SOCIAL REPRESENTATION AND EDUCATION

characteristics of the brazilian productions in the latest congresses of education and social representation

Abstract

In this paper, we present some of the characteristics of the researches in Social Representations as applied to the educational field. We analyze 136 papers published in annals of the last four International Scientific Meetings in this area – Canada (2000), Scotland (2002) and Brazil (2001 and 2003) – and the three last meetings of National Association of Graduate Studies in Education, in Brasil, (2001, 2002 and 2003). In order to orient the analysis of the papers, we investigate aspects such as: the most investigated research object, the way of the representations were analyzed, the characteristics of the samples, the identification of changes in representations, the relations established between social representations and the social practices, the processes of spreading out social representations, and other psychological and social theories which are considered in studies on representation and their methodological resources.