ACADEMIC PEREZHIVANIE, UNIVERSITY EDUCATION, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: VYGOTSKY’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO HIGHER EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

This study aims to develop the concept of academic perezhivanie, based on Vygotsky’s concept of perejivânie (perezhivanie), as understood in the works that belong to the final phase of his life (Vygotski, 1934/2018a; Vygotski, 1934/2006a). In understanding perezhivanie as a dynamic unit of consciousness, we find an important conceptual key to understand the psychological university students’ development. We showed that the relation between students and training practices in Higher Education produces academic perezhivanie that mobilize awareness and guide the senses about what it means to be a student and professional in a given area, resulting in transformations that generate new ways of thinking, feelings in university students and positions towards academic life. In this way, the concept of academic perezhivanie constitutes an important tool for the analysis of academic success and failure processes, the quality of training practices and assistance policies and student permanence, as it constitutes a qualitative indicator of university life.

Keywords:
academic perezhivanie; higher education students; cultural-historical psychology

RESUMO

Este estudo tem como objetivo desenvolver o conceito de vivência acadêmica, fundamentado no conceito de perejivânie (vivência) de Vigotski, como compreendido nas obras que pertencem à fase final de sua vida (Vigotski, 1934/2018a; Vygotski, 1934/2006a). No entendimento da vivência como unidade dinâmica da consciência, encontramos uma chave conceitual importante para a compreensão do desenvolvimento psicológico dos universitários. Evidenciamos que a relação dos estudantes com as práticas formativas no Ensino Superior produz vivências acadêmicas que mobilizam a consciência e orientam os sentidos sobre o que é ser estudante e profissional de uma determinada área, resultando em transformações que geram nos universitários novas formas de pensamento, sentimentos e posicionamentos diante da vida acadêmica. Desse modo, o conceito de vivência acadêmica constitui-se em uma importante ferramenta para a análise dos processos de sucesso e fracasso acadêmico, da qualidade das práticas formativas e das políticas de assistência e permanência estudantil por constituir-se como um indicador qualitativo da vida universitária.

Palavras-chave:
vivência acadêmica; estudantes universitários; psicologia histórico-cultural

RESUMEN

En este estudio se tiene como objetivo desarrollar el concepto de vivencia académica, fundamentado en el concepto de perejivânie (vivencia) de Vygotsky, como comprendido en las obras que pertenecen a la fase final de su vida (Vygotsky, 1934/2018a; Vygotsky, 1934/2006a). En el entendimiento de la vivencia como unidad dinámica de la consciencia, encontramos una clave conceptual importante hacia la comprensión del desarrollo psicológico de los universitarios. Evidenciamos que la relación de los estudiantes con las prácticas formativas en la enseñanza universitaria produce vivencias académicas que movilizan la consciencia y orientan los sentidos sobre lo que es ser estudiante y profesional de una determinada área, resultando en transformaciones que generan en los universitarios nuevas formas de pensamiento, sentimientos y posicionamientos delante de la vida académica. De ese modo, el concepto de vivencia académica se constituye en una importante herramienta para el análisis de los procesos de éxito y fracaso académico, de la cualidad de las prácticas formación y de las políticas de asistencia y permanencia estudiantil por constituirse cómo un indicador cualitativo de la vida universitaria.

Palabras clave:
vivencia académica; estudiantes universitarios; psicología histórico-cultural

