Representations of Institutions and Scholastic Esperience in High School Students

The concept of Institution, in the double meaning of datum and act (Lapassade, 1967), involves the distinction between the “instituted dimensions” and the "the act to institute" (Carli, 1974). A particular role is played by the scholastic experience, real laboratory for the construction of the institutional representations that mediate human interactions (Doise and Palmonari 1986; Doise 1990), contributing in addition to the construction of the Possible Selves (Markus & Nurius 1986; Oyserman, & Fryberg, 2006; Oyserman, et al., 2006). In this study we suggested that the representation of the Institutions (school, politics, police, etc.) was correlated to the scholastic experience in terms of performances and socio-relational dynamics, as well as to the Actual and Future Self representation. The sample was constituted by 88 high school students. The results showed a positive representation of the Istitutions (“police” and “school”) and a negative representation of “politics”. Significant differences emerged in relation to scholastic success/failure: those who considered their scholastic performance as a success showed a better representation of the police than the others. The relationships with classmates, teachers and the headmaster, and the willingness to go to school correlated positively with the representation of the scholastic institution, whereas the future Self correlated positively with the representation of the police. The linear regression analysis showed that the relationship with teachers can be considered predictive of the representation of the “school”.