Undergraduate students’ academic socialization at a public research university: variations of student experience in relation to cultural capital

ABSTRACT

This article explores which factors contribute to academic socialization among a group of possible components of this process. The topic is set in the context of expansion and diversification of student audiences in Brazilian public universities beyond social groups with high cultural capital. To analyze the academic socialization of university students, a scale was elaborated, composed of sections covering: academic activities prioritized in the student experience; valuation of learning; and difficulties expressed by students. Context variables were also analyzed. This is an exploratory study, with a quantitative approach that employs descriptive analyses, analyzing mean comparisons and correlations. The analyzed data were obtained from 1,185 responses to a survey applied in 2021 among undergraduate students at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. The results indicate a more intense academic socialization among students who participated in extracurricular academic programs. Converging with recent sociological literature, there are cases of high academic socialization related to traditional indicators of cultural capital. However, other training experiences available to students of unprivileged social origins, such as extracurricular programs of research, extension, and teaching apprenticeship, were shown to also lead to higher intensity of academic socialization. Data interpretation suggests that institutional investment in such programs and in the dialogue with the various forms of cultural capital developed by the students may produce better fruition of the university experience.

Keywords:
Academic Socialization; Higher Education; Students; Cultural Capital

RESUMO

Este artigo explora quais fatores contribuem para a socialização acadêmica entre um grupo de possíveis componentes desse processo. A questão se coloca no contexto de ampliação e diversificação do público estudantil nas universidades públicas brasileiras para além de grupos sociais detentores de elevado capital cultural. Para analisar a socialização acadêmica de estudantes universitários, elaborou-se uma escala abrangendo itens relativos a: atividades acadêmicas priorizadas na experiência estudantil; valoração de aprendizados; e dificuldades expressas pelos estudantes. Também foram analisadas variáveis de contexto. Trata-se de um estudo exploratório, de abordagem quantitativa com análises descritivas, examinando comparações de média e correlações. Os dados analisados foram obtidos de 1.185 respostas a um survey aplicado no ano de 2021 entre estudantes de graduação da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Os resultados indicam socialização acadêmica mais intensa entre estudantes que participaram de programas acadêmicos extracurriculares. Convergindo com a literatura sociológica recente, há casos de alta socialização acadêmica relacionados a indicadores tradicionais de composição do capital cultural. Porém, verificou-se que outras experiências formativas disponíveis a estudantes de origens sociais menos favorecidas também repercutem em maior intensidade na socialização acadêmica, como é o caso de programas extracurriculares de iniciação à pesquisa, à extensão e à docência. A interpretação dos dados sugere que o investimento institucional em tais programas e no diálogo com formas variadas de capital cultural desenvolvidas pelos estudantes pode produzir um maior aproveitamento da experiência universitária.

Palavras-chave:
Socialização acadêmica; Educação superior; Estudantes; Capital cultural

Introduction

With the expansion of vacancies and the implementation of affirmative actions in federal public universities, the academic communities of these institutions have become noticeably more diverse (RISTOFF, 2014). Upon analyzing questionnaires of the National Student Performance Exam (in 2011, 2014, and 2017 editions), Bertolin, Fioreze and Barão (2022) attest advances in the diversification of the student public in socioeconomic and cultural terms. They found a greater presence of “students of excluded races, low-income families and public high school graduates” (BERTOLIN; FIOREZE; BARON, 2022, p. 10).

This phenomenon is noticeable even in traditional universities, which until the 2010s were characterized by catering to a predominantly elitized audience. University practices were designed assuming students could dedicate themselves exclusively to studies, with the support of families who had the resources to invest in the higher education of their youth. Considering the changes in student audiences and the persistence of the previous period didactic patterns¹, it is necessary to look at the difficulties and opportunities triggered in students’ trajectories.

In this article, we use the concept of academic socialization to characterize the phenomenon by which individuals are constructed and construct themselves through relationships with the academic space, establishing lasting bonds that provide learning related to normative, cognitive, and affective dimensions. In an analysis guided by the Bourdieusian perspective, we focus aspects of cultural capital and habitus, such as ways of doing, feeling, and judging that merge the past and the present and present themselves in the lasting experiences of coexistence (VALLE, 2007; BOURDIEU, 2014b; DRAELANTS; BALLATORE, 2021; NOGUEIRA, 2021). Through a quantitative approach, we seek to verify cultural capital as a starting point for academic socialization in the setting of a public university.

In the next sections, we discuss the concepts of academic socialization and cultural capital. We report, below, the methodological process of developing our own database, through the deployment of an online survey in 2021, as well as the statistical analysis techniques used. We analyze, then, the results obtained in the exploration of the observed categories in order to identify evidence that can characterize dynamics of academic life, relating it to theory. Upon considering such relations, we present the final remarks.