INTRODUCTION

Perejivânie is a term used in everyday Russian language, but endowed with unique meanings by Vygotsky at different times in his work. In this regard, Veresov ¹(2016) clarifies that the meanings attributed by this psychologist to the concept of perezhivanie underwent important transformations in his vast theoretical production. At the beginning of his work, Vygotsky uses perezhivanie as a phenomenon of transforming emotional impact, for example, in the book “Psicologia da Arte” (Vygotsky, 1925/1999) which deals with artistic perezhivanie, produced from the aesthetic reaction that, according to Toassa and Souza (2010), it has an irrational character, marked by feelings and sensations that demand understanding after being experienced. At other times, as Veresov (2016) resumes, in his latest works, Vygotsky addresses perezhivanie as a concept, a theoretical tool for analyzing the influence of social reality on the course of human development, as in the texts “The problem of the environment” (Vygotsky, 1934/2018a) and “The crisis of seven years” (Vygotski, 1934/2006a). In these writings, perezhivanie ceases to be a special psychological state, reduced to situations of great emotional impact, and begins to contemplate various states of consciousness and affective intensity in the person’s relation with social reality (Toassa & Souza, 2010). González Rey (2016) explains that Vygotsky was developing the concept of perezhivanie with greater theoretical precision and interrelationship with other concepts in his work when he passed away, leaving the possibility of expanding the conceptual definition open to other scholars. Despite not being fully developed by Vygotsky, perezhivanie, defined by him as the “dynamic unity of consciousness” (Vygotsky, 1934/2006a), occupies an important place in his theory. Roth and Jornet (2016) clarify that this author, at the end of his life, was moving towards a new psychological theory of consciousness, which should overcome Cartesian dualism and the intellectual bias present in his early works by emphasizing the unity between the intellect and affection, body and mind. Without a doubt, the development of the concept of perezhivanie, based on the monist conception that he had been constructing, would contribute to this objective.

“Vivência” is the translation into Portuguese of the Russian word perejivânie which more verisimilitude conveys the meaning that Vygotsky attributed to this concept. It is related to the verb “vivenciar”, which is characterized as experiencing a given situation and allowing yourself to be deeply affected by it (Prestes & Tunes, 2012). It designates both the process and the result of the acts of experiencing and denotes an unfinished action in its flow of happening (Toassa & Souza, 2010). This article, of a theoretical-conceptual nature, aims to develop the concept of “vivência acadêmica” (academic perezhivanie) based on Vygotsky’s concept of “vivência” (perezhivanie), with an emphasis on the works where he approaches perezhivanie as a conceptual category that makes it possible to understand psychological development from the person’s relation with their social environment (Vygotski, 1934/2018a; Vygotski, 1934/2006a).

Within the scope of this work, we will seek to understand the development of university students based on their relation with the teaching and learning practices present in their academic/professional training. We will approach the dialectical and dramatic conception of human development, central in the historical-cultural perspective, for a more incisive understanding of the concept of perezhivanie (Vygotski, 1931/1995; Vigotski, 2000). According to Vygotsky, “the age between eighteen and twenty-five constitutes the initial link in the chain of mature ages rather than the final link in the chain of periods of childhood development” (Vygotski, 1934/2006c, p. 261). As it is in late adolescence and early youth that most students enter Higher Education in Brazil, we will deepen the psychological achievements of this phase. Then, based on these Vygotskian assumptions, we will dialogue with contemporary authors who carry out studies with university students.

THE DRAMATIC CONSTITUTION OF PERSONALITY

How did we become who we are? In the book “Problemas del desarrollo de la psique”, Vygotski (1927/1995), from the historical-dialectical materialism, deepens the theses that support his conception of human development as a process marked by qualitative leaps. According to this author, the human being is the result of a biological process of evolution, which led to the appearance of the species homo sapiens, and the cultural development process, corresponding to the entire historical path carried out by humanity, from the primitive human being to the contemporary, updated in the individuality of each person inserted in society. Vygotski (1927/1995) addresses the genesis of human development from the point of view of elementary psychological functions, determined by internal stimuli, of a biological nature, which, when in contact with cultural productions historically elaborated by humanity, become what this psychologist calls “higher psychological functions”, consciously controlled actions that make up the human personality. Vygotsky (1934/2018b) clarifies that the higher psychological functions are dynamic and interdependent formations that are complexly reorganized and hierarchically structured, in the different stages of human life, as the person develops, totally altering the activity of consciousness, forming a qualitatively new and superior psychological system in relation to the previous ones, producing new forms of social behavior. From this apprehension, for Vygotsky (1927/1995) human development is not a natural process, exclusively biological, independent and self-sufficient, governed by internal forces, but directed by historical and cultural laws, always in the process of happening, conditioned to social reality. In this sense, it is through socially mediated processes that people are able to establish relations between objective reality and their thinking and act in their social environment.

