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social representation; professor-manager; undergraduate course coordinator; teacher training.
In a higher education institution, a professor can assume various roles, such as undergraduate course coordinator. This thesis aims to investigate, with the Social Representation Theory, the meanings attributed by this professor-manager to her/his performance. The theoretical approaches adopted for this study are Social Representation Theory, based on Moscovici (1961, 1976, 1984, 2003) and Jodelet (2002); Central Core Theory, by Abric (2000) combined with structural approach (Sá, 1996). The sample for this study consists of 16 undergraduate (licentiate courses) course coordinators from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Central campus. To achieve this objective, in the empirical dimensions, this study used as tools semi-structured interviews; Free Word Association Test (Talp), for obtaining the respondents' evocations; and a questionnaire applied to identify the profile of these agents. Aiming to portrait this data, it adopted the Representational Spiral System, in order to analyze evocations of the research agents. Based on the Content Analyze, this study presents four categories, namely: professional (formative), descriptive (being a coordinator), missional (affective), and operational (task-oriented). According to the agents, teacher training is not sufficient for the development of this function. The results indicate that the agents do not have a concrete social representation, collectively shared among the professors-managers. The study identified that there is not a consolidated social representation, there are only meanings attributed to their practice, highlighting a circulating speech consistent with what is expected of a professional that develops this function.