Relations between academic socialization and cultural capital

Research on academic socialization propagates from the work of Weidman (1989), which originated in the United States higher education reality. The author understands socialization as a phenomenon comprising processes by which people acquire the knowledge, skills and dispositions that make them members of a given community (WEIDMAN, 2006). Academic socialization, specifically, involves processes of interpersonal interaction, learning and social integration that connect students to normative environments. The author emphasizes, therefore, processes related to the ethos that mobilizes individuals’ and groups’ actions as the main components of academic socialization.

Weidman’s approach (1989; 2006) also includes extra-academic relationships, such as friendship groups that provide support in face of difficulties, extracurricular educational activities, cultural activities, and political engagement. Weidman’s original model (1989) is organized around interpersonal, intrapersonal and integration domains, exposing the transformational character of the higher education experience. Its structure addresses the different normative pressures encountered by students in pursuit of their personal objectives and observes how these students maintain or modify the values, aspirations, and objectives they held when they entered their programs. This analytical structure was constructed to inform the development of academic programs and practices aimed at strengthening student identity. Reinforcing academic socialization would be a means of favoring the successful integration of graduates into the labor market as members of a professional community.

Reviewing research conducted from this model over the two and a half decades after its original publication, Weidman, DeAngelo, and Bethea (2014) concluded that the aspect that most lacked development was the relationship between demands from the academic environment and dispositions cultivated in the family and in other spaces of informal socialization. They pointed out that, to improve higher education, it would be necessary to explore points of contact between parenting factors and instructional activities, since anticipatory elements of socialization influence cognitive and affective higher education results, especially those linked to students’ identity development. Weidman (2015) associates higher education anticipatory elements with cultural capital, and its results to a habitus aligned with the institutional functioning.

In this aspect, it is important to emphasize the character of habitus as a mediating concept, which allows exploring the apprehension of the social by the individual by identifying subjective mechanisms of apprehending objective reality (WACQUANT, 2017). According to Bourdieu, the notion of habitus

is important to remember that agents have a history, that they are the product of an individual history, of an education associated with a given environment, besides being the product of a collective history, and that in particular the categories of thought, the categories of judgment, the schemes of perception, the systems of values, etc. are the product of the incorporation of social structures (BOURDIEU; CHARTIER, 2017, p. 58).

Loïc Wacquant furthermore clarifies that habitus is social, transferable, not static or eternal, has embedded inertia, generating “practices shaped after the social structures that generated it and to the extent that one of its layers operates as a prism from which the latest experiences are filtered, and the subsequent strata of dispositions are laid upon each other” (WACQUANT, 2017, p. 214). It is through this mediation that the past reproduces in the present:

The schemes of habitus, principles of vision and division of very general application, as a product of the incorporation of world structures and tendencies to which they adjust at least roughly, also allow to adapt incessantly to partially modified contexts and build the situation as a meaningful ensemble, in a practical operation of almost bodily foresight on the immanent tendencies of the field and the conducts engendered by all the isomorphic habitus with which, like in a well-trained team or in an orchestra, communicate immediately as they are spontaneously granted (BOURDIEU, 2001, p. 170, emphases from the quoted text).

However, according to Bourdieu, this is a process that involves discontinuities and leeway for change, since “habitus - as a virtual system - only reveals itself in reference to a situation. [...] It is like a spring, but it needs a trigger; and, depending on the situation, it can do opposite things” (BOURDIEU; CHARTIER, 2017, p. 62). Thus, the correspondence or divergence between the habitus developed by students in their spaces of social origin and the normative demands that rule the typical situations of the academic field generate different answers according to the incidence of other contextual variables.

In a psychology study on the socialization of young Latinos in higher education in the United States, Mena (2022) found that, based on ethnic-racial identifications, students can successfully resort to affinity groups, affirmation courses and activism actions to deal with situations of subalternity and guilt in face of what they perceive as academic failure. All these possibilities would be mediated by social capital and would have phenotype as an influential variable toward cultural self-identification and evaluation of the social structure.

Researching first-generation students at a Swedish university, Ivermark and Ambrose (2021) identified different profiles regarding adaptation to the university environment and peer interaction, considering the conditions of academic socialization based on the habitus related to their social origin. They concluded that the challenges of adapting to the university ethos are more easily faced by students with cultural capital acquired in previous socialization processes that generated a pre-adapted habitus regarding university experience. On the other hand, they found students capable of dealing with institutional demands by operating a cleaved habitus, according to Bourdieu’s terms (2012a), composed of resources obtained throughout life in diverse social environments that provide immersion in cultural experiences. Thus, they verified ambiguous class positions, in which the mismatch between the parents’ schooling and the children’s educational outcomes points to a greater influence of other aspects of social trajectories on academic experience.