In this sense, the peculiarity of human behavior is mainly due to the fact that people do not passively suffer the influences of the social environment, but actively intervene in their relations with this environment, subjecting it to its power. Through his conscious action in culture, human beings can understand, create and recreate their social and subjective reality. In the “Manuscript of 1929”, Vygotsky (2000, p. 25) asserts that speech is the central function of social relations, considering it as the founding instrument of personality structuring that regulated “by the word, verbalized conduct = power - subordination” becomes the means by which there is internal mastery of cultural forms of behavior. In other words, personality is characterized as a set of social relations transferred to consciousness and transformed into psychological functions through speech. Vygotsky (2000, p. 26) attests that “the relationship between higher psychological functions was once a real relationship between people”, because “all forms of verbal communication (...) later become psychological functions”.

When discussing the personality constituted in social relations, Vygotsky (2000, p. 27) states that psychological functions “can be more fully developed in the form of drama”. With this, he reiterates that the activity and the reorganization of psychological functions occur from a “clash” between the person and the demands of the social environment, which cause internal conflicts, due to the different social roles that the person objectively plays in different contexts. Thus, Vygotsky (2000, p. 35) states that “the dynamics of the personality is the drama” and that “the drama is really full of internal struggle”, of contradictory social positions converted into dynamic functions of the personality. With this thesis, Vigotski (2000) demonstrates that development always occurs in a revolutionary way, in the form of dramatic events that produce radical transformations in consciousness. About drama, Vygotsky (2000) refers to Politzer (1928/1998, p. 187) who, in a critique of psychology at the time, states that the object of this science should not be behavior itself or mental processes, but the meaning that emerges from the relation with the concrete events of a person’s life, since “the originality of the psychological fact is given by the very existence of a properly human plane and the dramatic life of the individual that unfolds in it”. In this development, Politzer (1928/1998, p. 187) attests that “drama implies man taken in his totality and considered as the center of a certain number of events, which, due to their relation to a first person, have meaning.”

The question of meaning is approached by Vygotsky (1934/2001) in the book “Thought and language”, where he deepens the relation between thought and speech by explaining that both are connected by a primary bond that originates, changes and grows in the course of psychological development. At the beginning of human life, they follow parallel directions; subsequently, they begin to relate dialectically. From this unit, “verbal thought” is formed, that is, external speech becomes internalized. From that moment on, the thought does not only begin to express itself in words, but exists and materializes through them, because although internal speech is organized on an entirely different plane from that of external speech, it maintains with it an indissoluble dynamic unity of transitions from one plane to another. As speech becomes more complex, thinking also becomes more developed. In verbal thinking, Vygotsky (1934/2001, p. 465) clarifies that there is a predominance of the meaning of words over their meaning and, according to the author, “the meaning of a word is the sum of all the psychological facts that it awakens in our conscience”. The word therefore has “zones of varied stability”, in this case meaning “just one of those zones of meaning that the word acquires in the context of some discourse”, because in different contexts the word easily changes its meaning, “the meaning, when contrary (...) remains stable in all changes in the meaning of the word in different contexts” (Vygotski, 1934/2001, p. 465), however, from a specific context, the meaning enriches and expands the meaning of the word that “it incorporates, absorbs from the entire context with which it is intertwined with intellectual and affective contents” (Vygotsky, 1934/2001, p. 466).

In this way, meanings are forged and expressed in communication among people, from the context in which relationships and social practices are woven and intertwined. Both knowledge of social reality and self-knowledge are achieved with the help of other people, via the production of meanings. The senses are linked, therefore, to the richness of social and historical experiences. The quality of social relations becomes a condition for development to reach higher levels, with regard to the ability to understand and think about reality. As Vigotski (1934/2018a) attests, the process of constitution of the human being occurs through perezhivaniya in the social environment, determined not directly by the objective conditions of situations, but by the meanings that these situations have for people, which result from the way in which they are affected by events in their life. But how, exactly, does perezhivanie constitute personality?

