Gênero, tecnologia e formação : o desenvolvimento da carreira das estudantes do ensino médio integrado em informática

Abstract

Career development is the process of seeking professional improvement through learning and work during all lifetime. Some stages of career development receive greater importance and interest, such as the academic formation and the choices made in adolescence, like choosing an undergrad course, for example. It is very important that these choices are made by adolescents who are aware of their interests and abilities. However, some personal factors, behavioral factors and environmental factors could influence this process by limiting the number of possibilities. Gender, as one of these factors, could act as a gatekeeper by interfering in the academic and professional planning of adolescents. In Brazil, some adolescents may choose to do an integrated professional course in specific areas of knowledge, such as Informatics, together with the High School. This choice could be considered one of the first choices of the adolescent life, while they are still in basic education, as well as be considered a gateway to an undergrad course in the field of Computer Science. According to data from the Brazilian Basic Education Census of 2018 and the Brazilian Higher Education Census of 2017, approximately 38% of enrollments in the Informatics High School and only 13.95% of enrollments in the undergraduate Computing courses are female students. Thus, we question about which factors influence the career development process of the Informatics High School Female Students so that they wish to continue studying Computer Science. Considering this scenario, the main goal this thesis is to understand how the career development process of the Informatics High School female students is perceived by them and how personal factors, behavioral factors and environmental factors could influence this process so they could want to pursue an undergrad course in Computer Science. In this work, we discuss the context of the professional education in Brazil and the context of women in Computing, among other subjects related to gender, technologies and career development. This thesis consists in a qualitative exploratory multimethod research conducted by questionnaires, focus groups and interviews with 80 participants (78 students and 2 teachers) from Mato Grosso Informatics High School institutions. The research and its instruments were submitted and approved by the Brazilian Research Ethics Committee. We use data crystallization as the data analysis methodology which reflects the results of the data in a combined way. As a result, this research contributes with models that describe the factors which influence the career development of the Informatics High School female students in each stage of this process, by the view of the female students and their teachers. The research shows that the gender relations, the previous experiences with technologies and the High School education in Informatics could bring female students closer or could further them away from pursuing the undergrad education in Computing. It would depend on how they are present in the female students lives at each stage of the career development process, and on how they create meaning from the relationships with those factors in order to make career choices using their autonomy. As future work, we propose to continue researching the career development of High School female students and their career choices towards Computing, also the extension and the refinement of the proposed models.