If academic socialization mainly interacts with the curriculum, institutional agents and the corresponding legislation, higher education experience is interrogated by the meanings present in non-academic spaces, or non-compulsory academic spaces, attended by individuals. The juxtaposition of socialization processes with often conflicting normative demands - whether among individuals or within the institution - tensions the habitus’ tendency toward stasis. Weidman (2020) asserts the need for attention to the human agency over institutional contexts, considering the academic socialization process is not a one-way street: the results of normative pressures change as plurality is put into play, updating the ethos, for instance, by influencing research agendas and institutional policies.

Although studies on academic socialization have originated in the United States’ sociology of education at a time when this research topic still had scarce relation to Pierre Bourdieu’s work, Weidman later associated elements of his model with concepts developed by the French sociologist. Among them is the configuration of habitus based on dispositions formed in the individual’s previous life trajectory, especially the ones mediated by cultural capital. Research in the Brazilian context also remarks on the impact of phenomena that consolidate this type of capital for formal education.

There is a broad literature that unfolds the Bourdieusian take on cultural capital in the Brazilian context, relating cultural inheritance, student trajectories, and relationships with institutions (SETTON, 2005; ZAGO, 2006; BONAMINO; ALVES; FRANCO, 2010; BRANDÃO; CARVALHO, 2011; VALLE, 2013; NOGUEIRA; NOGUEIRA, 2015; PIOTTO; NOGUEIRA, 2021). These works allow to understand elements of formal education in a national context far from the one which inspired Bourdieu’s theoretical production, either in terms of geopolitical differences or due to the historical distancing between the material circumstances in which the Bourdieusian categories were initially formulated and contemporaneity.

In our research, we sought to verify aspects of cultural capital constituted since the individuals’ past (BOURDIEU, 2014; WACQUANT, 2018), but mainly looking at the present and the relationship dynamics of relationships in which students are involved in the university. According to Bourdieu (2012c, p. 74, emphases from the quoted text):

Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state, that is, in the form of the body’s durable dispositions; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods - pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, which constitute evidence or the realization of theories or criticism on these theories, of problems, etc.; and, finally, in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification that needs to be set aside because, as observed in regard to the school certificate, it endows the cultural capital - which it supposedly guarantees - with entirely original properties.

Thus, in this research, we prioritized approaching the relational aspects of cultural capital, instead of privileging its character as an accumulated attribute. This means that we sought to interpret its evidence as elements that converge to form a habitus more or less pre-adapted to academic routines. We understand that it is necessary to address its multiple forms, from the institutionalized forms present in the family to the use of objectified cultural capital at university facilities, all these factors influence the inculcation, reinforcement, or suspension of durable dispositions throughout the process of academic socialization. This means to relativize class reproduction as a determinant attribute in its composition when considering the multiplicity of relations to which people are exposed, including still other forms of capital that come to weigh on individuals’ personal development (DRAELANTS; BALLATORE, 2021).

Contemporary sociological literature also questions the conservation of educational profitability of the cultural capital accumulated in the family, considering cultural changes that affect relationships and codes triggered in spaces of study and work:

[...] everything would lead to believe that educational elites are less and less composed of “heirs” [...] and more by individuals who hold informational and strategic resources related to the school world that allow them to navigate particularly well the maze of contemporary education systems (NOGUEIRA, 2021, p. 9).

Here, the heterogeneity of the possibilities of acquiring cultural capital is informed by the dissimilarities among the forms of family socialization and the diversified offer of complementary studies, language courses and trips, among others, such as programs to support international academic mobility. The means for the composition of institutionalized cultural capital and incorporated in student life become further diversified. At the same time, dynamics of digitization of cultural life and educational processes, in particular, factors of distinction related to information access that previously depended on the possession of objectified cultural capital.

We paid attention to evidence of cultural capital that can be found among Brazilian undergraduate students, seeking to assess the incidence of classical variables such as mother’s schooling, study and reading frequency, study habits, as well as travel and foreign language study, in academic socialization. We identified the academic activities prioritized in student experience, such as participation in curricular and extracurricular activities through institutional programs. At the same time, we enquired about the valuation of learning in different settings, and classification of difficulties faced by students.