THE PEREZHIVANIE FROM VYGOTSKY’S PERSPECTIVE

In the text “The problem of the environment in pedology”, Vygotsky (1934/2018a) analyzes the influence of the social environment about the personality constitution from the child’s psychological development. Based on his dialectical perspective, he states that this environment should not be understood as a factor that directly or in parallel defines development, but that it is essential to approach it “from the point of view of the relation between it and the child at a given stage of development” (Vygotsky, 1934/2018a, p.74). In this direction, Vigotski (1934/2018a) defines the perezhivanie as the concept that enables the understanding of the relation between the child and the social environment. He characterizes the perezhivanie as a kind of “psychological prism” in which the child refracts external social influences and this action determines the role of the environment in his development, depending on how he internally elaborates his relation with a specific social situation and how she/he interacts affectively with this event. Vigotski (1934/2018a) points out that the social situation and the specificities of the child form a unit in the perezhivanie, which constitutes the dialectical synthesis between the person and the social environment, between the internal and the external, by bringing together the personal and environmental characteristics in the psychological development. In the words of Vygotsky (1934/2018a, p. 78), the perezhivanie represents “in an indivisible way, on the one hand, the environment, what is perezhivanie - the perezhivanie is always related to something that is outside the person, and, on the other hand, how I perezhivanie it”. In this way, the perezhivanie contemplates the peculiarities of the environment that played a role in defining the child’s relation with a given situation, at the same time, in which it encompasses which the child’s particularities played a decisive role in the production of meanings of a given event. For this reason, each person perezhivanie the same event in their own way, as each person’s relation with that event is different.

In the text “El problema de la edad”, Vygotski (1934/2006c) clarifies that, during a more or less long period, there are no psychological changes capable of modifying the child’s relation with the social environment and totally restructuring his personality. On the other hand, in certain circumstances of life, from the perezhivanie of specific situations, the social environment begins to influence the child in a new way, generating new impulses, motives and interests, which are driving forces of behavior, which begin to change radically alter the child’s relation with the external reality, which needs to adjust to the new demands of the environment, transforming its personality, these circumstances are the “social development situations”. Therefore, it is not any social situation that determines the influence on development, but only that refracted through the child’s experience. Perezhivanie is what transforms the social situation into the social situation of development.

In “La crisis de los siete anos”, Vygotski (1934/2006a) explains that the changes that occur around this age produce unique perezhivanie and important psychological achievements for later human development. Until that moment, the child is not able to understand his perezhivanie, because he still does not completely differentiate the external world from the internal one. However, from this stage onwards, they begin to develop awareness of their own perezhivanie, which become “attributed with meaning” and promote the internal restructuring of their needs and inner perezhivanie. This occurs because they begin to perceive not only the external reality in a different way, but mainly their inner life, allowing the generalization of perezhivanie and the emergence of the feelings logic, a process that expands and becomes more complex in the later stages of development.

In this reflection, Vigotski (1934/2018a) summarizes that the perezhivanie passes uninterruptedly through the level of understanding, awareness and attribution of meaning to a given event. Supported by Vygotsky, we can affirm that the senses are produced in the dialectic relation between thought and speech and directed by the affections that guide behavior and (trans)form consciousness through perezhivanie. Perezhivanie is not simply the intellectual interpretation of an event, nor a purely emotional experience but a unit formed by the dialectical relation between intellect and affection. According to Vygotsky (1934/2006a, p. 383), “the true dynamic unit of consciousness, the full unit that constitutes the basis of consciousness is perezhivanie”. If consciousness is a complex system, formed by different psychological functions, perezhivanie, as its “dynamic unit”, is the force that mobilizes it, organizing new configurations among the functions, based on the production of meanings, in a continuous process of intellectual and affective development.

