Abstracts Psychology

A formação em Psicologia no contexto de expansão e interiorização das universidades públicas brasileiras : a experiência de Palmeira dos Índios/Alagoas

by Cássia de Castro BEZERRA

The present study intends to comprehend the meanings produced by professors and students about the Psychology major in the ambience of interiorization of the public universities, taking as a reference the Psychology course from the city of Palmeira dos Índios, Alagoas. In this regard, it turns into the research scenario for the public universities’ expansion to the small towns in the Brazilian Northeast, considering that this displacement creates several changes in the profession, once this formation context differs from the ones in which the knowledge and practices of Psychology were traditionally produced. The study was oriented by the Historic- Cultural Psychology theoretical reference in relation to qualitative research. Thus, two method- ological instruments were used: the Document Analysis and Conversation Circles. The chosen document was the course’s Pedagogical Project, considering it as a fundamental document for the comprehension of the background and the implementation conditions of the observed grad- uate course. The second moment was marked by two Conversation Circles involving professors and students, in order to delve into the implications of this interiorized formation. For the anal- ysis of the Pedagogical Project, the analytical strategy made by Seixas et al. (2013) was used, and for the Conversation Circles’ analysis the technique of content analysis with a focus on referent. The results were looked into in a complementary and integrated manner, and revealed that the course’s Pedagogical Project replicates disciplinary and conservative concepts sup- ported by the educational model oriented by the Core Curriculum, so there is a need to carry out a review of psychological knowledge and practices that consider the territorial, social, his- torical and economic conjuncture of the course. In this perspective, the meanings and meanings attributed to training in Psychology in the interior of Alagoas were diverse, with issues related to the opportunity to study, work, to the democratization of access to higher education, to strug- gles, resistances, and paradoxes made possible by the interface with the contours of public ed- ucation.