Social representations of teachership based on students’ and teachers’ drawings of a typical teacher

Abstract

This study examines social representations of teachership based on students’ and teachers’ drawings. Fifty-nine students and thirty-nine teachers in upper-secondary education in Finland participated in the research, drawing a picture of a typical teacher and commenting on their drawings verbally. The study focuses on what kinds of social representations of teachership the drawings suggest and how teachers’ and students’ social representations relate to each other and to Finnish education policy. The data were analyzed by content analysis. This study shows that teachers’ and students’ social representations of teachership differ from each other and also deviate from Finnish education policy to some extent. Furthermore, the results suggest that teachers do not pay sufficient attention to their visual nonverbal behavior, which might contribute to the formation of unfavorable social representations of teachers among students, influencing interaction and learning negatively.