A STUDY CONCERNING SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS 1

Paper presented in at the European Conference on Educational Research, Lisbon, Portugal, 11-14 September 2002

Paredes, Eugenia2

AbstractThis study is based on Social Psychology. It aims at understanding the social representations of academic activities, identifying their constituent and structural elements. The investigation has a multi-methodological character, having employed software for treatment and analysis of data. In a universe of a thousand and six university professors, free associations produced by four hundred of them were collected, and later processed by EVOC. Forty-nine in-depth interviews were submitted to the software ALCESTE. The results of those two stages were compared with the discourse analysis that was carried out with the verbal material collected, yielding a comparison that revealed professors who represent themselves as responsible for the uprightness and direction of the Institution, self-attributing important decisions that command their work and effort, although, contradictorily, they live in a state of dissatisfaction, which they believe is due to objective characteristics of the Brazilian historical moment.

Key Words: Academic Activities, Social Representations, University Professors

1. Introduction

The choice of the teaching category as target population of this research

project is due to the fact that it is responsible of the institutional dynamics on the most

different levels of the university activity. It is, thus, an attempt to sketch a maybe in

executable profile of the professor of the Federal University of the state of Mato Grosso

(UFMT).

2. The sample and its relation to the universe

The teaching staff of the university congregates, at present, on the campus in

Cuiabá, 1006 professors, among who we intended to research on 500 subjects. The sample

was defined from the criterion of proportionality, which held in consideration the total

1 Paper presented in Network 22 at the European Conference on Educational Research, Lisbon September 11-14 2002.2 eparedes@cpd.ufmt.br

number of professors at the campus and their appointments in the different Institutes and

Faculties, thus displayed as can be seen in the following table a :

TABLE 1 PROFESSORS DISTRIBUTION BY INSTITUTES AND FACULTIES, AND SAMPLES OF EACH UNIT

INSTITUTE / FACULTY N SAMPLEBiology 31 16Law 40 21Administration, economics, accountancy 76 39Veterinary sciences 62 32Medical sciences 134 69Physical education 28 14Nursing and nutrition 82 42Forestall engineering 30 16Technology and engineering 82 42Exact sciences and geology 145 75Human and social sciences 108 56Education 62 32Languages 92 48Social sciences 34 18TOTAL 1006 520

3. Theoretical background

One of the most significant human potentialities refers to the capacity of

representing. Along the history of humanity, representing has been present, for example, in

the pictographic writing, in the Greek theatre, in the political act of being a representative

of a community.

Spink (1993: 168) points out that the notion of representation has been

investigated in different subjects, such as Anthropology, Economics, Psychology and

Psychoanalysis. The discussion about representation turns itself towards the (...) power of

the ideas to create a shared symbolic universe which permits the everyday action, of

sustaining group identities and of institutionalising determined social practices.

Within Social Psychology, with Serge Moscovici, at the beginning of the

60s, inaugurates the study of the Social Representations as a field of structured knowledge.

In the work Psychoanalysis - its image and its public, edited originally in France in 1961,

and translated into Portuguese in 1978, Moscovici presents his first attempt in the sense of

systematizing the newborn theory propositions. Future contributions appeared in the

researchers' studies that developed and amplified the concept of social representation.

Jodelet, quoted by Sá (1996: 32) explains SR as being (...) a form of knowledge socially

elaborated and shared which has a practical objective and concurs for the construction of

a common reality into a social ensemble.

Moscovici's proposition parts with the north-American model of working out

the questions of Social Psychology, of an individualist character, once the social dimension

starts to be effectively taken into account.

According to Jovchelovitch & Guareschi (1994: 20):

It is when people meet to talk, argue, discuss daily life, or when they are exposed to institutions, to means of communication, to myths and to their societies historical and cultural inheritance, that the Social Representations are formed.

The concept of social representation brands the notion of man in so far as

subject maker of significations. In this reasoning, it is deduced that the Social

Representations are branded by appurtenance. The subjects involved in the same social

texture share representations that are found inserted into the web of relations that they

maintain.

The SR aim at the differentiation between the consensual and the reified

universes. For Sá (1998), the reified universe is formally elaborated scientific knowledge,

while the consensual universe is characterised by the construction established in the daily

social interactions, the common sense territory, which is the privileged field of the SR. It is

interesting to note that this work pursues the common sense constructions that professionals

familiar with different sciences build in daily sociability.

In the common sense construction are present two psychological

mechanisms which form its structural configuration named objectifying and anchoring.

This is a classification, a categorization process of an object or idea accompanied by a

historically constructed validating dimension, which is the movement of associating a

concept to an image.

