Social Representations about the Concepts of Emotion and Culture According To Student Teachers

Abstract

The research was initiated out of concern for the lack of knowledge that education students have regarding the concepts of emotion and culture. The specific objective was to investigate the social representations of education students in the region of La Araucaní a, Chile, regarding the concepts of emotion and culture. The method is based on the theory of social representations, so it is descriptive with a non-experimental cross-sectional design. The participants were 129 higher education students from a university in the Araucaní a region, selected under a non-probabilistic and intentional criterion. The results indicated that the words with the highest semantic weight in the core of emotion were feeling, joy, happiness, and calmness. In the case of culture, the highest semantic weight was given to custom, tradition and diversity. It is important to note that most students showed an understanding of the links between culture and emotion in their social representations, the former being a mediating element in the processes of emotional regulation. These findings support the potential of intercultural education to deconstruct the instrumental discourse of education in Chile.