The choice for these markers was directed by a “broadened” definition of cultural capital (NOGUEIRA, 2021), including elements beyond institutionalized states and the making of social distinction. This option was guided by the Bourdieusian proposal to identify dispositions by exploring behaviors, mental schemes, and linguistic structures, placing the radicality of social functioning in the dispositions activated by individuals when dealing with cultural goods. Thus, we asked the students about the gamut of student practices that we could identify in line with the Bourdieusian proposal. We did not seek to establish direct causation relationships, concluding, for instance, that those who travel the most have the best academic performance. We wanted to apprehend possible influences of social practices on results obtained at the university. We assumed activities that favor a greater mastery of codes and access to knowledge also provide students with varied resources to be mobilized in the processes of academic socialization. We considered some experiences, like those involving international mobility, multiply the possibilities to further reach diverse cultural goods, accessible by resorting to additional languages, technologies, relationship networks, spaces and events that maximize the social revenues of the university experience.

The choices we made were also guided by the accumulation of findings on the social condition of higher education students resulting from previous research projects in sociology of education. These studies verified: the importance of combining cultural and social capitals into a specific variety of informational capital (PEDROSO, 2020); the influence of dispositions’ sociogenesis on academic performance (PFITSCHER, 2019); identity constitution as an axis of socialization in the university (DOS SANTOS, 2018); inclinations towards scientific socialization established in the relationship with knowledge as factors of identification with the study program (SOARES, 2019); and the role of anticipatory professional socialization in intensifying the process of habitus-building (RODRIGUES, 2018).

Methodology

This article stems from a research project on student trajectories and academic socialization among graduates of public schools who entered higher education in public universities, in this case, the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)². This institution has particularities that require caution when stipulating the generalization of its results for the Brazilian context. Its institutional culture is associated with position as one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the country. Research activities play an organic role in its academic life, impacting the institutional ethos and habitus. Full-time students who can dedicate themselves exclusively to higher education activities and who have a higher concentration of cultural capital are more valued. This students’ labor was fundamental for the institution to build its research capacity and remains fundamental to maintain it, although this fact is usually not recognized. This is a federal institution that offers 70% of its vacancies through its own admission process (vestibular), allotting the remaining 30% through the Brazilian Unified Selection System (Sisu) (UFRGS, [2022]). As in other federal universities, the student body became more diverse in the last decade. The adjustment between understanding the present student condition and revising pedagogical practices established over decades as conatus, however, is still in process.

In our research project, we developed a questionnaire titled “Research on academic socialization in student trajectories: dispositions, reflexivity and recognition in Higher Education”, and efforts to enable its application began before the pandemic start. It was sent to university students through the Undergraduate Programs’ Steering Commissions from April 7^th, 2021, to August 31^st, 2021. From a universe of 25,823 undergraduate students enrolled at UFRGS in the teaching period³ in which the survey deployment was initiated, we obtained 1,463 valid answers with informed consent. In order to refine the sample, answers by respondents who reported being enrolled in the first semester of their programs (256) were disregarded due to this being an early period in the socialization process. Answers by students who reported not knowing which semester of the course they were attending (22) were also set aside from the dataset. As a result, we analyzed a sample with a total of 1,185 responses. Considering the universe and the size of the final sample, we obtained a sample with a 95% confidence interval and a margin of error of 2.8%. The respondents are students who were linked to diverse undergraduate programs of the university, between the second and last terms of their curricula, and who volunteered to answer the questionnaire.

The main resource to structure data analysis was the elaboration of an academic socialization scale, considering cultural capital variables, as an instrument by which “numbers can be attributed to distinct individuals to indicate different amounts of any attribute or property” (RAMOS, 2014, p. 41). Among the questionnaire’s 46 questions, three of them were central to the construction of the socialization scale. Table 1 presents the values associated with the categories of events considered and their items.

To verify the validity and internal consistency of the scale, we performed a Cronbach’s Alpha test with the 20 variables involved in the socialization scale, and the test response was 0.73, evidencing sufficient cohesion and internal coherence. Among the respondents, we observed results between 3 and 73 in this exploratory scale with a theoretical interval between 0 and 90. The mean found was 38.6; and the median, 38. Graphical analysis of the scale’s histogram and the Q-Q chart indicates an approximately normal distribution, according to Figures 1 and 2.

TABLE 1
Categories and items of the academic socialization scale, with assigned values.

Category	Item	Value
Participation in extracurricular programs	Participated in scientific apprenticeship programs	0-3
	Participated in extension projects	0-3
	Participated in administrative scholarship*	0-3
	Participated in teaching apprenticeship programs	0-3
	Participated in teaching assistantship or Tutorial Education Program	0-3
Total of the category Participation in extracurricular programs		0-15
Academic experiences and meaningful learning	Teaching from faculty linked to the program curriculum	0-5
	Conviviality with colleagues	0-5
	Participation in scientific research projects	0-5
	Participation in outreach/extension programs	0-5
	Guided studies at laboratories, libraries, practice units and information and communication technologies	0-5
	Cultural programs taking place at the university	0-5
	Social and political movements taking place at the university	0-5
	Practical and technical-professional activities provided by the program	0-5
Total of the category Academic experiences and meaningful learning		0-40
Difficulties to keep up with university	Performance in course or in curriculum stages	0-5
	Academic language and scientific writing	0-5
	Relationship with faculty	0-5
	Relationship with classmates	0-5
	Adaptation to university’s schedules, rules and deadlines	0-5
	Management and understanding of procedures in institutional offices	0-5
	Courses’ tasks and requirements	0-5
Total category Difficulties to keep up with university		0-35
Total scale score		0-90

• SOURCE: Authors (2022). * Paid activity at any university office

FIGURE 1
Histogram of the academic socialization scale.

