Social Representations of Students in the ENTS-UNAM Open University System Regarding the Perspectives of Gender, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study whose main objective was to interpret the social representations (SR) of students enrolled in the Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work within the Open University System (SUA) at the National School of Social Work of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (ENTS-UNAM). To this end, a qualitative epistemological approach was adopted, allowing for an exploration of the subjectivities that emerge when students engage, through their social representations, with studies on human rights, gender perspective, and sustainable development as part of their professional training. Furthermore, this approach enabled students to conceive reality not merely as something predetermined by cultural norms, but as something actively and socially constructed by individuals. The techniques employed for collecting empirical data were a questionnaire and in-depth interviews. The study involved six students from the Community Field Practice Group 9995, supervised by Professor Patricio Rivera within the SUA. The online questionnaire complemented the information obtained in relation to the research objectives, while the in-depth interviews provided privileged access to participants’ discourses, processes, and the construction of culture, specifically the educational culture reflected in the social representations of SUA students. The findings were organized according to the three dimensions of social representations: information, attitude, and representational field. This framework made it possible to gain a deeper understanding of how students perceive teaching-learning processes and how they receive and interpret the knowledge transmitted within educational settings