Building the educational self of transgender people throughout their academic trajectories (Master’s thesis). Graduate Program in Psychology, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador.
Gender identity; transgender people; educational self; Cultural Psychology; Educational Psychology.
At some point in the development, individuals develop self-awareness, giving rise to the experience of self.
Semiotic-Cultural Psychology understands that the self is built from the relationship with significant others,
which produce discourses about an individual, who in turn negotiates and internalizes some of them,
thus building their definitions of themselves throughout life.
Discourses produced by educational actors play an important role in the development of students' selves,
and the specific part of the self that emerges from educational experiences is called the educational self.
The school experiences of transgender people are permeated by different types of violence.
Therefore, this study questions how trans people build their educational selves.
The objective is to understand the development of the educational self of trans people throughout their academic
trajectories. For this, a qualitative study of multiple cases was carried out, involving three trans students from
higher education courses. Data were collected from a semi-structured interview and the technique
of dilemmatic scenarios, anylyzed on the basis of content analysis and interpreted using Semiotic-Cultural Psychology.
In the three cases analyzed there was an experience of abjection discourses in basic education that influenced
the emergence of three positions in the educational selves of the participants:
I-Foreigner, I-Invisible and I-Insecure.
Resistance positions, such as the Tough-Me and the Flawless-Me, also emerged.
In the university experience there is greater dialogic tension, with both inclusive and excluding discourses
and practices, leading to a coexistence between positions of abjection and positions of resistance in the systems
of the participants' educational selves. Future studies can observe gender relations in schools, as well as address
the dynamics of the educational selves of trans people who do not access the university.