FIGURE 2
Q-Q normal graph for the academic socialization scale.

We used the socialization scale to verify its relationship with variables, such as participation in university programs of scientific, extension and teaching apprenticeship. We also investigated the relationship between the score in the scale and other variables that were not part of it: mother’s educational attainment; father’s educational attainment; program stage; additional language studies and traveling; participation in cultural and recreational activities; average of books read per year; and amount of study hours per week. These variables are described in Table 2.

TABLE 2
Independent variables, type and description.

Variable	Variable Type	Description
Mother’s Educational Attainment	Ordinal	Variable recoded from question “32. Up until which stage of formal education has your mother or guardian studied?” Low (202): None; Incomplete Lower Secondary Education; Complete Lower Secondary Education. Average (336): Incomplete Upper Secondary Education; Complete Upper Secondary Education. High (376): Incomplete Higher Education; Complete Higher Education. Very High (266): Specialization; Master’s degree; Doctorate.
Father’s Educational Attainment	Ordinal	Variable recoded from question “33. How far did your parent or guardian study (or study)?” Low (241): None; Incomplete Lower Secondary Education; Complete Lower Secondary Education. Average (326): Incomplete Upper Secondary Education; Complete Upper Secondary Education. High (375): Incomplete Higher Education; Complete Higher Education. Very High (186): Specialization; Master’s degree; Doctorate.
Scientific Apprenticeship Programs	Dichotomous Categorical	Variable retrieved from question “21. Among the academic programs and projects listed below, which one(s) did you take part in during your academic trajectory?”: No (772); Yes: (413).
Extension Projects	Dichotomous Categorical	Variable retrieved from question “21. Among the academic programs and projects listed below, which one(s) did you take part in during your academic trajectory?”: No (775); Yes (410).
Teaching Apprenticeship Programs	Dichotomous Categorical	Variable retrieved from question “21. Among the academic programs and projects listed below, which one(s) did you take part in during your academic trajectory?”: No (1094); Yes (91).
Additional Language Studies	Categorical	Variable recoded from question “4. Do you study or did you study any foreign language?” I did not study (60): I did not study. Yes, at school and/or by myself (403): Yes, at school; Yes, by myself (through books, music and internet). Yes, I also took a language course and/or exchange programmes (722): Yes, in a language course; Yes, in an exchange program.
Travel Destination	Categorical	Variable recoded from question “6. Which of these destinations have you traveled to?” I do not travel (54) = unanswered Regional Travel (115) = Upstate Rio Grande do Sul National Travel (467) = Southern Region of Brazil; Other Regions of Brazil International Travel (549) = South America; North America and/or Central America/the Caribbean; Other Continents
Participation in Cultural and Recreational Activities	Ordinal	Scale created from the answers to question “1. Mark the frequency with which you practiced the cultural activities below, considering the period prior to the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic.”, the activities: (1) Watch free cultural activities in public spaces (squares, parks, etc.); (2) Watch free cultural activities in enclosed spaces (museums, cinema, plays and dance, concerts, etc.); (3) Go to the movies, watch shows and the like with ticket charges; (4) Go to the theater, museum or dance company with admission fee; (5) Participate in leisure activities in groups or in collectives (sports, carnival block, soiree, etc.); (6) Participate in traditional activities with religious, ethnic-cultural and regional characteristics. Frequency scale: 0 (never) - 5 (always)
Books Read per Year	Ordinal	Scale created from answers to question “2. According to the categories below, how many books do you usually read per year, in addition to your course-assigned readings?”, with the categories: (1) Self-help; (2) Scientific; (3) Historical; (4) Literary; (5) Handbook/Technical; (6) Religious/Esoteric The options were: 0; 1-2; 3-5; 6-9; 10 or more books a year.
Study Hours per Week	Ordinal	Variable obtained from question “3. How many hours a week, approximately, do you dedicate to academic studies outside the classroom?” None, I only attend classes (37) From 1 to 3 hours (263) From 4 to 7 hours (425) From 8 to 12 hours (228) More than 12 hours (232)

• SOURCE: Authors (2022).

