Social transcultural representations about the concept of university social responsibility

ABSTRACT

The new paradigms of university social responsibility (USR) conceive students as key players who express their beliefs, attitudes and opinions both in the professional training process and in their willingness to serve the community in line with the agenda of USR. This research focuses on a comparative study of the social representations that students of two higher education institutions have on the concept of USR. From a qualitative methodological perspective, using focus groups and semi-structured interviews as the information collection technique, the narratives of 50 participants were analysed by codifying and prioritizing the categories in accordance with the assumptions of the central core theory for the study of social representations. The results show that the central core of the representation focuses on prosocial sense. The peripheral elements are associated with social awareness, mutual respect, co-responsibility, social projection, university identity, and comprehensive education and entrepreneurship, among others.

KEYWORDS:

• Social representation
• university social responsibility
• education policy
• education system
• higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Idaly Barreto http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3677-852X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Catholic University of Colombia [grant number PIC_212_P_1].