Jean–Claude Abric elaborated the Theory of the Central Nucleus, by way of

a complementation to Moscovici's theory. His basic proposition indicates that a social

representation possesses an organization with specific characteristics and a classification of

the elements that compose it by structuring themselves around a central nucleus (CN), this

one is constituted by one or more elements that give a meaning to the representation.As CN we understand (...) a sub ensemble of the representation, composed by one or some elements whose absence would de-structure the representation or would give it a completely different meaning. (ABRIC, 1994, quoted by SÁ, 1996: 67)

The CN points out to functions, one being a generator and another an

organizer. It is determined in part by the nature of the represented object, and in part, by the

relation that the subject or the group maintains with such object. It defines the homogeneity

of a social group, being determined by the history of this group and linked to its collective

memory. The CN is determined by historical, sociological and ideological conditions,

marked by the collective memory of the group, as well as by the norms system. Being

normative, it is resistant to change and its function is to guarantee the representation

continuity

Parallel to the idea of centrality appears the concept of peripheral system,

where happen actualisations and contextual part of the normative dimension, breaking the

consensus and taking the representation back to mobility, to flexibility and to

individualized expression.

The main function of the peripheral system is the promotion of interface

between concrete reality and the central nucleus, guaranteeing the representation anchoring

in the reality of the moment, through realization, regulation and adaptation of the

representation CN defending its meaning as a shock-absorber of the impact caused by the

confronting of the different meanings of a same object.

In this study was searched the social representations contents and from them

their structures and their modifications.

Numberless approaches have been discussing the teaching work with

different emphases in dimensions that express and reflect the activity complexity, on the

personal and professional plans.

From his analysis concerning the professor's identity, Nóvoa (1992) affirms

that he lives a crisis produced by the emphasis given to its curricular and methodological

contents. He denounces that the education thinkers have forgotten that the professor as a

person is, as such, subject to daily pressures. He suggests, therefore, that the researches turn

themselves towards the development of the professor's identity, considering his personal

and professional life.

Nóvoa (1992: 10) believes that the teaching profession [...] needs to be said and told: it is a way to understand it in its whole human and scientific complexity. It is due to the fact that being a professor obliges one to make constant options, that cross our way of being as well as our way of teaching, and that they unveil in our way of teaching our way of being.

We take, again, as a reference the studies of Baptista (1997) about the

identity of the Brazilian university professor. She defends the principle that the collective

identity constitution of that category has begun to be understood together with the

reconstitution of the university history. This would function as a medial structure of the

understanding of the individual and collective histories.

Baptista (1997) identifies five significant moments for the construction of

the professor's identity chronologically divided: 1) from the colonial period to the decade of

the 30s when the first superior courses appeared in Brazil; 2) 1931, marked as the year in

which the Brazilian universities elaborated their statutes; 3) the decade from 50 to 64 when

was instituted the character of the professor as a knowledge producer; 4) the year of 64 as

the initial mark of the collective construction of the identity establishing an only pattern, 5)

from the decade of 70 up to the present days turned towards the coexistence of a double

image (positive and negative) of the professor, internalised in a thoughtless and automatic

form.

Social Psychology, when studying the construction of the identity process,

points out to the notion of the individuals' appurtenance to the biological, psychological,

cultural, social and ideological categories, which function as references for an identification

process.

Santos (1998: 152-153) affirms that:

To have an identity is, at the same time, to be someone unique, with idiosyncratic characteristics and to be someone equal to the others, in the sense of sharing with the group common significations. (...) Identity, therefore, is formed in the social relations game is so far as the subject takes to himself the rules, values, norms and forms of thinking of his culture.

Ciampa (1985) tries to reveal the theoretical complexity of the theme and

emphasises the dialectics in the discussion of contradictory poles, however coexisting, that

compose the identity such as: difference and equality, transformation and permanence,

individual and social, totality and part, angel and beast, one and multiple.

Codo (1985:64) shows that structural aspects contributing to the identity

construction are defined from the reciprocal acknowledgement of the individuals identified

through a determined social group and its practice, interpreted as work. Within a materialist

dialectical conception the author yet points out to the humanity history as a history of work

relations as characteristic factor of the human substance. He shows that (...) it is by the

acting, by the doing, that someone turns into something.(...) we are our actions, we make

ourselves by the practice.

Andrade (1998:142), states that the identity conception as a social

representation prevailed in the Congress of Toulouse and instructs: Identity is a

representation of the social actor, of the ‘I / ego’, a cognitive phenomenon in which the

social actor, the ‘I / ego’, is the object of knowledge. He reveals that identity is composed

by various mutable facets, which can maintain a certain degree of contradiction between

them, as long as it is ruled by a coherent and stable organization. Further on, taking as a

base Bourdieu and Gramsci, he sustains that the social representation possesses at the same

time a conservative and revolutionary character and that the representative activity is a

process of social construction of reality, pointing to the individual and social character of

the representation of oneself.

Borsoi (1995) emphasizes that the professional category is not the only

structuring element of the identity. He also points out the part of the family, the school and

of the media. Further on he analyses that the productive revolutions and the growing

changes at the work processes lead to a constant readjustment of men's identity.

