Russian Students' Social Representations of Higher Education.

Marianna E Sachkova,Galina K Esina

doi:10.3390/bs10010002

Abstract

The ideas of the theory social representations proposed by Moscovici and developed in the structural approach by Abric were used in the research in order to reveal the structure and content of students’ social representations of higher education in a modern society. The total sample size was 572 students: of which 197 were secondary school students (average age of 16.7), 189 were undergraduate students (average age of 20.8) and 186 were master students (average age of 29.3). The methodology of Vergès for the analysis of the structure of social representations was used. We tested the hypothesis that the structure of social representations of higher education has general and specific features correlated to the age and educational level of students. It was found that the social representations of schoolchildren, undergraduate students and master’s students differ in a number of elements and content characteristics. Generally social representations of students with different education levels had similar characteristics. Students of secondary schools expanded the core performance, in contrast to students of universities, presumably because of their fewer social experiences, providing large “distance” to higher education as an “object”.

Highlights

A higher education is the basis of one’s self-development, a necessary start of career and for further success in the life
A total of 985 words were evocated by secondary school students in case of stimulus “higher education”
It was confirmed that the core of representations of higher education of secondary school, undergraduate and graduate students differed in the number of elements and their content characteristics

Summary

Introduction

A higher education is the basis of one’s self-development, a necessary start of career and for further success in the life. The theory of social representations by Moscovici describes social representations via ordered, related images, ideas, knowledge, and beliefs in relation to the changing events, shared by individuals included in different social groups [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. The social representation theory assumes an existence of a dynamic interdependence between the specific, culturally conditioned forms of thinking fixed by means of language, and their transformation at the expense of activity of individuals and groups. It is possible to tell, about individual social representations, and about the collective social representations characterizing separate social groups [1,8,12,13,14]

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Conclusion