Reflexivity and Alienation in Academic Training

Nowadays academic training has gone beyond educating technicians and has become a part of common training. “Common training” here is seen as “making the self”. Our theoretic assumption is that self can be made through expressing itself; namely through confronting the world, and through making changes in its context. This is a reflexive self. In contrast there is an alienated self which is isolated from the society and detached from its context. From such point of view society is seen as simple summation of independent individuals. This is an alienated self. The question is that among two situations, the situation of educating at the sphere of natural sciences and at the sphere of human and social sciences, in which one is it more possible to make a reflexive self? The research has been conducted via deep interviews with students. Social science faculty of university of Tehran was selected as a sample for human science disciplines and engineering faculty of university of Tehran as a sample for natural science disciplines. 15 students of each faculty were interviewed. The results showed students who are training in social science faculty, have a more reflexive and contextual understanding of the self.