The findings presented in the next section result from statistical tests for the comparison of means and bivariate correlation. For this, we performed the T-Test of independent samples, whenever the independent variable was dichotomous, and the analysis of variance (unidirectional Anova), whenever the independent variable had three or more different groups.

Statistical results and analysis

Parents’ educational attainment is an important variable in terms of access to education and variations in socialization (BOURDIEU, 2012; 2014). Although recent studies complexify and even relativize its role (NOGUEIRA, 2021), it is an indispensable factor to analyze processes of academic or school socialization. Figure 3 shows how the academic socialization average increases as the mother’s educational attainment increases (Anova; p<0.05).

FIGURE 3
Relationship between position in the socialization scale and mother’s educational attainment.

The post-hoc test (Bonferroni) shows us that only the difference between averages of students with mothers with postgraduate studies is statistically significant (p<0.05). Students whose mothers have other levels of educational attainment have statistically equivalent averages. The same situation appears in the case of father’s educational attainment. We can see that the average increases slightly with upper secondary education, but then drops, and only increases significantly for students whose fathers hold postgraduate degrees, according to Figure 4. Likewise, only the difference between averages of students whose fathers attained postgraduate education is statistically significant.

FIGURE 4
Relationship between position in the socialization scale and father’s educational attainment.

In a previous study, we had found the completion of upper secondary education by mothers and fathers as a significant marker for predicting the completion of upper secondary education by young people (CAREGNATO et al., 2021). This datum seemed consistent with research developed in Bourdieusian perspective (BOURDIEU, 2012a; 2012b) and with the high levels of dropout in upper secondary education in Brazil. We expected that the most impactful level of parental education for academic socialization would be higher education. The fact that only postgraduate studies have a significant influence leads to the elaboration of some hypotheses. One is related to the broader transformations in the social stratum from which university students originate. It considers that, in view of the expansion of schooling, with the massification of higher education, significant differences are now conditioned by a higher level of schooling. Another hypothesis concerns a research university’s typical form of socialization. In this case, the institutional ethos would have particular traits, requiring a more intense affiliation, whose basal dispositions would only be developed in families with guardians holding a postgraduate degree. The issue of access to information adds to the matter, as it is supported on relationships with instructed peers in the individuals’ social capital networks, leading to insight on the ways of knowing and the organizational processes of the university.

Regarding the participation of students in extracurricular programs, we found a statistically significant difference between the results of academic socialization obtained by those who participated in contrast to those who did not participate in these programs. Table 2 exposes this variation.

TABLE 3
Variation in the average of points on the academic socialization scale in relation to participation in extracurricular programs.

Item	Participated	N	Average score on scale	Difference	T-test
Scientific Apprenticeship Programs	No	772	34.3	12.3	(t(1183)= -18.80; p<0.05)
	Yes	413	46.6
Extension Projects	No	775	34.5	11.8	(t(1183)= -17.86; p<0.05)
	Yes	410	46.3
Teaching Apprenticeship Programs	No	1094	38	7.3	(t(1183)= -5.54; p<0.05)
	Yes	91	45.3

• SOURCE: Authors (2022).

Table 3 shows that, regarding scientific apprenticeship programs, students who did not participate in this opportunity obtained an average of 34.3, while those who participated obtained an average of 46.6. The difference between the averages is 12.3 points. In relation to university extension projects, the participants obtained an average of 11.8 points higher than the non-participants. For teaching apprenticeship programs, the difference was 7.3 points.

The data presented above allow us to infer that participation in different extracurricular training programs is related to a higher index of academic socialization. Here, the variation between the differences on the score supported by different experiences also led us to formulate two interpretative hypotheses. In the first, the most consolidated apprenticeship programs, which are closer to the institutional ethos, impact the academic socialization of their participants with greater intensity. Also, in a research university, scientific apprenticeship is more valued, while teaching apprenticeship does not have a consecrated place. A second hypothesis derives from that: there is a pre-selection among the participants of these programs by the same sociological factors that condition success in academic socialization.

Another important means of incorporating resources that favor university life and that affects academic socialization is the study of additional languages. This variable impacts the average score on the socialization scale to the point it establishes groups with statistically significant differentiation. The difference can be verified between three groups of respondents (Bonferroni between groups, p<0.05): (1) those who claim not to have studied, with an average of 32 points; (2) those who claim to have studied by themselves or at school, with an average of 37 points; and (3) those who report having studied through specific courses or exchange programs, who reached, on average, 40 points. Table 4 below elucidates this relationship.

TABLE 4
Variation in the average of points on the academic socialization scale in relation to the study of foreign language(s).

