The mark of the difference and the discourse of the discrepancy

Discursive fields are constructed through relatively stable ways of saying, acting and being, constituted in/by the language that circulates among its participants, formed according to discursive genres specific to each context and situation (^{Bakhtin, 2003}; ^{Haye & Larrain, 2018}). ^{Geraldi (2014}) articulated the concepts of literacy and discursive genres when considering this as the process of learning the ways of using language. In this way, we understand academic literacy practices as learning how to say, act and be in the discursive context of higher education. These practices tend to conflict with previous literacy practices (^{Alves & Moura, 2016}), making it necessary to take into account the students’ experiences with reading and writing in the learning process in higher education.

As ^{Rama (2015}) analyzed, academic knowledge in Latin America has historically been linked to the occupation of places of power accessible to specific portions of the population with greater purchasing power. In Brazil, this condition was associated with the low quality of public elementary and high school education, which limited the conditions of access to quality public higher education. As a consequence, entry into the best Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) remained, for decades, restricted to students from private educational institutions who, more easily, adapted themselves to the HEI practices.

Tensioning this condition, the increase in the entry of students from the lower classes into universities, as a result of access policies, destabilizes the standards and practices naturalized by the participants in the academic context, requiring their review (^{Cerutti-Rizzatti & Dallagnelo, 2016}). To problematize this context from the perspective of students, we present below the statements of two participants in the reading and writing workshops. Both came from public schools and joined UFSC to attend the Literature course. Their statements reveal the recognition of the unequal conditions with which they entered higher education and with which they face reading and writing practices, the appropriation of academic genres and the methods of evaluation in their courses:

The university excludes the issue of social diversity. The entrance exam is for everyone and there is the question that some students come from a top school... And others do not. And then it is as if the professor and the institution were giving the exam only for those students who had the opportunity to have a good high school education. (Lorena, Literature, 7th phase, UFSC).

The professors assume that all students had very good schooling, that they came from an excellent high school and they no longer need to teach this. (...) I have trouble writing. I’m suffering. I have difficulty bringing ideas together, understanding what a narrative is, a short story, reviews, essays, the ABNT (Brazilian Technical Standards Association) rules. (...) They expect that those who are at the Federal University already have all this preparation, that they already have those three years of excellent high school education. (STR, Literature, 2nd phase, UFSC).

Considering the relationship between the ways of teaching and learning, as they are signified by these students, we perceived special contours in the contrast between the conditions of their fellow students. When experiencing the difficulties inherent to the academic context, the students recognized a place of inequality in the relationship with their peers, however, they also seemed to unify the responsibility for the challenges faced in the failures of the previous educational stages. This meaning is produced in the students’ concrete experience, however, reproduces the social meaning that currently runs through the discussions about access and permanence at the university (^{Almeida & Pan, 2017}).

According to ^{Zavala (2010}), in the context of a dominant intellectual and cultural tradition, groups of students from other cultural traditions face obstacles that seem to be unknown (or unconsidered) by the professors. In this process, a “normative formulation” is created (p. 90) which defines that the good students are those that most easily move towards what is expected of them, in terms of academic performance, already upon their admission. For the others there is an exclusion process that reserves them the place of deficiency, discrepancy and deficit that starts to compose their discursive production. This statement directly articulates the conditions of fundamental education, mainly in the public school, to the supposed cognitive and emotional difficulties of the students and/or to family contexts that would not promote good reading and study habits.

It should be highlighted that the previously cited statements include not only the fact that the students feel a discrepancy when compared to other students, but also the impression that the classes are not directed toward them, but toward those that more easily overcome the challenges of academic literacy. When STR mentioned the difficulties he faced in the course, such as learning academic genres and formats, such as those of the ABNT, he was commenting on learning that, in principle, is specific to higher education in the Brazilian educational context. In spite of this, his statement seems to link his difficulties solely to the fact that he did not go through “those three years of excellent high school” at the private school, responding to and substantiating, in this way, discourses that neglect the university’s responsibility for the training of students in their own academic practices.

