[Teaching development and professional identity in nursing: the system of concepts as a mediator in learning]

The focus of this study is characterisation of the representations socially constituted about the concepts "Nursing" and "Nursing and context". The interpretative mental schemes were sequentially configured during the Graduation course starting from the written answers supplied by students to the following questions: "How do you judge Nursing?" and "What is the relation between the profession and social context? "We have used interpretation schemes based on the contain analysis. As a result, we have identified a peculiar development of schemes formed by means of structures that were involved with forming system and used system of human resources as reference which promote distinct perspectives of professional performance. The components nucleuses of each stage of conception expressed the logical structure which were incorporated to subsequent construction, that configures a evolution determined by selective adhesion of students to the graduation or to the practice field. There has been a movement alongside to those systems resulting from discrepancy between the experience and personal schemes.