Corporeidade e representações sociais: agir e pensar a docência

The aim of this study is to reflect upon teachers' bodily manifestations and the representations constructed about their profession. A group of students enrolled in an undergraduate program in Education and another group from a graduation program in school administration took part in this study. Subjects examined three pictures of people acting as teachers and were requested to point among the figures which ones they considered to be real teachers and to justify their answers. With this methodology it was possible to identify which body manifestations were identified as typical of teachers. It was observed that judgments based on the photographs reflected teacher-student ways of interactions. For the undergraduate students, the word "posture" and gestural descriptions indicated representations focused on teacher's actions, while for the graduate ones action verbs and words referring to the others involved in the interaction revealed a more dynamic representation of teacher-student relationship.