Abstract

WOLTER, Rafael; OLIVEIRA, Flaviane da Costa; PEIXOTO, Álvaro  and  SANTIN, Thiago Rafael. Representational Structure and Dimensions of Undergraduate Studies in Psychology by its Students: Experiences, Knowledge, and Fears. Av. Psicol. Latinoam. [online]. 2023, vol.41, n.1, 8.  Epub July 14, 2023. ISSN 1794-4724.  https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/apl/a.10118.

Undergraduate education is a moment of transition for young adults from educational to professional life. Because it is an object full of affections, practices, inserted within an institution and linked to the students' daily lives, undergradutae studies are thought of in a contextualized way. Therefore, the research aimed to study the social representation of undergraduate psychology studies based on the structural approach, within three different thought contexts: descriptive, normative, and practical. The participants were 340 undergraduate psychology students from three public universities in southeast Brazil. They answered a questionnaire using basic cognitive schemes (SCB) and the successive choices by block (CPB) techniques. The data of the SCB was analyzed by valence calculation, and the data of the CPB was used to calculate Guimelli's distance index and to elaborate maximum trees. Results show that in descriptive and normative contexts, thought is structured by two opposed poles: one of hope and evolution and another of yearnings and difficulties. In the descriptive context, thought is based on the idea of knowledge, whilst in the normative context, 'work' is the most likely central idea. In the practical context, the pole of yearnings and difficulties almost disappears. Thought is more related to study aims and to positive and pleasant ideas of the undergraduate studies, with the idea of development being most likely the central one. Such results elicit the question of cognitive polyphasia in the representational structure.

Keywords : Undergraduate education; psychology; social psychology; social representations.

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