Public primary school students"™ and teachers"™ understanding of crack use in adolescence

Abstract

We aimed to understand students"™ and teachers"™ representations of crack use in adolescence. Action research was carried out in a public school in the city of Fortaleza, Ceará, with twelve students and seven teachers from June to August 2015. Data were collected from focus groups held with students and interviews with teachers using the recording technique. For data analysis, we used the interpretative analysis of the drawings made in the focus groups based on the theoretical framework of Jean Piaget. In order to analyze students"™ and teachers"™ statements, we transcribed the material verbatim and applied Paul Ricoeur"™s hermeneutical phenomenology. The results identified a contradiction between the participants"™ statements: on the one hand, there is a different idea of what is socially constructed about the user, and, on the other, there is a discourse linked to what they see in the media and to what they experience with family members who use crack in a disorganized way.