Social representations formulated by high school students

Abstract

The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the social representations of learning formulated by adolescents. In order to do so, three descriptive case studies were carried out using transversal methodology with High School students from three schools. For data collection, a semi-structured questionnaire was used. Two forms of analysis were performed at a later stage: the qualitative data was analyzed by the technician of Content Analysis; the quantitative data was submitted to descriptive and inferential analysis. A posteriore, three theoretical categories that emerged from the discourse used by the participants pointing to different social representations about learning traditional, renewed and contemporary conceptions. The results show the predominance of the contemporary concept among the studied groups. This scenario suggests that the adolescents who assumed the contemporaneous concept represent the learning connected to the peripheral system, a device that prepares crystallized transformations, diminishing the confrontation between subjective reality and consensual elements, which are part of the central core of social representations