ADOLESCENCE AS A TRANSITION TO YOUTH AND ADULTHOOD

As human beings advance in their development, their ability to understand social reality and themselves expands. Upon reaching adolescence, the transition phase to adult life, new psychological achievements produce perezhivanie never before observed in previous stages, which provide a basis for the development of young people and adults. Vygotski (1934/2006b), in his study on “Paidologia del Adolescente”, characterizes adolescence as a period in which new attractions and internal needs guide and infinitely expand the adolescent’s relation with the social environment. The highest biological and cultural needs manifest themselves clearly, produce internal conflicts and create new objective and subjective demands, causing radical changes in the personality. The complex psychic syntheses that occur during this stage promote advances in the development of practical and rational activity, enabling the choice of a profession. In the youth phase, which is when the young person occupies or is preparing to occupy another position in social production, there is mastery of professional work or the concrete representation of practical thought.

According to Vygotsky (1935/2018b), at each stage of life there is always a new central formation as a kind of guide for the process of psychological development that characterizes the reorganization of the entire personality on a new basis, producing new forms of activity and thought. The other remaining formations, related to the isolated facets of the personality, are located and grouped around this new core formation. Vygotski (1934/2006b) states that in adolescence the formation of concepts is at the center of the development of thought and represents the true revolutionary changes that take place in the content and ways of the adolescent’s thinking. The concept at this stage is not just an enriched group of internally related associations, as in previous stages, but is a new mode of intellectual activity. The main characteristic of conceptual thinking is that it reveals the deep links underlying reality, and the laws that govern it, allowing the perception of this reality with the help of logical thinking. Adolescents acquire greater control over their psychological functioning when moving from the level of experience of an event to the level of understanding the laws that regulate it (Vygotski, 1934/2006b).

In this direction, Vygotski (1934/2006b) points out that conceptual thinking results from a conscious elaboration, based on a set of judgments, perception, interpretation, understanding, of an aspect of reality, that is, it always involves an evaluative positioning of the subject. Vygotski (1934/2006b) argues that conceptual thinking allows the development of objective social awareness by enabling the understanding of the deep links that are hidden behind the external appearance of phenomena and the complex relation within each area of reality and among its various spheres. With this, it is possible to observe the different realities and understand society more broadly by systematizing, knowing and interpreting the social experience of humanity formed historically. In addition, scientific and artistic knowledge, as well as knowledge of the various spheres of social life, can be appropriated in a deeper and more complete way, as young people begin to actively participate in the different spheres of their culture.

The knowledge of external social reality, based on conceptual thinking, also leads adolescents to turn their attention more and more to their inner life, allowing them to know and understand their inner reality, the world of their own perezhivanie. Vygotsky (1934/2006b) states that imagination plays an important role in this process. By being intimately related to conceptual thinking, imagination ceases to be a passive and imitative activity, typical of childhood, to become active, voluntary and creative, allowing people to symbolically elaborate a concrete situation of social reality, both at the level subjective as objective. This conquest of symbolic thinking helps in the process of solving problems of external reality, opening space for people’s inventions and creations in different human life fields.

Considering the cognitive and affective potential that young people have when they enter Higher Education, academic training can enhance the development of students’ conceptual and symbolic thinking, producing in them more complex and conscious forms of thought and action in their social and educational context, for example through their academic perezhivanie.

THE ACADEMIC PEREZHIVANIE AND THE UNIVERSITY AS A “SOURCE OF DEVELOPMENT”

For Vigotski (1934/2018a, p. 89), the social environment presents itself as a human “source of development”, as it contemplates the ideal forms of cultural productions elaborated by humanity throughout history, which are appropriated by people during the personality construction process. This appropriation always implies new ways of understanding social reality. The mastery of cultural productions in their most elaborate ways, such as the modes of reasoning from the most different professional areas, with their specific knowledge, concepts and explanatory principles, characterize the modes of representation and explanation of social reality in Higher Education. The university is thus characterized as a “source of development” for university students, by offering conditions for them to appropriate the knowledge and activities that are part of their professional choice, expanding their learning potential and their already established achievements, through pedagogical practices concretely mediated by teachers and other more experienced colleagues.