The identity study goes, therefore, back to individual and group dimensions.

The Social Representations Theory was chosen to establish the theoretical support once it

permits an articulated discussion between the psychological and sociological aspects, which

draws near Nóvoa's and Baptista's discussions, when they set about to study the professor's

personal and professional life as indissoluble ensemble.

4. Instruments, data and analysis

4.1 The ALFA Questionnaire Initially was prepared a questionnaire named ALFA, applied to 397 professors

and being concomitantly administrated items configured as free associations.

The group of applying students, constituted by nine students from the Post-

Graduation Program in Education, tried to contact all the individuals of the defined sample,

nevertheless the quota was not reached because some professors were not available, others

declared that they disagreed in participating.

The ALFA questionnaire consisted of questions, with closed answers in their

majority. They were organized from categories that the researchers thought relevant, after

extensive discussion and exchange of information with some members of the teaching staff.

The collected material was submitted to the statistical treatments permitted

by the software Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), which allowed a census

appreciation of the group but also contributed to the understanding of some correlations

between levels of expectation, values and investments that the professors presented in

relation to their professional life.

On December of 1999, once collected the data, seen from the titles

(diplomas) and the class of the component individuals, they showed the following

configuration:

Table 2 Professors, by class, level and qualification, in terms of percentage

CLASS/LEVEL GRADUATES SPECIALISTS MASTER DOCTORS TOTALLecturer I 85.7 34.3 3.6 19.9Lecturer II 2.9 7.4 0.6 2.7Lecturer III 6.5 2.4 3.4 3.8Lecturer IV 12.0 1.2 1.7 4.4Assistant I 0.9 30.1 1.7 14.2Assistant II .9 10.8 5.2Assistant III .9 6.6 1.7 3.5Assistant IV 2.9 4.6 13.3 7.6Associate I 2.8 1.2 32.8 6.5Associate II 0.9 1.8 5.2 1.9Associate III 5.6 3.0 10.3 4.6Associate IV 2.9 21.3 25.3 39.7 24.3Full-prof. 2.9 1.9 3.4 1.4TOTAL 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Some considerations, which will possibly orient the reading of the SR, have

to be formulated about the data presented above:

1. The high concentration of professors inserted in the Lecturer I Class is

explained by the elevated number of professors engaged as substitutes, who do not

move, by ascension or progression, in the career table

2. In opposition, the Full Professor Class shows an emptying, that reflects the

fact of being treated, by successive administrations, as something in extinction. A

hundred Full Professors existing in the decades of the seventies and eighties, on

choosing retirement, were not replaced.

3. The professors' convergence towards the Assistant Professors' Class, Level

IV, can be explained in part, as a result of the damning up caused by the absence

of access examinations to the Full Professor's functions. We can also add that,

among the Associate Professors, only 31.3% are in possession of the master's

degree. They are the professors that have moved within the career by lapse of time

or who deserved ascension to the Associate Professors' Class through the

Resolution of the Teaching and Research Council – CONSEPE. As a possible

peculiarity to the staff of the UFMT, it can be verified that, from a total of

specialists that should belong to the Lecturers Professors' Class: 7,3% are

Assistant Professors, and 30.6% are Associate Professors.

4.2 The free associations and EVOCEVOC is software which lends itself to word analysis. Its opening screen

presents the programs ensemble to which it submits the words to achieve the factorial and

typifying or grouping analysis.

In fact EVOC constitutes itself in an ensemble of programs that permit an

evocation analysis. It was developed in France, by Pierre Verges and his collaborators, and

in this study was used a version 2.0, of 1999, which runs on a Windows operating system.

Of the various tables, that represent the analysis steps, some lend themselves to the corpus

preparation and depuration, which in this case was constituted by almost 800 different

words. Once effected the initial analyses, the subsequent ones offer categorization

suggestions for the words, form groupings, analyse the frequency values, the evocation

order, calculate simple and pondered averages and provide a table with four columns.

ALFA lent itself to the data collecting for the identification of the structure

and of the Central Nucleus of the Social Representations starting from the presentation of a

generative expression: “to be a professor of the UFMT”, which conducted the subjects to

offer a list of attributes by free association. Such attributes, once processed by EVOC,

present themselves, in the end, in a table of four columns which contain the Central

Nucleus elements, the intermediary elements, and those which belong to the peripheral

system, ordained according to the average of the pondered averages (by order of

evocation), and with the frequency average of words.

Although the software provides a list of possible categories, in this study

three groups of students of post graduation program in education, operating independently,

analysed the output words, adding them to a dozen of category classes, as can be seen as

follows.