The statement, transcribed below, of Alba, a law student at UFPR and from a rural public school, reinforces meanings of disorientation and helplessness interwoven in the articulation between the meaning produced about discrepancy, the complexity of the readings included in her course and the difficulties of appropriating academic genres:

In the high school education there is a very large discrepancy in reading and writing and at university the professors push us to write articles. So I find myself having to write an article and I don’t even know where to start. And then you are also faced with complicated reading. Durkheim and Marx are very complicated reading for those that are now starting to read texts of this type. And this pressure for us to write well, read a lot, leaves us disoriented and there is no support at all. (Alba, Law, 2nd phase, UFPR).

The intricate process described by Alba reaffirms the perception that the overcoming of academic obstacles has been delegated, by the HEIs, to individual students, since pedagogical practices seem to assume that these students should already bring from previous levels of education all the knowledge necessary to respond to any demands that academic literacy imposes on them. However, it is necessary to evaluate that the reading of works by authors such as Marx and Durkheim, as mentioned by Alba, would probably not have been carried out before entering the university by any student, coming from public or private Brazilian education. Despite this, also for Alba, her difficulty is signified as a direct result of the “very large discrepancy in reading and writing” that she had due to her high school education.

In addition to affirming the denial of the relational condition of the educational process, when the students are delegated to assume alone the implications of their academic success/failure, at the same time that they are assigned a place of discrepancy or deficiency, the knowledge and skills that they take with them to the university are made invisible and their supposed faults and shortcomings are valued. In this sense, what the student knows does not seem to find space in the academic context, as this knowledge is alien to the contents and formats that circulate in the disciplines.

The usucaption of the university

Jefferson, a student of the Mechanical Engineering course at UFPR, a course that, like other engineering courses, presents disciplines with high levels of reproval, also expressed in his statements meanings about the distances established between the institution and students. In the statement transcribed below, the student exemplifies how, in his course, the process of holding the student accountable for academic success or failure surpasses the classroom practices and is extended to the academic and institutional organization:

There was even a situation recently... that the people were enrolling and a girl went to ask the coordinator if he could put on an extra class for a certain discipline (...) if he could put on another class, because there were a lot of people failing the discipline. Then the professor said: “We are not going to do that, this is not our problem. You should have rethought your choices so that you didn’t fail any discipline and now you would not have a problem”. (Jefferson, Mechanical Engineering, 6th phase, UFPR).

We also heard in Jefferson’s speech, meanings constructed around a logic that seems to release the university from rethinking institutional policies and practices. The planning of a project to be perfectly followed in the university, from the beginning of the academic trajectory, seems to be entrusted to the students, as if the fact of failing in subjects was for them a matter of choice or disorganization. In addition, we heard in his speech an expectation that this trajectory will occur fully ordered, with control and without stumbling blocks.

In this sense, it seems that the aforementioned course obeys a concept of learning as a linear, cumulative process, composed of sequenced and pre-fixed stages, which students always need to follow rigorously and successfully, with the risk of being reproved, that is, of not being able to enroll in mandatory subjects without having been approved in previous subjects placed as prerequisites for the following ones. For this situation, the course does not seem to provide alternatives.

When we focus on this issue from the historical-cultural perspective in psychology, we observe that the condition placed on these students is incoherent. From ^{Vygotski (1992}) we comprehend that the construction of higher psychological processes takes place in a relational way, between people in certain social contexts, semiotically mediated. Different contexts and relationships engender different processes of subjective, cognitive and affective construction, in a dialectical movement between collective and singular that is not linear or sequential, but interwoven by tensions, ruptures and contradictions. Learning is, therefore, intertwined with the conditions of the social context in which it takes place, a process that needs to be evaluated in all educational stages, including higher education, since it is also a subject undergoing development, as ^{Marinho-Araújo (2016}) analyzes well.