	N	Average	Standard deviation	Standard Error
I did not study	60	31.88	12.13	1.57
Yes, at school and/or by myself	403	36.99	11.70	.58
Yes, I also took a language course and/or exchange programs	722	40.00	12.23	.46
Total	1,185	38.56	12.22	.35

• SOURCE: Authors (2022).

In the question about traveling, we found that there is a difference between those who do not travel and those who travel, as well as that the average increases as the student travels to more distant destinations, as shown in Figure 5. However, based on the post-hoc Bonferroni test (p<0.05), we see that only the difference between those who have traveled abroad and the other groups is statistically significant, since there is no statistically significant difference between their means.

FIGURE 5
Relationship between position on the socialization scale and travel destinations.

Overall, among the respondents, 60.9% (N=722) of them stated they had access to language courses, and 46.3% (N=549) informed to have traveled abroad. These values are higher than expected and, in addition to the possible biases of the sample, may signal some social dynamics. First, the fact the research setting is a highly selective university can produce a distinction in the profile of its student body. Second, the improvement in living conditions of the Brazilian population during a significant period in the recent past allowed an increase in levels of cultural consumption. Thus, goods that were once restricted to the elites began to be enjoyed by other classes. The conversion of the consumption of cultural goods into cultural capital by processes of institutionalization and embodiment, however, depends on factors such as normative references and taste, which may or may not be aligned with the university tradition. However, the fruition of the foreign involves a cultural repertoire situated beyond academic ambiance, rarely accessible through the prescribed curriculum, and, notwithstanding, highly valued for position-taking in trajectories and clashes at university, given its relationship with elite culture.

Bivariate correlations were tested in relation to the socialization scale and continuous variables on cultural practices related to student status. Among the statistically significant correlations, the most relevant were: (1) participation of students in cultural and recreational activities; (2) average number of books read per year; and (3) the number of study hours per week in addition to those performed in the classroom. Such correlations have a positive direction, that is, the higher the intensity of these practices, the higher the score on the academic socialization scale. However, we must note that the correlation intensity is low (<0.3), as shown in Table 5 below.

TABLE 5
Correlation between students’ cultural practices and socialization scale.

Variable	Spearman	p
Participation in cultural and recreational activities	.194	.000
Books read per year	.143	.000
Study hours per week	.127	.000

• SOURCE: Authors (2022).

These practices, prescribed within the formal curriculum and which intensify the relationship with knowledge accessible through classes and conditionable through school forms of habitus production, are not associated with significant changes in the respondents’ pattern of social relations. Therefore, the university ethos demands a habitus with components that are not cultivated in school (BOURDIEU, 2011; 2012b; VALLE, 2013). Moreover, these components are those that present the most significant impacts on the intensity with which students experience the phenomenon of academic socialization.

The most intense correlation observed is that between program stage and scale of academic socialization (Spearman’s rho = 0.33; p <0.05). We understand that, progressing through terms at the university, students intensify their knowledge of university life, due to the sustained opportunity to participate in diverse activities. In addition, as students master codes and resources related to academic life, they tend to face less intense difficulties in the tasks they need to perform.

Regarding these data, it is possible to formulate some hypotheses. The first, most obvious, is that the training in the program enables students for the later stages, shaping their habitus and exerting normative pressures to align their ethos to that of the institution. The second is that such pressures take place not only in the adaptive sense but end up excluding students whose profile is not adherent to the program and/or the institution. Thus, students in more advanced stages, with a higher level of academic socialization, would be those able to instrumentalize their cultural capital to survive the university’s challenges. In the terms explored by Ivermark and Ambrose (2021), these would be students who entered with a pre-adapted habitus or those able to instrumentalize other sources of cultural capital to make up a cleaved habitus; that is, they present, in various manners, resources or mechanisms to deal with university logics in order to withstand the standard pressures that could alienate them from higher education. As Mena (2022) points out, such mechanisms may be linked to self-affirmation developed in affinity groups.

Final remarks

The data seem to confirm the reproductive trait considered to predominate in the Bourdieusian theory by the academic common sense. There are several elements pointing out that a more intense academic socialization is statistically significantly related to markers that are usually associated with conditions of “inheritance” (BOURDIEU, 2014b): parents’ high educational attainment and trips abroad. These data ratify the finding that university practices assume a social experience rich with opportunities for the accumulation of cultural capital. Thus, they remain linked to the ability to operate with resources that are not common to most young Brazilians. After changes in access to higher education (RISTOFF, 2014; BERTOLIN; FIOREZE; BARÃO, 2022), such conditions are not representative even among students of federal institutions of higher education.

