Abstract

The research aimed to identify the semantic networks that will foster the analysis of the construction of the psychological meaning of the concept teacher, by university students in their first year of Pedagogy. To carry out this study, we use the technique of Natural Semantic Networks (Valdez, 1998).The instrument was applied to an intentional non-probabilistic sample of 409 students from the Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación [Faculty of Education Sciences], Facultad de Ciencias Básicas [Faculty of Basic Sciences], and Facultad de Filosofía y Religión [Faculty of Philosophy and Religion] of the Universidad Católica del Maule (Chile). The results show common elements in psychological representations of the studied groups, but meanings differentiated in the nuclei of the emerging conceptual networks, and this, according to the career, the educational level they are tied to as future teachers, and the socio-cultural scenarios in which their profession is interwoven.

Keywords: Psychological meaning; natural semantic networks; professor; pedagogy students