ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCES LIVED BY STUDENTS IN BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AT UFABC: Interdisciplinary training and its implications in the professional trajectory
This work intends to analyze the experiences of graduates of the Bachelor of Science and Technology (BC&T) from the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), considering the interdisciplinary formation and its implications in the professional trajectory. The study recognizes the polysemy that accompanies the term interdisciplinarity and highlights some of the different views on the subject. The general objective of the research is to understand aspects of the experience of graduates from BC&T at UFABC, with regard to interdisciplinarity at the personal and professional level. For this, the work is developed through the analysis of the speeches present in institutional documents from UFABC, as well as from BC&T, in studies that involve the functioning of UFABC and its courses, and finally, which is the main focus of the research, in the views of BC&T graduates on the experience in interdisciplinary higher education. The study analyzes the perspective of interdisciplinary and innovation in higher education, it highlights the main structuring elements of the Institutional Pedagogical Project (PPI) at UFABC and the BC&T Pedagogical Course Project, as well as the main academic contributions that analyzed UFABC and its functioning. The research uses qualitative methods of investigation, through semi-structured interviews with the graduates of BC&T, relying on the analysis of the current French discourse for the construction of their arguments on the discourse present in institutional documents, research on the theme and on BC&T graduates’ speech. A pilot questionnaire was applied in order to validate the questions for the interviews with the graduates, which was carried out, at that time, through a Google form, due to the restrictions brought about by the pandemic generated by COVID-19. At this stage, three graduates answered the questionnaire, allowing the first conclusions of the study to be raised. In the interviewees' speeches it was possible to identify elements of convergence, of what is intended with the training at BC&T, by UFABC, mainly concerning the professional profile, which in the graduates’ speech, is meant as open to facing different problems of the contemporary society, emphasizing the contact with solid scientific knowledge and experiences brought by course subjects. The interdisciplinarity proposed by UFABC, through an adaptable and flexible curriculum, is another element of convergence observed in the graduates’ speech, who highlighted the experience with different areas of knowledge during their training as positive. The difficulty of understanding, on the part of the labor market, of what a bachelor in Science and Technology is, is a point to be highlighted as problematic, in relation to the implications of training in the graduate’s professional future. Once the pilot questionnaire demonstrates the validity of the structured questions for the interviews, aiming at the construction of the argument, the study will continue through other interviews, aiming to expand the analysis of the answers to the research questions and finalization of the dissertation.