_Dal_Pizzol_Coelho_2019.pdf. Acesso em: 26 out. 2020.
https://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/b... ).

Final Considerations

The critical dialectical method that guided the research presented in this article allows identifying a dialectical interaction between living conditions and conditions produced and offered by the IFSC. The convergence of the dynamics triggered from the two aforementioned poles – living conditions and institutional conditions – produces more or less favorable contexts for the initiation, maintenance and conclusion of the educational projects of the different subjects who present themselves as students in the subsequent technical courses at the IFSC. The students’ living conditions, resulting from the tangled context that is established between production and social reproduction, can be configured as an obstacle or as a favorable factor for student permanence, depending on how they are incorporated into the institutional sphere.

The examination of living conditions showed the dialogues established by students with the world of work, which requires thinking about the working conditions in which student workers are inserted. The school needs to question not only who these students are, but what work they come from, being fundamental to know them in their tense journeys of humanization, considering their histories as workers and as students. Thus, it matters not only the fact that they are student workers, but mainly the type of activity they carry out, the duration of the workday, the existence and type of employment contract to which they are bound, whether they are covered by the State’s social protection, among others.

Material and symbolic permanence (Mendes, 2020MENDES, Maíra Tavares. Mapeando a Produção sobre Permanência Estudantil. REU: Revista de Estudos Universitários, Sorocaba, UNISO, v. 46, n. 2, p. 385-407, 17 dez. 2020. Disponível em: http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php/reu/article/view/4040. Acesso em: 11 abr. 2020.
http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php... ; Santos, 2009SANTOS, Dyane Brito Reis. Para além das Cotas: a permanência de estudantes negros no ensino superior como política de ação afirmativa. 2009. 214 f. Tese (Doutorado em Educação) – Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, 2009. Disponível em: https://repositorio.ufba.br/ri/bitstream/ri/11778/1/Tese%20%20Dyane%20Santos.pdf. Acesso em: 25 abr. 2021.
https://repositorio.ufba.br/ri/bitstream... ) is directly related to living conditions, as it depends on the resources that the student and his family have to pay for the permanence in the courses and, in the absence of these, it depends on the resources made available by the institution, in this case the IFSC. Thus, it is essential to bring institutional responsibility in the production of permanence strategies (Mendes, 2020MENDES, Maíra Tavares. Mapeando a Produção sobre Permanência Estudantil. REU: Revista de Estudos Universitários, Sorocaba, UNISO, v. 46, n. 2, p. 385-407, 17 dez. 2020. Disponível em: http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php/reu/article/view/4040. Acesso em: 11 abr. 2020.
http://periodicos.uniso.br/ojs/index.php... ) to the forefront. In this sense, it is stated that student permanence is multi-determined and largely depends on the institutional capacity to produce contexts that are favorable to the permanence of the various subjects who present themselves as students.

This emphasis on the institution’s responsibility is anchored in the institutional autonomy of educational institutions, guaranteed by the National Council of Education for the elaboration, execution, evaluation and revision of Political-Pedagogical Projects, respecting the current legislation (Brazil, 2021BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Conselho Nacional De Educação. Resolução CNE/CP nº 1, de 5 de janeiro de 2021. Define as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais Gerais para a Educação Profissional e Tecnológica. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, edição 3, p. 19, 6 jan. 2021. Disponível em: https://www.in.gov.br/en/web/dou/-/resolucao-cne/cp-n-1-de-5-de-janeiro-de-2021-297767578. Acesso em: 06 abr. 2021.
https://www.in.gov.br/en/web/dou/-/resol... ). Considering that the IFSC is a public institution, it must plan actions to better serve students, including those demands that are traditionally delegated to the private sphere, such as social reproduction. The prioritization of institutional responsibility must be accompanied by knowledge about the living conditions of students, with a view to subsidizing institutional organization and planning. Expanding student permanence is ensuring the enjoyment of the right to education, an essential task for public institutions, which conceive education, a social and universal right and, in the case of the IFSC, for the social function assigned to it by Law No. 11,892/2008 (Brazil, 2008BRASIL. Lei nº 11.892, de 29 de dezembro de 2008. Institui a Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e Tecnológica, cria os Institutos Federais de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia, e dá outras providências. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, a. 145, n. 252, p. 1, 30 dez. 2008.).

In view of this, the evidence observed in the research makes it possible to indicate some possible paths that can be thought of from the institutional context, among which the following stand out: consider living conditions as guiding the planning of courses; adopting work as a material and symbolic reference for learning; break with the invisibilities surrounding social reproduction; strengthen admission by public lottery to democratize access to EPT; deepen the analysis of learning difficulties and other pedagogical issues in relation to student permanence; and expanding universal student assistance programs to the detriment of targeted programs.

The analyzes carried out and the suggested paths, although identified in the context of the subsequent technical courses at the IFSC, apply to other levels of education and to other institutions, since the living conditions of the students and their correspondence or not by the institutional programs is relevant data for the enjoyment of the right to education in any context. It is concluded, therefore, that one of the main contributions of the research is to shed light on the interaction between students’ living conditions and institutional conditions and, especially, to incorporate social reproduction as an axis of analysis, since it is often devalued or made invisible.

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