Perhaps more significantly, the meaning that unfolds from Jefferson’s statement is that, in view of the professors’ place of voice and authority and their determinations, students feel powerless, a meaning that was similarly reported in the statements by participants from other groups of the workshops. We highlight below a dialogue between Ana Maria, a student from the 7th phase of the Literature course, and Dhara, from the 1st phase of Pedagogy, both at UFSC, which occurred when the conversation circle discussed the possibilities of requesting changes in the practices of their professors:

Ana Maria: There are some professors who already have a usucaption² from the university and they do what they want and they have another position. So, how do we fight with a professor like that?

Dhara: Actually, there’s not much we can do, right? We don’t have any way to complain. I still don’t know where we are going to complain because we are going to talk to the professor and he doesn’t accept criticism.

When she mentions “another place”, referring to the place occupied by professors, Ana Maria alludes to a condition of power that allows them apparently unquestionable actions. The student still uses, as a resource illustrative of this condition, the acquisitive prescription process and compares the professor’s place to the law of usucaption, indicating that she perceives that certain professors have acquired the property of their place of power in the university, being able to enjoy and dispose of it, regardless of the other participants of this space. Like the professor mentioned in Jefferson’s statement, they make use of this place in order to deny any possibility of dialogue, of difference or of their practices being modified. The problem is the other, in this case, the student.

What Jefferson, Ana Maria and Dhara offer us are concrete examples of how the power relations structured at the university configure possibilities of action that are crossed by the recognition that the social place of the professors is unmoved by changes, receiving the effects of a law against that which does not appear to have resources. Their statements resound with presumptions that, in their place as students, they are subjected to transforming their possibilities of acting, saying and being, in obedience and silence.

How, for whom and for what to write?

Research, internship and university extension reports come into existence in the academic community when published in books, chapters, annals of events or scientific journals, with each publication adding a new item to the curriculum of its author and expanding their possibilities of speaking and being heard by their peers. This dynamic participates in the construction of the different places of knowledge/power occupied by participants in the academic-university context, making their practices visible.

In the institutional hierarchies, the prominent place of knowledge/power is occupied by the professor. It is the professor that publishes the texts to be read by the students and that defines the evaluation criteria for their disciplines. Therefore, this professor is the figure for whom the student’s writing is historically proscribed, which makes him/her the authority in this field. The students’ statements, or what they can say and the way they should say it, are produced in the relationship with this special interlocutor, they respond and address him. This constructs a discursive space filled with “dialogical resonances” (^{Bakhtin, 2003}, p 300), that is, the reflection and refraction of the voices that intertwine in the chain of statements that constitutes the discursive communication.

We can deepen these resonances based on the statement of Thais, a student from the 1st phase of the Literature course at UFSC, when discussing the difficulties, she faced when producing written work:

Each professor likes you to do that work, be it an abstract or whatever, in a particular way. When he gives you guidance on how he wants it, it makes it easier. But when he leaves you alone, without even saying: “Look, do it this way”, you are insecure. We did a lot of abstracts, we haven’t had any responses yet. There’s more to do and we are: “But am I doing it right?” Okay, university is a place where you are more by yourself, you can’t count on the professor, but at least he’ll give you guidelines for what he wants... To say: “Look, I want you to elaborate more on this, this and that”. And when you don’t have this, you’re very lost, very insecure. (Thais, Literature, 1st phase, UFSC).

Perhaps the abstract format is among the textual productions most requested from undergraduate students, being frequent in the Literature course at UFSC, according to the information of the students in the workshop. But Thais’ speech revealed different possibilities for its realization, stating that when requesting abstracts, professors place certain expectations on the students’ production. These expectations are not obvious, but they seem to be presumed in the professors’ request, leading to the recognition of what ^{Bianchetti (2012}, p. 248) called the mark of the pre-formatted order. For the author, the commissioning of the work creates a kind of tacit contract between professors who provide the content and students who receive that content to then return it to the professors in the format of assessment tasks. For Thais, the doubts culminate in insecurity regarding her productions and reinforce requests for explanations about “how to do” the activities in order to respond to the assumed requirements of the professors.

