Representações sociais de alunos acerca do que é ser estudante em uma universidade pública federal

Abstract

This study aims at getting to know the social representations elaborated by a group of students concerning being student in a public federal university. The analysis highlighted the mythical dimension of the representations. The theoretical basis on which this research was structured is the Social Representations Theory of Serge Moscovici (1978) and the Central Nucleus Theory of Jean-Claude Abric (1998). A dialogue between both theories and the studies concerning the identity processes, social memory and mythical dimension, according to a psychosocial perspective were also presented. It was outlined as main assumptions the following issues: the relationship between representation and social identity representation, the mythical dimension of social representation thought as an idealized form of reality meanings; intergroup representation related to the social memory, and the processes of identification and differentiation in the dialogue with the perspectives of belonging of the social representations (transubjetives, intersubjective and subjectives). The data collection was divided into two phases. In the first period 10 interviews with university professors of campus Cuiabá were carried out. These talks served for circumscribing the context, in order to access the possible categories in which, they supposedly organize their discourses concerning the studied object. The comprehensive analysis was used for reading the data. In the second phase of data collection, the participants were university students. In this phase the gathering of the information was done. In a first part, a group of 177 students answered a questionnaire compounded with census data and the free association of words. This verbal material was processed by the software EVOC, subsequently, in a second stage; it was aimed to access the notional universe of the students by carrying out interviews covering a total of 80 students. The lexical analysis was done based on the data processed by the software ALCESTE. The findings concerning the discourse of the professors revealed professionals who anchored their representations in an idealized image of the institution supported by an identity function that offers them legitimacy of belonging. Concerning the students, the analyzes suggested that the social representations about themselves as being students in a public federal university have a multitude of dimensions that involve the family, the society, the interrelationships and the institution itself, manifested by two aspects: one that lies in the plane of the ideal, in which students construct the images of themselves supported by the discourses rooted in the social memory. Thus, it is observed an indifferentiation relationship between the university and the student. Another, is in the order of the real image the students have of themselves elaborated on the analysis of the lived experiences and revealed in the discourse by the presence of elements such as competence, maturity, relying on the subjective survival faced on institutional constraints and the association with knowledge, suggesting a process of differentiation of the self, starting from the university. Consequently the findings indicate that the social representations lie at the plane of the real, relying on reflective discourse of everyday experiences and those positioned in the plane of the ideal anchored in images that attest the presence of the mythical thought reflected in the social representations.