A Lei de Cotas na UNIFAL-MG : alcance no ingresso e implicações para a integração social e acadêmica de estudantes das Ciências Exatas

Abstract

This study aimed to enlarge the discussions related to affirmative action in Higher Education in the scope of Mathematics Education. The goal was to understand the scope of Brazil's "Quota Law" in the admission of students to exact science undergraduate courses at the Federal University of Alfenas (UNIFAL-MG) during the period from 2014 to 2019. The proposed study seeks also to understand the social and academic inclusion process of those target UNIFAL 'S students covered by Brazil's Quota Law. The research was performed in two stages. In the first stage, we used microdata provided by UNIFAL university related to information about students from 28 undergraduate classroom courses, who were admitted by SISU/ENEM between 2014 and 2019. The occupancy rate of vacancies was

analyzed based on Brazil's Quota Law; the racial profile of the new entrants, based on racial self- declaration; and simulations on the percentage of students who would not have joined UNIFAL-MG

without the Quota Law.In the second stage, we used the answers obtained by applying the instrument Scale of Academic, Social, and, Survival Experiences in Exact Science courses (EASS-Exatas) in 17 of these courses at UNIFAL-MG. This instrument has 75 objective questions and was applied online, with 534 students, with 390 validated respondents. To analyze the data we collected in this stage, we used descriptive statistics, correlation significance tests, chi-square, and correspondence tests and we also used principal component analysis. The highlight of this first phase of the study was that during the time in those three knowledge areas was noticed the under-occupation of vacancies intended to blacks and browns students from public school. On the other hand, the categories that do not require racial self-declaration presented higher occupation, both in the Quota Law categories and wide competition. Besides, that was observed that some of the vacancies designated to people with disabilities were occupied even though the numbers related to those students are been occupied by a few vacancies, the results show an increasing occupation of vacancies in this category and also indicated that Brazil's Quota Law has been a success, the university scenery is more racial diversified and the numbers of the students' self-declared Blacks are over the White ones in all the knowledge areas. In a scenario without the Quota Law, the simulations shows that quota students self-declared black and brown, in the same socioeconomic conditions as the white quota students, would have entered in a smaller number, even when grouping the data considering different areas of knowledge. The results of the second stage can be discussed in four blocks: preparation, social integration, academic integration, and racial microaggressions. In the first, the results indicated that older students feel less prepared about mathematics than their peers; still, quota and non-quota students present similar results regardless of their preparation to attend mathematics subjects. In the second stage, the results indicated that older students and male students have higher total scores of social integration; in addition, self-declared white students had higher total scores than self-declared black and brown students. In the third, the results indicated that participation in extension activities positively affects the social integration of students. In the last stage, the results show that self-declared black students had high total scores related to experiences with racial microaggressions at the university sphere. These students were even more engaged in extracurricular activities, something that the literature points out as important tool to oppose racism. We believe that the results of this study will contribute to the development of practices and public policies that may support the admission of quota students in higher education courses in Exact Sciences, especially those self-declared black and brown.