Abstract
From the perspective of the enative theory of cognition, an ability can be understood as a flexible relationship of an organism with aspects of its environment so that it can act in a successful way. In turn, the concept of cognitive policies allows to understand how skills are promoted and distributed in diverse contexts. We consider that the models of evaluation of academic productivity promote more relevant results than transformation of existing “solutions” into problems. The objective of this article is to understand how the forms of evaluation of graduate programs in Brazil modulate a notion of academic abilities based, mainly, in publications, decreasing the importance of other processes involving the production of knowledge and the experience of the researcher. For such, we conducted an intervention research with students from five graduate programs of public and private universities utilizing semi-structured interviews and photography workshops. The results show how academic functioning assumes the ability to research as an attribute that belongs to the individual. They emphasise the abilities acknowledged only in scientific methods, considering as experts students able to reproduce standard practices.
Keywords:
Cognition; Academic Productivism; Skills; Enaction