This study relies on the premise that all educational practices are based on presuppositions of philosophic and pedagogical nature, representing the curriculum, the vision of the world, perceived by the school and its professors. The leading question in this research can be formulated as: what is the professors' perception on the guiding concepts of the nursing degree curriculum? 36 professors form 9 nursing schools in the State of São Paulo participated in the research answering enquiries based on the technique of Semantics Differential. The traditional, cognitive, behaviorist, self-realization and social reconstruction concepts guided this analysis. The results of the research expressed the subjects preference for postures of humanistic and social character, demonstrating the orientation for more renovating postures, as well as for more traditional postures, enabling the authors to conclude that there is no predominant guiding conception in the nursing curriculum.
nursing curriculum; nursing education
