The reconfiguration of the educational self in the context of higher education

Abstract

This paper aims to explicate the experience of higher education in the reconfiguration of the Educational Self, based on the dimensions analyzed in psychosocial development and highlighting the contributions of Cultural Psychology. Based on a qualitative research and anchored in the narrative method, it presents an empirical framing of an episodic interview with an undergraduate student. Data analysis consisted in the identification of thematic nuclei centered on ambivalences and signs, emerging from the discourse on identity positionings and trajectories. Results show that the academic experience is guided by the sign of coping, permeated by the dialogical tension between the construction of knowledge and the confrontation between sociocultural differences. These findings confirm that the dimensions of the Educational Self are formed and reactivated during critical phases of life, at school and at the university, moments of change in temporal perspectives and sociocultural orientations. The university appears, thus, as a cultural frontier where belongings and new identity positionings activated by dialogical processes meet, constituting a mediator for the emergence of new psychological functions.