Yrket som föreställning : en analys av föreställningar hos studerande inom fyra högskoleutbildningar

Sammanfattning: This study deals with students' notions of the function in society of their future professions. The overall aim is to study what notions are actually represented by the students and to describe the content of these notions. Another aim is to study how the students' notions change during their period of training. Slightly more than 100 students, distributed equally among the higher education programmes of economics, medicine, psychology and engineering, were interviewed when entering these programmes and after a period of approximately three years. The result of the analysis of notions was that five qualitatively different categories of notions could be discerned among students of economics, psychology and engineering, whereas three could be found among students of medicine. The categories run on a dimension from the profession being regarded as manifestations of and subordinate to an economic-political system, to the profession being regarded as manifestations of and subordinate to individual differences. The various categories of notions have been given names intended to, somewhat incisively, summarize their content. The students of economics and engineering changed during their period of training so that a larger number of them conceptualized the profession as a manifestation of individual differences. The students of psychology changed in the opposite direction and the students of medicine remained in the middle position. An analysis of the students' reflections on notions and the conceptualization per se, has also been carried out. This analysis is an attempt at problemizing the relation between notions and actions. It showed that, at the end of their training period, the students of psychology and, to a certain extent, the students of engineering more often than students of economics and medicine, considered the possibilities of acting in accordance to their notions of the ideal function of the professions. Attempts are also made at relating certain changes of the students' notions to specific characteristics of the educational programmes. The importance of students' initial notions for how they change is, however, also analysed and emphasized. The answer to the question of students' change of notions during their period of training can, in other words, be found in the dynamics and in the opposition between students' initial notions and the notions of the professions conveyed by the education. In relation to the goal of higher education to encourage critical thinking in students, the results of this study indicate that the educational programmes, rather than conveying one specific critical notion, should convey an awareness of the fact that there are different notions of the function of the profession. The students would then be stimulated, on the basis of their own initial notions of the profession, to make critical examinations of, to decide on, and to make their own choices of alternative notions.