A conceptual and methodological frame to foster reflexivity on educational identity and professional practice

What is reflexivity, why is it so important in higher education, and how can it be implemented? We assume a semiotic standpoint to deal with these issues, focusing on the acknowledgment of the primary role of meaning in mediating the ways people take part in their system of activity, be it educational or professional. Reflexivity can be seen either as a specific educational model that teachers adopt to cope with the otherness of the students’ system of meanings, or a basic competence that higher education programs should promote in the students in order to improve their ability to manage the otherness with which they will deal in their professional practice. A specific reflexive model, based on narrative methods, will be presented. In this model, the development of the ways the students think of their educational identity and of their future professional practice is conceived as the emergent property in an intersubjective sense-making process, as every dialogic exchange can be regarded