A configuração do trabalho docente em face às contrarreformas da educação: um estudo sobre os professores da rede estadual de Minas Gerais em São João Del- Rei

Abstract

This research investigates the work of state school teachers in Minas Gerais – Brazil, considering the educational counter-reformations that emerged in the 1990s. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the configuration of teaching in elementary and secondary education in state schools located in the municipality of São João del-Rei (SJDR) under the counter-reformations process. The research’s epistemic foundation rests on historical-dialectical materialism taking into account Karl Marx, Karel Kosik and Edward Palmer Thompson’s theories. The methodology combined techniques, such as documentary research, bibliographic research and an open-ended and multiple-choice survey of 203 teachers of São João del-Rei. In addition to the Marxist concepts of labor and educational policy, the corpus analysis is also based on three content categories: professionalization; professionalism; teacher’s professional identity. The study reveals that there has been an international counter-reformation tendency in education, which has been affecting Minas Gerais educational policy since the 1990s. The research also concludes that: (I) the counter-reformation elements are present in Minas Gerais educational policy and in the schools investigated. Among such elements, we could highlight: the managerialism, the pressure upon students’ failure and success, the undue exigencies towards the official assessments results, the control over teachers carried out by performance evaluation and the fragmentation and heterogeneity of this category; (II) the teachers that graduated from public schools and that were hired through civil service examinations are the most resistant and critical to the educational counter-reformation in Minas Gerais state. They are also the ones who empathize the most with trade union movements; (III) In the teachers’ perspective, the profession has lost its social prestige and they believe that Minas Gerais government policies have contributed to that; (IV) The teachers have noted that the systematization of knowledge in curriculum content has been losing its importance in school as the counter-reformation policies have shown; (V) When the teachers were asked to list the main traces of contemporary teachers’ profile they chose counter-reformation representative concepts such as individualism and neoprodutivism in education. Therefore, given the education counter-reformation process, this study shows that teachers have been challenged both to: make public school a space to share historically accumulated knowledge and also to maintain the nature and the specificity of the teaching profession.