Introduction

The conceptions of teachers influence the interpretation of educational situations and their daily pedagogical practice. Knowing them is important for planning training processes.

Aims

To describe the conceptions about the learning and the teaching that the teachers of the health careers of an university have, to establish if these conceptions have similarities with some of the classifications already described in other publications and if these teachers support conceptions close to the constructivist perspectives.

Subjects and methods

The study was performed from the perspective of phenomenology with semi-structured interviews. The sample was intentionally selected and was of 28 teachers of health careers with pedagogical training. An analysis was carried out by dimension and another one of internal consistency of each interview.

Results

On this basis, three profiles of conceptions were elaborated: teaching provider-passive student, teacher-coach-active student, and teacher-tutor-student manager.

Conclusions

The teachers interviewed, even with specific training in education, do not conceive learning as a construction process, but only as the incorporation of socially validated knowledge. But, in addition, they use terminology that comes from constructivism without being able to account for the meaning of these terms in the context of the learning theory that sustains them. In the comparison with other authors, the profiles elaborated would be closer to direct and interpretative conceptions of learning and there are no profiles in which learning is clearly defined as a process of knowledge construction.

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