OS SIGNIFICADOS DA LEITURA ACADÊMICA NOS CURSOS DE FORMAÇÃO SUPERIOR

Abstract

This study strives to verify whether the reading practice of higher education students reflects the importance of reading within the environment of university level education. Academic reading is different from day-to-day reading, as it is done by obligation, in order to learn something that will later be evaluated. Taking into consideration the various components that emerge with the reading of a text (psychological, historical, socio-economical, and others), I make a description of the act of reading through the decifering, comprehension and rewriting of texts, and I analyse what type of reading is manifested by the students in the university. I take into account cultural issues and the demands of the capitalist socio-economic system that create specific reading situations which are mediated, collective and often manipulated. Reading is seen as a social and cultural construction that antecedes the undergraduate years and run along those years of higher education. By identifying what type of reading students bring with them as they enter the university and how they manage when faced with reading required by professors, this study focuses on the years spent at university and the changes brought about by the reading assignments suggested by the professors. The students are considered to be creative readers, inventors of meaning, but always inserted in a social and cultural context of much weight and influence. The analyses are those of the readings done by students although the role of the professor as the mediator of the learning process is also underlined. The central concern is the activity of the students, with some added observations taken from interviews with professors.