SCHOOL DROPOUT RATES IN THE TECHNICAL COURSE INTEGRATED WITH HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study that aimed to understand the perceptions of students, graduates, dropouts, and teachers of the computer technology course integrated with high school on a campus of the Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais (CEFET-MG), Brazil, about factors that are triggering students’ dropping out or failing to complete the course. This research is qualitative, based on documentary analysis, including as sources the pedagogical project of the course, and final reports of the incoming groups from 2008 to 2016. Field research was also carried out in 2019, with the application of questionnaires to teachers, students, graduates, and dropouts of the computer technology course integrated with the high school of a CEFET-MG campus. Data analysis was performed based on content analysis by Bardin (2016), assisted by the MaxQda software. The results make it possible to state that the factors that trigger evasion in this course often coincide with the ones present in the literature and in the Documento Orientador para a Superação da Evasão e Retenção na Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e Tecnológica (Guidelines for Overcoming Evasion and Failure in the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education). However, the teacher-student relationship was observed as one of the elements that trigger the high dropout rates in the computer technology course, which seems to indicate that CEFET-MG and the actors of the educational process need to plan and implement actions to prevent evasion, for an education for citizenship and work based on human solidarity relations.