The Structure of Students’ Parents’ Social Representations of Teachers

Abstract

Teachers, among others, are responsible for improving the quality of education. In order to understand the teacher's professional role within the context of contemporary society, one must analyze the impacts of political, economic, social and cultural problems on education. The present study's objective is to identify and discuss the social representations made by students' parents/guardians in relation to being a teacher nowadays. The study enjoyed the participation of 181 parents/guardians of elementary school students from the city of Mossoró/RN. They responded to the TALP after being presented with the stimulus phrase being a teacher today. Prototypical analysis (EVOC), analysis of similarity (IRAMUTEQ) and thematic analysis of content were performed. The terms most frequently evoked were patience, educator, love, and teach. The parents/guardians' social representations have a multidimensional character that is structured into two main: one involving an image of the teacher that is rooted in the notion of a vocation; and the other, in the professional as an educator. The thematic analysis also indicated a representation of teachers that is related to a work context involved challenges, precarious working conditions, social disfavor and violence. One thus observes a twofold representation of the teacher, as an individual with a vocation and as a professional, an employee of the educational system, a fact that could be related to the low attractiveness of a career in teaching.

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“…2) Then, the respondents need to order their answers from the most to the least important, or by order of occurrence. The design of the questionnaire can be adapted depending on one's objectives in research [20] [23] [25]. For many authors, the argument here is, the most important answers qualify for the centrality of representations, more salient elements come first [25] [26], which can be measured by their frequency and average relevance while proceeding to the ordering (or not) of the elements of the core.…”

“…The design of the questionnaire can be adapted depending on one's objectives in research [20] [23] [25]. For many authors, the argument here is, the most important answers qualify for the centrality of representations, more salient elements come first [25] [26], which can be measured by their frequency and average relevance while proceeding to the ordering (or not) of the elements of the core. However, because many factors can affect the order or frequency of those representations, it is not suitable to identify the structure of the representations of university A, only an idea of the content is given.…”

“…As Abric pointed out, the complexity to study representations lies in the type of objects being studied, and the pieces of information, either insufficient or abundant, available to investigate an object [1]. In the same way, topics about education are extremely abundant, and one might assume that the nucleus of students' social representations have already been approached as such, which appears not to be the case as far as the current literature is concerned, which seems to be on opinions mainly, a remark also made by [25] [12].…”

“…Although, studies conducted on social representations of higher education discuss elements of those representations, less are done to explain the reasons behind the formation of social representations. For example, the social representations of teachers/ school staff by students [13] [19] [25], to name a few.…”