Table 3 Categories, by different words and occurrences, in absolute and percentage numbers

CATEGORIES NUMB.WORD % WORDS NUMB. OCCURR. % OCCURR.Well-being 59 7.77 235 8.13Lacks 34 4.47 84 2.90Citizenship 38 5.00 150 5.19Conformity 08 1.05 31 1.07Future 30 3.95 100 3.46Uneasiness 158 20.81 450 15.58Personal 158 20.81 732 25.34Production 17 2.23 232 8.03Profession / work 105 13.83 313 10.83Qualification 28 3.68 178 6.16Relationship 60 7.90 182 6.30Retribution 22 2.89 153 5.29No category 42 5.53 48 1.66Total 759 99.92 2888 99.94

Re-arranging the categories, from the number of different words found in each one

of them or, from the total number of occurrences we will have:

Table 4 Hypotheses for analysis: 1 privileging the number of different words, and 2 distinguishing the number of occurrences

Hypothesis 1 Hypothesis 2Categories Words Occurr. Categories Words Occurr.Wel l –Being 158 450 Personal 158 732Personal 158 732 Uneasiness 158 450Prof./Work 105 313 Prof./Work 105 313Relationship 60 182 Well -Being 59 235Well –Being 59 235 Production 17 232No Category 42 48 Relationship 60 182Citizenship 38 150 Qualification 28 178Lacks 34 84 Retribution 22 153Future 30 100 Citizenship 38 150Qualification 28 178 Future 30 100Retribution 22 153 Lacks 34 84Production 17 232 No Category 42 48Conformity 08 31 Conformity 08 31Total 759 2888 Total 759 2888

We found two categories, WELL-BEING and PERSONAL, those present the

same number of different words (158), which, apparently, seems to guarantee equal weight.

Going through the occurrences number existing in the categories it is possible to verify that,

while UNEASINESS covers 15.58% of the words total, PERSONAL contains 25.34%, which

turns it into the category with greater occurrence of attributes, although with a level of

greater dispersion. On the extreme contrary CONFORMITY (08) and PRODUCTION (17),

present themselves as the weakest categories. Nevertheless it will be within the

PRODUCTION category that we will find a word with the greatest index of occurrence: the

attribute RESEARCH, which appears 101 times. It is this intricate game of relations that

EVOC does not hide, but that shows its exigency of the researcher's attention and

experience.

In the data processed by EVOC, the UFMT professor considers the

professors' personal qualities, the individuals' personal characteristics, and his uneasiness

experiences inside the institution, as self-identifying as professional, before his teaching

activity.

To produce a general panorama of the results it seems relevant that be shown

the words with the highest index of occurrence, enunciated at the side of the categories in

which they are accommodated. The attributes put into relief already seem to produce

indications of the SR possible contents.

It will be possible to visualize, for example, that the PERSONAL category

shows itself as the highest contributor to the ranking formation, in which it is followed by

the PRODUCTION category.

Table 5 Categories, with their main attributes, by number of occurrence

CATEGORY N ATTRIBUTES N

Well-being 59Pleasure 34Satisfaction 30Realization 21

Lacks 34Lack of Infra- Structure 20Lack of Institute. Support 11Lack of Acknowledgement 05

Citizenship 38Struggles 54Social Compromise 27Polítics 10

Conformity 08Abnegation 17Resignation 05Accommodation 04

Future 30Challenge 16Hope 13Future 10

Uneasiness 158Low salaries 58Difficulties 33Sacrifices 21

Personal 158Dedication 95Responsibility 84Knowledge 56

Production 17Research 101Teaching 60Extra-mural activities 18

Qualification 28Study 48Qualification 31Actualization 26

Relationship 60Students 22Ethics 17Relationship 10

Profession/work 105Work 69Professionalism 21Learning 17

Retribution 22Status 52Respect 19Prestige 17

No category 42

It is necessary, now, to see how categories and attributes accommodate

themselves in the quadrants that EVOC permits to construct. On the contrary to what could

be imagined, not all the attributes with higher frequency ranking are present in the Central

Nucleus (CN).The attribute RESEARCH will locate itself between the intermediary elements.

The explanation comes from the fact that to identify the representation structure, the words

frequency is crossed with the evocation order average of each attribute. And it is from this

that result the four tables that follow:

4.24

CENTRAL NUCLEUS F EOA INTERMEDIARY ELEMENTS

F EOA

COMPROMISE 47 3,255 Low salaries 58 4,328

KNOWLEDGE 56 3,286 STUDY 48 4,354

DEDICATION 95 3,032 STRUGGLES 54 4,463

TEACHING 60 3,417 RESEARCHES 101 4,376

RESPONSIBILITIES 84 2,512

STATUS 52 3,615

WORK 69 3,304

18INTERMEDIARY ELEMENTS F EOA PERIPHERAL

ELEMENTS F EOA

DIFFICULTIES 33 3,424 STUDENTS 22 4,318

PLEASURE 34 3,794 ACTUALIZATION 26 4,346

PROFESSIONALISM 21 3,000 SOCIAL COMPROMISE 27 4,556

REALIZATION 21 3,952 CREATIVITY 24 4,583

RESPECT 19 4,000 EXTRA-MURAL ACTIVITIES 18 5,278

SACRIFICES 21 3,048 LACK OF INFRA-STRUCTURE 20 4,450

SATISFACTION 30 3,633 IDEALISM 19 4,526

PERSISTENCE 23 4,261

QUALIFICATION 31 4,290

Figure 1 Attributes which compose the CN, the intermediary and peripheral elements