The origin of the feeling of insecurity that accompanies the preparation of academic work can be traced to the first stages of formal schooling. For ^{Zanella (2017}), the schooling process that from its early years invests primarily in the consumerist/reproductivist logic, a logic marked by the accumulation of information and the reproduction of forms and styles, distancing itself from the process of its own production and diffusion, produces effects that persist in higher education. From a Bakhtinian reading, the author states that investing in creative processes that favor an inventive posture is fundamental for the construction of authorship: “The dialogue with different perspectives is necessary, as is the interpenetration that makes it possible to understand their specificities and is configured as a foundation for the important movement of displacement and differentiation” (p. 209).

In Thais’ situation, the pedagogical mediation of the professors would be necessary for the immersion in the different modes of creation and the explanation of the teaching expectations, according to the activities requested, in order to favor the reflected, active and inventive creation of academic work.

In addition to the doubts about the concrete process of how to do the requested activities, what is worrying in Thais’ statement is the meaning that the university experience must be lived in a solitary way, and the student cannot count on the professor. It is important to problematize the ways of constructing this mode of thinking, as we recognize that the academic space is constructed by the relations that mediate the processes of teaching-learning and by the collective construction of knowledge and actions in situations of experience, this movement being decisive for the results obtained by the students in their trajectories.

It is also important to highlight that the concern with expressing oneself in the way that the professor wants establishes itself as tension in the student’s production, defining the parameters for a good or bad text. In this process, in addition to the possibility of awarding good grades as a result of the student’s work, the successful academic production of students becomes a value of exchange for places in research projects, for participation in scientific events, for entry into postgraduate courses, for the expansion of the curriculum and for the publication of articles in partnership with the professors, having their names cited and referenced by their peer-authors.

Even though they crave the recognition of professors and the opportunities that this recognition makes possible, the consequences of this partnership with the professor are not always clear for the students in relation to the authorship and publication of their work. Such an aspect can be analyzed from the statement of Júlia, a student of the 6th phase of Nursing at UFSC, when she commented on a situation in which she felt that the authorship of her work was not respected:

Julia: I wrote an article. The professor corrected it and she asked to add the names of four more people... And four professors! So, me and five professors were the authors of the article. But the professors did nothing.

With this discussion, we do not want to disqualify the practice of co-authorship between professors and students, which provides a possibility for creation and learning for both. Joint publication not only helps students to register their names in publications, but also to insert them in the academic field of discourse, to dialogue with their peers, to reflect on, share and produce knowledge. We are also aware that the voice of the professor, the knowledge taught by him/her and its analysis are appropriated by the students, who, in turn, “remove the quotation marks” ³ when they write their work.

The teaching authorship needs to be recognized in the student’s work, however, the conditions of authorship of each part, according to Julia’s statement, are not clear to the students. We believe that these disagreements, among other reasons, respond to the conditions that are placed on the teaching work that, in the current academic-university structure, in its relations with development agencies and institutions of excellence evaluation, impose a strong demand for the number of publications, supervisions and projects.

This is the reality that results from the logic of commodification of the relations of the professor’s work, as discussed by ^{Mancebo (2010}). In her study, the author addresses the neoliberal reforms implemented since the 1990s in the policies aimed at Brazilian higher education, in which procedures resulted in the “intensification and extension of the work, relating it to market demands and/or logic” (p .80). As a consequence of this logic, ^{Meksenas (2012}) discussed the current production of significant numbers of intellectuals adhering to the status of the profession and engaged in research and publications that serve more the career advancement and less the critical and militant capacity, in a movement that culminates in a distance between theory and practice.

In this scenario, it is not inconceivable that professors also feel pressured or threatened, a condition that interferes in the relationship with students and in the authorization that is given, or denied, to participate in the scientific-academic dialogue. As ^{Tovar (2015}) analyzed in his study on the relationship between students and professors at a Brazilian federal university, the link between teaching work and productivist parameters is the reason why professors are valued for what they do outside the classroom, that is, the number of productions, supervisions and disciplines, thus being invited to “evade the encounter with the student” (p. 82).