The students’ relation with university practices, especially those related to learning professional theories and methodologies, produce academics perezhivaniya that provoke intellectual and affective psychic changes, which guide the meanings production about what it is to be a student and professional in a given area and generate new ways of acting, feeling and thinking on the part of university students. These perezhivanie, in turn, modify the students’ relation with scientific knowledge, with themselves, with their peers, professors and other participants in the university context. In this sense, they are transformations produced by the social situations of development that involve this context and the moment in life in which the students find themselves. In this direction, the academic perezhivanie becomes a concept that makes it possible to understand the influence of institutional practices on the student’s development, by allowing to analyze which of them, and to what extent they produce perezhivaniya, in the subjective and professional formation of university students. This assumption indicates that the academic perezhivanie must be analyzed in relation to the quality of training practices and student assistance and reception policies, which may or may not contribute to successful learning and to the permanence and engagement of university students in Higher Education. The way in which each student is going to face their dramas in the academic routine depends largely on the support network and guidance they will receive at the university, either through the pedagogical and welcoming practices of each course, or through the existing programs in different college instances.

Studies in the field of psychology indicate that the transition process from Basic Education to Higher Education, especially the first year of graduation, is the most critical and decisive period in the continuity or withdrawal of the university course (Coulon, 2017; Pan & Jacques, 2018; Postareff, Mattsson, Lindblom-Ylänne, & Hailikari, 2017; Soares et. al., 2018). The difficulties encountered by the students are related to the need to carry out new tasks that involve responsibilities regarding financial issues, social, affective and family relationships, and new demands for learning and organizing time. Students’ expectations at this stage influence their satisfaction and attachment to the course and the quality of their academic participation, their commitment and involvement with curricular activities (Soares et. al., 2018). The students’ “shock” with academic writing, hitherto unknown to most, is evident in different studies and, in many situations, triggers doubts, produces negative feelings, and leads to suffering throughout training (Pan & Jacques, 2018; Pan & Litenski, 2018). The transition process generates a great emotional impact on students’ lives, causing intense conflicts and a variety of negative and positive feelings, difficult to manage, which may or may not contribute to their adaptation to this new context (Postareff et. al., 2017).

In this regard, Coulon (2017), a French researcher considered a reference in studies on academic success, explains that in the transition to Higher Education, the student needs to overcome the culture of High School to a new culture, more complex and symbolic, therefore more difficult to appropriate. If he does not “affiliate” to this “intellectual world”, he may perezhivanie a situation of failure and suffering, from the simultaneous ruptures that occur in the conditions of existence, in the affective life and in the rules of knowledge appropriation, in this stage of life. Despite the fact that the transition is a critical and decisive period for whether or not the student remains at the university, we cannot say, based on the academic perezhivanie concept, which, once affiliated, the student does not face new conflicts in their training process, since the perezhivaniya, in the university routine provoke constant demands and require them to overcome their dramas throughout their student trajectory, also impacting, after graduation, completion of the course, in their professional performance.

When we consider that the students’ perezhivanie implies the way they are affected by the practices present in the educational environment, the bond between professors and students becomes fundamental in the production of academic perezhivaniya, As Garcia and Pan (2019) clarify, the fact that professors and students are at different levels of understanding, of the social and professional reality, allows the new knowledge to be appropriated by the students to be related to the already known, expanding the knowledge of their professional sphere. To the extent that the student actively integrates new knowledge with previously learned knowledge, learning becomes a creative activity and enables the development of critical thinking about social and work reality. By becoming aware of the complexity that involves the processes of learning and university education, professors can direct their practices so that knowledge is worked on in its social function, related to the possibility of building a transforming knowledge of social reality, aimed at good public and for the student’s critical and citizenship training.