The Representations Central Nucleus shows attributes that we can order by

the evocations order average (EOA), or by the attributes frequency (F):

Table 6 Attributes, ordained by EOA and by F

ATTRIBUTES F EOAEOA

ATTRIBUTES F EOARESPONSIBILITIES 84 2,512 DEDICATION 95 3,032

DEDICATION 95 3,032 RESPONSIBILITIES 84 2,512

COMPROMISE 47 3,255 WORK 69 3,304

KNOWLEDGE 56 3,286 TEACHING 60 3,417

WORK 69 3,304 KNOWLEDGE 56 3,286

TEACHING 60 3,417 STATUS 52 3,615

STATUS 52 3,615 COMPROMISE 47 3,255

In both alternatives we found at the top two attributes: DEDICATION and

RESPONSIBILITY, characteristics that the professor attributes to himself, as qualities of

personal character. It is a good indicator to show that the delineated CN points out to a

group of attributes that put themselves, for their most part, within the PERSONAL category,

derived from the production directly imputable to the professor.

The absence of the RESEARCH attribute was verified in the CN. Although

such word presents the highest occurrence index, it does not constitute itself into a

promptly evoked attribute, being defined as an intermediary element. What happens with

the LOW SALARIES attribute is not different. We can see in the right superior quadrant that

such attributes were evoked, on average, as the fourth word mentioned by the individuals.

We can compare this position with the one of the RESPONSIBILITIES attribute, which

appeared, on average, in the second evocation.

As to the intermediary elements (superior right and inferior left quadrants),

these show attributes that put themselves in two antagonistic poles: on one side LOW

SALARIES, STRUGGLES, DIFFICULTIES and SACRIFICES, on the other side PLEASURE,

REALIZATION and SATISFACTION. Intermixed, are situated the entries that refer to the

RESEARCHING, STUDYING, AND ACHIEVING actions and also to the PROFESSIONALISM and

RESPECT attributes.

Which analysis is possible up to now? What can be deduced of such data?

The UFMT professor takes for granted that from him originates the energy that moves

academic life. As the UFMT existence went by, its professors constructed a representation

of themselves as pillars and supports of academic life and this constitutes the core of the SR

which they entertain about themselves, while performing their professional activities.

The CN shows a composition that in everything resembles the construction

of the UFMT, which always derived, outside and beyond the official documents and

speeches, in the daily task, of its professors' effort, according to what infer the elements

captured by the research.

The data from that collecting analysis phase claim for a contextual part

which will be made possible by the verbal contents carted by the interviews, in which can

be verified that the first university staff was formed by professionals who, in their best part,

did not dispose of didactical and pedagogical preparation and who re-invented, through

their own personal technical competence, the ways towards the discussion of knowledge

and exchanges with the student body.

Officially created in 1970, aggregating professors coming originally from

the generating nucleus which were the Federal Law Faculty and the Cuiabá Sciences and

Letters Institute already in the middle of the decade, at the cost of huge personal sacrifices,

levies of professors directed themselves, annually, to the country centres of excellence, in

search of qualification at the masters and doctorate levels. Such movement constructed the

foundations of the CN, in which knowledge found itself equalled to compromise, to

dedication, to responsibilities with which work and teaching were faced. In the same way,

the possession of titles always was a source of status that also came from the excellence

that was being built for the teaching activity.

Thus, significations were built for “being a UFMT professor”, and the CN

cannot be read only as a list of words that constitutes the SR core but as a revelatory aspect

of a social process of the construction of the same SR, which remain submerse in the

institution hushed history, either by the absence or retraction of so many of its actors, or by

the perverse function of social memory, which, through means of movements and interests,

threw the travelled journeys to the limbo.

The intermediary elements indicate immediate reality, towards the present

plot. So the peripheral elements (inferior right quadrant) present themselves directed turned

towards the professor's professional daily life: students, actualisation, qualification,

creativity and lack of infra-structure occupy this space.

