Social Representations Regarding the Graduate Profile of the ...

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Abstract

The subject of the present article is to reveal the social representations (SR) of first-year students on the differential education course of a university in the Araucanía Region of Chile, with respect to their professional identity, to interpret them and compare them to the graduate profile of the course. We will also analyse the public social function of the course. The research subjects were first-year students on the course, and the data were collected using interviews and natural semantic networks; these techniques were applied to two participating groups. On the one hand, the results show that the subjects are conscious of the importance of the graduate profile, having greater knowledge about the general competences taught in the course than the specific, and relating the profile with their future role and not with the discipline; on the other, the students’ SR are constructed in their initial training in different areas, and the subjects state that the vision of the teaching team has an impact on their understanding of the graduate profile.