Espaço escolar: uma visão dos alunos de arquitetura sobre memórias e afetos

Abstract

This Master’s dissertation in Education (Stricto Sensu) at the Universidade Católica de Santos is part of the Research Line Policies and Practices in Teacher Education. It investigates the school space from the perspective of first-year Architecture and Urbanism students, seeking to understand how experiences, memories, and affections associated with school contribute to the development of a sensitive and critical spatial thinking. The research was based on the understanding that educational space is a territory of experiences, relationships, and meanings, where material and symbolic dimensions intertwine. Grounded in the work of Milton Santos, Paulo Freire, Ailton Krenak, Vilanova Artigas, and Michel Foucault, the study adopted a qualitative approach with a critical-decolonial perspective, integrating semi-structured interviews and focus groups as instruments for listening, data construction, and analysis. The data were organized and interpreted through Thematic Content Analysis, as proposed by Laurence Bardin, and Visual Content Analysis, based on the contributions of Martin W. Bauer, George Gaskell, and John Berger. This approach made it possible to identify thematic categories related to the affective, aesthetic, and pedagogical dimensions of school space. Students’ narratives and graphic productions revealed the school as a place of belonging, memory, and coexistence — a space that transcends materiality and becomes a territory of formation and resistance. The study concludes that understanding the school through the memories and affections of students allows for a re-signification of both design practice and educational practice in Architecture, recognizing space as a mediator of human relations and knowledge construction. Thus, the research reaffirms the potential of Architecture as a field of listening and transformation, capable of embracing the sensitive, the lived, and the poetic in the conception of learning spaces, in deep dialogue with the territory and with the people who inhabit these spaces that produce life, culture, and learning.