What profile is this the UFMT professor draws of himself? The main

indications detected in the ensemble analysis of the Alfa Questionnaire and the data output

by EVOC are the following:

1. The professor does not seem to experiment doubts that his most adequate

describers be associated to personal characteristics, which answer for a fourth of all

the indications (25.34%) are equally important the elements that constitute what was

called as uneasiness (15.58%), in the performance of his professional activities;

2. The professor attributes to himself the low level of conformity in opposition

to a good dose of citizenship. As it seems that it is from the retribution (status,

respect, prestige) and from the citizenship elements (struggles, social compromise,

politics) that he detaches himself from conformity and seeks his well-being;

3. The professor's role in teaching and research is correlated, as well as the

professor's role in research and the investment level that the professor makes in his

career. When he was questioned about investment in his career he explained that this

factor concerned research, publication, qualification, acquisition of books, and/or

equipments and participation in scientific events, activities that depend, as a rule,

from initiative and expenses on the professor's part;

4. The professor represents himself in a situation in which he subjects himself

to devaluation, sacrifices, difficulties and low salaries, favourable to a feeling of

uneasiness, compensated by typical behaviours of work relationship, of production

and of qualification;

5. The group emancipation line may be present in the tendency according to

which the higher the career investment, the higher the importance attributed to

research. Moreover, the conjuncture analysis seems much better developed between

the professors with higher titles and career involvements, which, in their turn, make

the future perspective oscillates, characterizing it, between these, in a pessimist form.

This seems to be one of the possibilities of reality re-signification and new

presuppositions construction for the UFMT professor's identity.

4.3. Interviews and ALCESTE

Forty-nine interviews were conducted, with professors from all the Institutes

and Faculties. The collected material received specific format to be processed by the

software ALCESTE, a program developed in France by Max Reinert, here used in its 4.0

version, of 1999.

The variables were considered for the preparation of the text to be analysed:

sex, institute or faculty of charge, maximum of titles obtained by the interviewed, class to

which he belongs to, type of link that he maintains with the institution, time of service and

age.

On the base of the data processed by the textual analysis program, the corpus

constituted by the interviews was organized in five classes, which can be visualized in the

following dendrogram:

----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|

Cl. 1 ( 285uce) |-------------+ 15 |---------+ Cl. 3 ( 265uce) |-------------+ | 16 |-------------------+ Cl. 2 ( 338uce) |-----------------------+ | 17 |---+ Cl. 5 ( 737uce) |-------------------------------------------+ | 18 |+Cl. 4 ( 175uce) |-----------------------------------------------+

Figure 2 Dendrogram, the classes and its links

According to the interpretative reading of the results, names were established

for each class, they serve as describers of the same ones:

c 1: Conflictsc 2: Personal relations and political engagementc 3: Teaching practice and professional formationc 4: Circumstances and criteria of admission in the UFMTC 5: Conjunctural analysis of the profession

In the dendrogram, we can observe, the existence of a strong approximation

between classes 1 and 3. Both show their link with class 2. Class 5 pairs itself with this

ensemble of the first three, justifying its designation of conjuncture analysis. Class 4

presents itself with a higher differentiation when comparing with the others.

From the report output by ALCESTE, was analysed the strength of the

words link in each class, as well as the context in which they appeared. The category

discussion permitted to identify the quality of the contribution of each class, in an

articulated speech of the group.

Class 1 appears more strongly at the problematical level that the professor

makes about the social function of the university and its social role. This process is lived as

social pressure characterized as something near to a recovery, which happens on three

levels: social, institutional and individual. This class also has a presentation in other

categories, with which it is less involved, achieving an indication of these. That's where it

touches the conflict relations in the teaching practice and in the infrastructure. The bridge

between these three categories and the social function is the capacity of conjuncture

analysis that the professor shows himself interested in making.

The professor speaks of his conflicts starting from his academic competence, the

interpersonal relationship in the university and the UFMT social role. Arguments can be

seen that indicate signs of the professor's preoccupation as far as academic competence is

concerned, in the sense of giving fulfilment to the social role that is expected from him.

Such perceptions seem to be lived as recovery originated from the social, institutional and

individual levels. The social function of the UFMT appears as a recovery and a criticism of

society to the professor.

The interpersonal relations are permeated by conflicts and stereotypes. Class 1

delineates contents linked to the relation between conflicts and recoveries, where academic

competence is questioned from a speech marked by expressions of the type - gee!, you got

it?-, relevant of the affective point of view, in a movement which sometimes can be

compared with an effusion, sometimes to an empathy and identification request. In this

class the professor discusses problematical issues concerning ethics of his relations with his

colleagues, and his reflexes in the political articulation of his professional category.

Depending on the interpersonal relations that he establishes, he puts himself more or less,

near the representative instances of his professional category.

In class 2 delineates a denser relational universe, concentrating aspects of the

personal and collective relationship. The personal dimension reveals a higher fluidity in the

social exchanges that sustain themselves in the micro and macro social, intradepartmental

and interpersonal spheres. Nevertheless, as the professor refers himself to his relations with

other departments, or even with the higher administrative instances, such aspect is not

confirmed.

In the collective scope it may be observed that the professor thinks his political

engagement from his participation at the ADUFMAT, the association that congregates his

class. His participation tends to vanish due to the professor's experienced perception of the

existence of personal links of preference that superpose themselves to the ideals of

democratic relations.