Language courses occupy a less defined social place: although traditionally associated with the wealthiest classes, access to them has become more democratic in recent decades, with more affordable supply, including free-of-charge classes⁴. They consist of analytical markers of parental investment, signaling prioritization of family expenditure on children preparation between families within the same income range. They are evidence of a social mobility project, such as the search and mobilization of information about higher quality schools within the same public system. Although most of these efforts are linked to family strategy, in a recent period, extra-family mechanisms of support and information exchange have intensified, noticeably those linked to spaces such as popular pré-vestibular courses and sociocultural collectives. Thus, entry and success in education superior have also been influenced by the broader agency of strategies for the recomposition of educational elites through informational assets for the acquisition of cultural capital, as observed by Nogueira (2021).

Beyond that, data show that there are other variables with a significant impact on the intensity of academic socialization of university students, associated with participation in extracurricular programs. These opportunities, when linked to research and extension, have grown with the increase on vacancies in public higher education. In addition, new bonds of training and activity for undergraduate students were created, such as teaching apprenticeship⁵. Such spaces of socialization enable and provide immersion in academic codes in a different manner from the classroom, usually with greater integration. Interaction with peers or with people at different points in the academic hierarchy allows the combination of different points of view in the assimilation to the university life. Joint work proposes other forms ways to relate to knowledge, often based on mechanical solidarity processes that provide cognitive and affective mediations as other instances of interpersonal development. More possibilities of negotiation of the cultural resources of the individual in the face of the normative requirements of the institution stem from there (RODRIGUES, 2018; SOARES, 2019).

In view of the analyzed data, we emphasize the need to know the sources of students’ cultural capital that diverge from traditional educational settings and are associated with diffuse systems of knowledge and information (SETTON, 2005). In dialogue with previous research (DOS SANTOS, 2018; PFITSCHER, 2019; PEDROSO, 2020), we perceive in these sources the relevance of sociability spaces such as collectives of political action, cultural agitation groups, ethnic and community clubs, as well as other forms of identity grouping that make up environments dense in social capital, allow the cultivation of self-confidence dispositions, task organization, argumentation, rhetorical recursion, and composition of repertoires (MENA, 2021). This knowledge becomes even more important in a historical context when the relative importance of family socialization is reduced and the horizons of experience are diversified, converging, moreover, with a self-perception of the Brazilian university as a more plural institution than it used to be practiced or even idealized. This extended cultural capital composes a field of possibilities that can be activated by university pedagogy to enhance the academic socialization of non-traditional groups.

The limits in relation to the analyzed data also beacon new fronts for research. The questionnaire that served as the basis for the research reported here was elaborated in a pre-pandemic period. The shift from classroom teaching to the emergency remote model implied the disarticulation of conviviality venues that had a fundamental role in academic socialization by exposing university students to each other’s habitus and to the institutional habitus. The rarefaction of contact with faculty also implied a lower contact with normative pressures that make up the institutional ethos. Future research would need to deal with this phenomenon, for example, by testing the hypothesis that this period of exceptionality led to the increase in the importance of previous cultural capital in academic success, or by exploring compensatory responses by students, institutions, and other agents to ensure basic conditions for socialization.

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• 1
  In Bourdieusian terms, this type of persistence is themed under the concept of conatus, which describes a maintenance of the institutional operating modes associated with the preservation of a nomos emanating from a social position, as “people who hold power, capital, act, whether they know it or not, in a way that perpetuates or increases their power and their capital” and that “leads the different bodies that hold the capital to face off each other and to install the powers they hold in the struggles to maintain or increase that power itself” (BOURDIEU, 2014a, p. 351).
• 2
  The research project “Academic socialization in student trajectories: dispositions, reflexivity and recognition in higher education” was granted funding by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and a scientific apprenticeship scholarship from the Research Funding Agency of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Fapergs). The scholarship grantee, Renato Terra, contributed to the literature review used in this article. We also received support from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel’s Excellence Program (Proex/Capes). We thank Harlon Romariz for his comments on the first version of the text.
• 3
  Teaching period 2020/2, which took place between January 25th, 2021, and May 25th, 2021. It is noticeable that, for this period, the number of enrolled students (25,823) and that of those affiliated to undergraduate programs (31,805) differ (PORTAL BRASILEIRO DE DADOS ABERTOS, s.d.). Therefore, about six thousand students were not enrolled in courses in the period, away from the university and, consequently, distant from the fundamental processes of academic socialization.
• 4
  One example is the offer of free courses to federal institutions of higher education’s communities through the Language without Borders program. Originally established by the federal government, it was since discontinued and resumed by the National Association of Federal Higher Education Institutions’ Leadership (Andifes).
• 5
  Currently, most of these opportunities are concentrated in the Institutional Program of Teaching Apprenticeship Scholarships (Pibid), created in 2007, and the Pedagogical Residency, created in 2018.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 Jan 2023
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  11 May 2022
• Accepted
  24 Aug 2022