SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF TEACHERS ABOUT THE USE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN TECHNOLOGICAL HIGHER EDUCATION

The field of education and technologies as an area of knowledge has received significant attention in scientific studies for just over two decades. The general objective of the study was to investigate the contents of the social representations of professors of technological higher education about information and communication technologies in the educational space and as a specific objective, to investigate the representations about classroom and distance learning. As theoretical assumptions, Moscovici's theory of Social Representations was adopted, which defines social representations (RS) as the set of opinions, beliefs or values that are socially constructed in groups delimited in relation to a given object and for Jodelet (2001), social representations are forms of knowledge that are socially produced and shared, with a practical orientation, contributing to the construction of a reality common to a given social group. It is observed that in the group represented, there is a belief that the simple instrumental use of ICTs would modify the teaching practices of teachers, presenting an idea of common sense about the theme, as it was expected that the teachers interviewed would bring more in-depth notions on that issue. It was observed that most technological devices have a generalist character and did not incorporate specificities of an educational nature. Thus, teachers end up reproducing the same practices with other types of support and believe that they are innovating in their practices. It is also possible to observe that the teachers believe that classroom teaching is higher than distance education because they work primarily with expository classes.