The remoteness that the professor experiences in relation to the ADUFMAT is

named as a lack involvement, constituting itself, on one side as an answer to the

discordance concerning the processes of decision the professional category, and, on the

other side , as an absence of reaction, a lack of compromise.

Class 3 characterizes a teaching practice referring to the experienced lacks and

necessities. The lacks are pointed out on the axis of the pedagogical formation and

infrastructure. As far as the pedagogical formation is concerned, there seems to have a

distance between knowledge and know-how. The professor emphasizes the opposition of

technical knowledge with pedagogical knowledge. As reflex of his formation the professor

points out the professor-student relationship characterizing it by professional complicity

and commitment, showing a relation between competence and seduction. Infrastructure

appears through daily problems that stiffen the professor's pedagogical project. In this class

can be observed the indication of an overcoming turned to the continued qualification

courses.

In class 4 the theme about the UFMT acceptance form configured itself as an axis

for the professor's speech about the intersection of institutional history with his history of

personal familiar and professional life. This puts into relief a tendency to the gradual

approximation of the substitute professor condition to the one of effective professor, fully

inserted in the professors' regular staff of the institution. As such a journey develops itself,

in a parallel way, occurs the larger and deeper adhesion of the personal destiny to the

institutional destiny.

The acceptance form scours a gradient that takes in from simple interviews and

selection tests up to public examinations of tests and titles. Informal dimensions as

invitations sprung from extra-academic professional contacts appear in this context.

This is where it is summarized the discussion instigated by the data of the CN,

obtained through EVOC: the UFMT acceptance forms decisively contributed, in the long

run, to the construction of the professors' SR. The personal trajectories, that we at times

insisted in not being admitted by the perverse function of the social memory contained in

official texts, crop out intermixed to the construction of the own university, denouncing that

the personal adhesions, either to career, or to qualification and professional practice,

demanded decisions and efforts from the teaching staff, more than from the institution.

In class 5 the professor does a conjuncture analysis. He seeks for subsidies on the

temporal axis to understand the present times and delineate his future at the UFMT. The

central theme of this class turns around the professor's dissatisfactions, discomforts and

displeasures.

In the present dimension, we can say that the professor designates his uneasiness

characterized by aspects such as: low salaries, early retirement, menace of privatisation

institutional death. The professor reveals conflicts of the order of choice between retirement

and investment in his professional career. He seems to believe that only qualification can

proportionate the self-esteem balance in relation to his teaching role.

The confronting of uneasiness seems to be opposite to the social image of serious

professional, powerful and apt to help society in the sense of struggling for citizenship.

In the future dimension, the professor designates his perspectives turned towards

the UFMT potentialities, taking certification as a strategy to achieve it, being research

implicit in this process.

From the data output in a dendrogram format, we can point out the strong relation

between classes 1 and 3, which indicates the proximity of their contents. The lack,

understood as problematical issues, and the recovery can be taken as approximated axis of

the classes. While in class 1 the lack is pointed out from an explicit recovery in the

professor's speech, in class 3 the recovery can be identified implicitly in the preoccupation

with academic competence marked by the professor's limitations in his pedagogical

formation.

The point of approximation that is evidenced in classes 1, 2 and 3 concentrates

itself in the question of the interpersonal relationship (especially in the ones that are

engaged with the ones that are closer) and its reflexes on the political and pedagogical

project of the institution.

In the relations between classes 1, 2, 3 and 5 we can observe the professor's

capacity to deal with problems and analyse aspects of his profession.

Class 5 is characterized for being the one that shows itself more significant as to

what concerns the textual data, once its frequencies and the 2 are the highest. The words

appear associated, forming a well-defined shape and structure, which theme reveals a

conjuncture analysis of the profession, and, probably because of this, it is closer to classes

1, 2 and 3.

Class 4 differentiates itself from the others in function of its more narrative and

less analytical character.

5. Approximation of the EVOC and ALCESTE analyses, from the personal category

The significant presence of the PERSONAL category in the superior left

quadrant processed by EVOC, the locus in which lodged the attributes that point out to the

social representations central nucleus, suggested an approximate analysis between the

results originated from EVOC and the ones produced by ALCESTE. The presence of the

attributes research, extra-mural activities and qualification in the peripheral system,

analysed through the use of the interview material, also return to relevant considerations.

It was verified in the alluded to quadrant the existence of a strong tendency

of the professor to define himself through personal attributes such as competence,

responsibility, dedication. The questioning turned to seek and understand the way by which

a similar tendency could be contemplated in the interviews. Thus, the proposed question as

starting point for analysis was: how does the professor characterize himself from the

adjectives, verbs, and expressions? In a subsidiary way, aiming at enlarging the

understanding, the concept of identity as representation of the ego, of an ego turned towards

practical activity, work, and a group of appurtenance was used.