Academic productivism and individualistic authorship

The partnership between authors, the exchange of experiences and knowledge necessary for the construction of knowledge and the understanding of the historical process of their production, which, we understand, are indispensable for student education, are important points of reflection on authorship in the academic-university context. However, according to the participants’ statements, these processes seem to give way to the meaning of the authorship as a result of the individual effort that would determine the name that will be printed in the next publication.

Lucas, a student of UFSC, identified how this way of thinking takes place in the field of Physics, his undergraduate course:

I think that science is cruel because it tries to value the individual. They do not try to value the development of the entire study, of everyone who participated: “I want my name to be there” and they don’t think much about the development. (Lucas, Physics, 1st phase, UFSC).

Lucas recognized that the researcher’s work is not solitary, as it involves groups of people who become responsible for the results produced. However, he noted that for many fellow students it would not be enough to participate in the study, with it being necessary to stand out from the rest. Having the name printed in the study is an ambition that goes before being part of the collective construction of the research.

We highlight this desire or the claim of individual authorship detached from the other, from the word of others, as an unrealizable aspiration, since the knowledge is necessarily constructed in a process and is based on the works of others that preceded its producer/author. On this point, ^{Vygotski (2009}) stated: “No invention or scientific discovery can occur before the material and psychological conditions necessary for it to occur have appeared. Creation is a historical, cumulative process where every succeeding manifestation was determined by the preceding one” (p. 42).

Great creations by great authors are supported by small creations by anonymous authors, because “an enormous percentage of what has been created by humanity is a product of the anonymous collective creative work of unknown inventors” (^{Vygotski, 2009}, p. 16). When this collective process of creation is disregarded, the intersubjectivity of all creative work is denied and competitiveness is established, which in turn strengthens the meritocratic logic by gratifying those who publish the most.

Perhaps there is confusion in the statements of the participants between the sense of authorship, such as the positioning of voices that, from a dialogical construction, become concrete in an enunciation, such as the academic text, and public recognition as a social place that responds to the logic of the market, of the publicity, of the insertion in the complex web of communication that produces ephemeral successes. The recognition so desired should not, therefore, be the objective of the participants in the academic context, but rather the consequence of a significant authorial production combined with the conditions that participate in this production.

Fernanda, a Geography student at UFSC, also reported how she observed the action of the same logic and its effects on the academic activities in her area of training. In the statements transcribed below, she signifies the participation of colleagues in scientific events:

What a thing! Sometimes I hear someone saying: “Ah! We will send any abstract (to an event). Send it! Write anything there! Send an abstract there because they approve everything and then we get on with it and do it”.

(...)

For me, it is a pleasure to be in these environments. But on the other hand, I see colleagues going to these places just to get the certificate, you know? They are just worried about the hours, they don’t even say: “I was part of that”, understand? (...) Then you see that you are losing the passion in your profession, in the discussion (...).Then this passion starts to dies, the university seems to be killing it. (...) My professor says: the university makes people sick. People often start to suffer depression at the university. So we have to pay attention to that, do things that give pleasure in life. Living without meaning is terrible! (Fernanda, Geography, 8th phase, UFSC).

In her statements, Fernanda illustrated how, in addition to enabling the registration of authorship in academic publications, participation in events assumes the function of generating certificates with registration of hours of participation in activities, a requirement in the undergraduate courses. However, for this, colleagues stop doing activities that interest them to participate in events for which they are not motivated. The meanings of taking part, of participating in the discussions, of the exchanges proposed in these events are lost, as is the enthusiasm for the training itself, culminating in a process of illness that the student, through the voice of her professor, defined as depression.

Fernanda’s statements again problematize the process of exclusive accountability of the students for their academic successes or failures, as we discussed in the previous item. When she says that “the university seems to be killing it”; “The university makes people sick”, Fernanda recognized that the so-called depression is not a condition that students necessarily bring with them to the university. On the contrary, it can be produced after enrolment, in the struggle that students have to succeed in academic activities, not only in the production of evaluative activities, but also in the attempt to participate in the greatest number of activities possible, which in turn will revert to new publications, opening spaces and greater visibility in their fields of study. Thus, the university inserts its students in the logic of production and conditions their possibilities of authorship.