Retratos sociológicos: uma metodologia de investigação para a pesquisa em educação

Recently, Bourdieu’s sociological tradition has emerged as an important trend in research in science education. This paper presents some critiques elaborated by Bernard Lahire towards Bourdieu’s sociological approach. The main purpose of our incursion into Lahire’s critique is to argue and introduce the methodology of sociological portraits as an important resource for research in science education. After describing this methodology, it is illustrated with a portrait of dropout on an undergraduate course in chemistry. Diogo’s portrait illustrates, at the empirical level, some basic features of individual dispositions (variability, genesis, transferability, dichotomy and contextuality). From this portrait, it was possible to illustrate how the resonance between students’ and institution’s dispositions helps explain their sense of membership and belonging to the course. Finally, we highlight some potentialities of sociological portraits to the purposes of sociological research in science education.