The social representations of student assistance for benefited and not benefited students

Abstract

The National Student Assistance Policy - PNAES is one of the educational policies that have been contributing to the development of several actions in the Brazilian educational scenario, aiming at expanding the student’s permanence in Higher Education. In this perspective, the present study aimed to understand the social representations of Student Assistance for benefited and not benefited students, in a Public Higher Education Institution (IES). Data collection wascarried out with 100 participants, using the Free Word Assiciation Technique- TALP, with the presentation of a stimulus word, in this case, Student Assistance, and then the sociodemographic questionnaire. The data analysis obtained by the TALP was made from the semantic chain and the information contained in the questionnaires was analyzed using the SPSSWIN software, version 21, obtaining the characterization of the sample´s sociodemographic profile. The results showed that the benefited and not benefited students have the social representation of Student Assistance as a support and associated with income, respectively. These understandings point to the lack of knowledge of some students about a set of actions that must be developed by this public policy to enable equal opportunities, in order to contribute to improve academic performance, acting in a preventive manner on retention situations and evasion school by students with socioeconomic vulnerability. Therefore, it is necessary to think about how educational policies are affecting the university environment, and what is the understanding about them, so that, in fact, its effectuation in this context.