This paper aims at investigating how study is being accomplished in contemporaneity. It follows two main paths: Initially, it operates an inflection in the study field of studies. Instead of conceiving study as an objective and naturalized entity, it proposes to analyze the issue from notions of practices of study, with the support of constructivist approaches of cognition such as those by J. Piaget, L.Vygotski, F. Varela and H. Maturana, as well as the work of M. Foucault and R. Chartier. The study becomes the result of concrete actions of students, instead of being conceived as an allegedly invariant mental activity aiming at knowledge acquisition. Secondly, it presents and discusses a field research in which fifteen psychology students were interviewed. The interviewees belong to four different institutions from the city of Rio de Janeiro, two public and two private, where they were between the 1st and 9th semesters. Interviews were carried out following the explanation technique. The conclusion points out the importance of the use of internet-computer in contemporary study practices, and analyzes some of its effects, such as the great amount of information, the study in circulation, the fragmentation and composition of parts, and the coexistence of study with the digital and printed texts.
Study practice; Computer; New technologies; Contemporary subjectivity