The present study aims at analyzing the students and professors performance in the nursing undergraduate course of the University of São Paulo as well as learning of their own analysis about their roles. The study is based on the idea that the teaching-learning process is grounded in the interpersonal relationship between students and professors and this relationships linked to the way these individuals play their social role. The author made a qualitative analysis of four professors and four students free discourses looking at apprehending the expression of the free association of ideas as well as allowing the manifestation of the intra-psychical content of each one of them. Therefore, the author concluded that, in spite of these groups aspirations for significant changes in their roles, their behaviors reiterate former social roles based on the traditional pedagogical model.
social role; nursing teaching; social relationship