Class 1: subject of the action

The professor seems to perceive himself as subject, conscious of his social

function. Through expressions “I read”, “I ask myself”, “I am going to watch a film”, “I

worry myself with”, we can say that he represents himself as a subject that looks for

information through which he thinks about his reality, perceiving the conflict relations, as

well as his reflexes in his personal and professional identity.

It is possible to observe the dynamics of the professor's attitude in relation to

investment in his profession which oscillate between emotional wear and the credibility in

his career potentialities. The competence question in the field of scientific investigation

presents itself, inclusive, in the questioning that it establishes in relation to the research

work.

Class 2: sociability and political engagement

The professor possesses a social competence evidenced by the form of

involvement in the scope of immediate personal relations, qualified by him, as excellent or

very good, but close and respectful as to what concerns the professor-student relationship.

In the institutional dimension, the professor characterizes himself as

deprived of involvement and of compromise, maintaining relations at times merely bearable

and of competition. In both cases, we can find in the professor's speech the understanding

of his sociability.

Class 3: mediation and technical and pedagogical competence

The professor perceives himself as engaged in his pedagogical practice,

preoccupied with the construction of knowledge, with his discernment as to what concerns

mediation, involving his interpretative capacity of the other - the student.

The professor represents himself as apt to transform himself and look for a

more humanitarian facet in his pedagogical formation process.

The search for technical competence appears directly associated in relation

to the professor-student. More competent may the professor be, smaller are the chances of a

relationship permeated by the destitution of his legitimate authority.

Class 4: autonomy in the construction of the teaching career

The professor's power is put into evidence, and still more than that, this

happens when he has lived the selection and public examinations rituals for getting access

into the career and into the regular staff, processes in which occurs an exposition and

approbation of his technical competence. It can thus be observed a significant autonomy

that the professor perceives as regard to the personal administration of his career and his

functional ascension.

Class 5: academic competence and capacity to construct excellence

The problem linked to the excellence question of the Public University

involves the professor's competence, in the form of social pressure, identified and analysed

by him. To this coercion force, that points out to degeneration, a degradation of the

University competence and its professor, he reacts restarting his researcher profile, his

social status acknowledged by the community and his project of future for his career and

for the UFMT. It is here that the professor characterizes himself as hopeful and desiring.

The professor believes in a better destiny for the UFMT, and puts himself as the historical

subject capable of taking, breaking and leading again to better paths the undesirable project

of privatisation of public university.

It can be said that, on a general level, the professor reflects and analyses his

competences either the technical and pedagogical sociability ones, or the academic ones.

In the analyses of the quadrants and of the classes processed by the EVOC

and ALCESTE softwares, respectively, an interesting movement of the attributes teaching,

research, extension and qualification was put into evidence.

Although RESEARCH had been the most evoked attribute, it even still

remained in the peripheral system, which did not happen with the less evoked teaching

attribute, nevertheless present in the central nucleus. Considering that the identity principle

that points out to the notion that man constructs himself in his own making, translated in

the form of work, we consider that the UFMT professor's representation is centralised on

teaching and not on research and extra-mural activities.

Considering the function of the peripheral system, which lends itself to the

acknowledgement of the necessities of change and to the promotion of the adaptation to

immediate reality, we have in research, extension and qualification three attributes that, by

the classes analysis, function as the professor's reaction and resistance instruments to the

political conjuncture of the Brazilian university, once these are acknowledged as indicators

that rule the institutional evaluation proposed by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and that

attain the professor's social image, reflecting on his identity.

Still in the peripheral system, we can point out the presence of the

professor's dissatisfaction evidenced by the LOW SALARIES, DIFFICULTIES, SACRIFICES,

LACK OF INFRA-STRUCTURE attributes, opposite to the attributes relative to well-being and

retribution such as: PLEASURE, REALIZATION, SATISFACTION AND RESPECT. That is when is

put into evidence how much the peripheral system can function in the sense of offering

support to the central nucleus.

6. Final considerations

The UFMT professor represents himself as responsible in making the

university delineate and follow a direction. For him, his personal characteristics are what

sustain his academic life. The decisions proceed from him as to his teaching actions, to his

own qualifying, to his making research and work with the surrounding community, to his

ability to maintain and justify his trajectory as a professor from a public university. The

UFMT professor represents himself as a teaching being, whose personal attributes sustain

the university pedagogical project.

Contradictorily, he lives in a state of dissatisfaction, attributed to the

objective work conditions. In front of the difficulties, he faces the challenges of the

construction of research, of the search for qualification and of the strengthening of extra-

mural activities to maintain his place as the UFMT dynamo and catalyser.

If one and only one sentence could describe the ensemble the

social representations apprehended in this study, certainly it would be contained

in the statement "The lead and the direction are in the professor’s hands".