Academic Cultures: Psychology of Education Perspective

Abstract

This work contributes to a wider range of research, the main objective of which is to investigate models of thought and behaviour that result from belonging to a given academic culture. The academic culture that will be examined is that within the university system, and this research will look at how this culture can take different forms. According to (Bourdieu, 1984), university professors hold an institutionalised form of cultural capital that places them in a dominant position within a field of power. The university system is immersed in a specific culture, and it expresses a given culture and understanding this culture will allow one to understand the system itself (Anolli, 2014). Cultural models are the result of a process of signification, which is understood as the ability of a group or community to elaborate a shared symbolic dimension around an object or symbol at a given historical moment. The cultural models that underlie the professional context orient social and organizational behaviour, which contributes to the construction, on a symbolic level, of identity.