Based on Vygotsky, the authors Camargo and Bulgacov (2016) point out that all activity is produced, sustained or modified by emotions. In the study activity, the pedagogical practices affectively mark the student’s relation with knowledge. Affection produces meanings in the interaction with the intellectual functions, directing the motivations necessary for the knowledge appropriation, and may have positive or negative effects on the learning process, depending on the quality of mediations in the educational context. Marques and Carvalho (2019) point out that pedagogical practices, by interfering with students’ affections, produce perezhivanie that express not only the way they understand things, but also how they feel, resulting from the affection and intellect relation, as the senses mediate affective relation with the world. Teachers’ mediations therefore imply not only the cognitive-intellectual development of students, but simultaneously cause subjective repercussions, basically affective and motivational in nature. As Roth and Jornet (2016, p. 315) analyzes, by integrating emotions, perceptions and thoughts, the perezhivanie represents what Vygotsky calls the “full vitality of life”, which is formed by the unity between intellect and affection. This means that academic perezhivaniya, affect students at an intellectual, social and emotional level, bringing subjective implications in each of these areas, which need to be contemplated, in an articulated way, in institutional practices of university education, reception and student assistance.

Vygotsky (1934/2018a) reminds us that the perezhivanie constitutes the dialectical synthesis between the person and the social environment, that is, no isolated institutional factor or a specific characteristic of the student directly defines their development, but only those institutional practices refracted through of the academic experience of university students, produced in relation to these practices. Thus, it seems appropriate to conduct the analysis of the university role in the development of university students from the point of view of academic perezhivanie, because it considers the particularities of training practices and of the students themselves, allowing a broad understanding of the influence of these practices on the student’s personality. In the university context, we can say that the student experiences the daily life of the university in different ways, based on the meanings produced by the academic perezhivanie. These senses influence their positioning in relation to learning and development situations. Human development for Vygotsky (1927/1995) is revolutionary, the result of the human capacity to change social reality, even though it is shaped by it. In this way, university students can passively become involved in social learning situations, but they can also transform these events into the individual process of their development, becoming an active subject, capable of acting concretely in their educational environment, based on reflection and the production of new meanings about themselves and others, about the social, political, educational and professional reality that they experience in a constant and unfinished movement that characterizes the perezhivanie and human development itself.

This Vygotsky’s development conception shows that even in youth, or in adulthood, students, during their academic training, continue their development process and need mediation to advance in more complex forms of thought, because the more learning of a semiotic nature and symbolic they receive, the more they will be able to expand their knowledge. For this, the university must promote social situations of psychological development of university students that transcend the training of professional skills and competences, a recurrent objective in contemporary educational policies, since, according to Garcia and Pan (2019), university education is not restricted to rational and technical dimension of knowledge, but reaches an ethical dimension, of greater breadth, which encompasses the production of new ways of existence, thinking, acting and feeling of students. Based on the concept of academic perezhivanie, the university student can be understood as a being in constant formation and who at each stage of academic and professional life must take a critical position in the face of the new tasks imposed on him by the university context. In this sense, the perezhivanie, and their positive and negative effects, are not an individual production of the student, but produced in their relation with university practices. If understood in this way, the concept of academic perezhivanie enables a new theoretical understanding of the development of university students in view of the quality of training practices, and can also serve as an indicator of the transformations that university students undergo in their academic trajectory, constituting themselves as important tool for analyzing academic success and failure processes and student assistance and permanence policies.²

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• 1
  Like Veresov and other Vygotsky scholars, the authors will use the term “perezhivanie” to transliterate the word perejivânie from Russian to English.
• 2
  The authors make reference to the “Programa Nacional de Assistência Estudantil” (PNAES), which emerges as a federal policy that aims to create conditions for student permanence, through institutional programs, combating evasion or dropout in Federal Higher Education Institutions (IFES).

• 4
  This paper was translated from Portuguese by Ana Maria Pereira Dionísio.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 Oct 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  06 Feb 2021
• Accepted
  23 Dec 2022