Compensatory processes and subjectivity of people with dyslexia at university: contributions from the cultural-historical theory

Abstract

This text constitutes an excerpt from a PhD thesis in Education, which employs the foundations of the Cultural-Historical Theory, the Vygotskian concepts of conscious awareness and compensatory processes in particular, and the González-Rey’s concept of subjectivity, inspired by the Vygotskian work. The study aims at understanding how compensatory processes and subjectivity can influence the way people with dyslexia are constituted in their learning process in Higher Education. The research subjects are undergraduate students at a federal university in the south of Brazil who have a diagnosis of dyslexia. Adopting a qualitative approach, the method comprised the multiple case study and data collection. The latter was carried out through semi-structured interviews. The Content Analysis Technique was used for data analysis. The results highlighted in this study were provided from the category related to the concepts of the Cultural-Historical Theory. In this sense, subjectivity, constituted from the conscious awareness and meaningful experiences of each subject, was understood as in constant formation and transformation. Subjects with dyslexia are motivated by their own difficulties to seek compensatory strategies and processes in order to access knowledge, learn and demonstrate their learning. Therefore, it was concluded that subjectivity, constituted from the experiences and the meanings attributed to it, influences the attitudes of each subject. Consequently, it influences the mobilization of these subjects to seek strategies and resources for their learning, in order to compensate the difficulties presented by dyslexia.