Palavras-chave: Inclusão social na universidade pública. Alunos ingressantes. Dificuldades acadêmicas. Formação contínua. Pedagogia universitária. ABSTRACT BELLETATI, V. C. F. First-year students' difficulties in public universities: signals of the need of reflections about university teaching. 2011. 237f. Thesis (Doctoral) -Faculdade de Educação, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2011.The concentration of Brazilian public universities on the elite is the central concern of this research. Inclusion programs have provided the possibility of a greater representation of students in unfavorable socioeconomic conditions in these institutions. At the University of São Paulo -USP, chosen locus for this research, the inclusion program -INCLUSP, has, since 2007, favored the admission of students who studied their entire high school in public schools, which, in Brazil, are majorly composed of students in society's less favorable conditions. An objective of this research is to provide elements that promote university teaching in the sense of favoring a successful academic career for these students, which is understood as the possibility of professional, scientific and political education, role which we attribute to public universities and is perceived to be realized by the promulgation of professional teaching coalesced with research and extension. For that purpose, data was collected through two open questionnaires, which were answered in writing by the subjects of this research at different moments. The first questionnaire looked to identify the main difficulties that freshmen students who attended public high schools have in their first year at the university. The second stage sought to establish whether the difficulties brought up during the first stage lasted through the year following the subject's admission or not, and how they had dealt with these difficulties. The data collection occurred in three courses of the University of São Paulo which presented lower retention of students who attended public high schools, which is interpreted as a form of exclusion. The main academic difficulties that were identified, which constitute barriers to a successful trajectory, were: the exiguity of time and its bad management; the choice of a superficial approach to schooling; the quantity and complexity of contents; the frustration when confronted with unsuccessful situations; and difficulties with academic daily life. From the study it was possible to extract as demands of the teachers the necessities: of reflecting about the social function of the university and the low representation of students in unfavorable socioeconomic conditions, especially in more prestigious courses; of identifying and reflecting about difficulties freshmen students have, keeping in mind the differences between courses and subjects-students; of considering aspects of time management as teaching contents, emphasizing how and what to study and learn considering that the students are in a process of affiliation and construction of new forms of relatin...