What is a teaching vocation? This research tries to characterize social representations around teaching vocation of students of Pedagogy belonging to a traditional Chilean university (2016-2017), reflecting on the importance, meaning, origin and use of the concept in the narratives of these students. The research uses a non-experimental, exploratory and transversal qualitative methodology to characterize the social representations of the participants, through the application of an online questionnaire and focus groups. The main findings indicate that there is a lack of clarity when delimiting the meaning of teaching vocation, attributing a property of "entity" to something that cannot be accurately described, but that most of the participants recognize as an important element in teacher development. It is interesting the way in which participants characterize the vocation, recognizing it as a dynamic factor over time and influenced both by internal (motivation and expectations) and external variables (future work context, teacher training institution and pedagogical scenarios).
Keywords:
Teaching vocation, teacher training, social representations, initial teacher training, pedagogy students
Author Biographies
Luciano Celis-Ibáñez
School Coexistence Manager, Corporation for Social Development, Municipality of Providencia, Santiago, Chile. Master in Educational Psychology.
Christian Sebastián-Balmaceda, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Christian Sebastián-Balmaceda
Director of the Educational Psychology Master, Faculty of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. PhD in Psychology.
Celis-Ibáñez, L., & Sebastián-Balmaceda, C. (2020). Social Representations of Teaching Vocation. Revista Saberes Educativos, (5), 120–148. https://doi.org/10.5354/2452-5014.2020.57819
