Resistance to Rupture in the Self Facing a School Failure Experience: Case Study of an Adolescent

Abstract

This research aims at understanding the meanings related to the schooling experience of an adolescent at failure risk in a Brazilian Federal Institution of vocational education. We highlight what we call resistance to rupture since the participant did not experience an essential transformation of his predominant I-position (I-excellent student), even when he had to repeat the third year of the vocational high school. The theories that support this study are cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics and the dialogical self-theory. ‘I-student’ positions have appeared obedient to parents’ voices who believed in the school success of the participant and showed him directions to keep studying in the institution; nevertheless, other voices also interacted with him: peers’ and teachers’ who acted as relevant in the reconfiguration of his ‘I-held-back-student’ by silencing it. This silencing was a process of resistance to rupture-transition in the participant’s self. His resistance to rupture-transition reduced tension within the self, and required less effort from the point of view of the dialogical reorganization of his psychological system; therefore, it possibly worked as a self-regulating process of the self.