Banca de DEFESA: CLARISSA GOMES VIDAL

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : CLARISSA GOMES VIDAL
DATE: 29/01/2026
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: Sala de Atos FE3
TITLE:

The Pain That Teaches: Subjective Suffering of Teachers in a Public School in the Federal District

KEY WORDS:

Teachers’ suffering. Subjectivity. Social subjectivity. Public teaching. Education and health

PAGES: 150
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Educação
SUMMARY:

This study emerged from concerns regarding the significant increase in the number of teachers diagnosed with psychological problems and placed on medical leave in Brazil. The ways in which this issue has been addressed have proven to be limited, revealing a tendency, sustained by hegemonic discourses, to understand teachers’ suffering through simplified explanations marked by medicalizing, pathologizing, and individualistic perspectives. In this context, the study aimed to understand how expressions of teachers’ suffering are subjectively configured in a public secondary school serving both upper-secondary and lower-secondary education in the Federal District, as well as the subjective resources implicated by teachers in this context. The research was grounded in the Theory of Subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective, as proposed by González Rey, articulating education, health, and teachers’ suffering through a relational, historical, and socially situated understanding of educational processes. Based on these articulations, the study problematized the role of the teacher in professional practice, considering the educational times and spaces in which teaching is constituted, as well as the technicization of education and the growing symbolic precariousness to which teaching is subjected. From an epistemological and methodological standpoint, the research was guided by Qualitative Epistemology, articulated with the Constructive-Interpretive Methodology, and involved five months of fieldwork. This process included the use of different research instruments at significant moments of everyday school life and in projects developed within the institution, involving teachers and other members of the school staff. Conversational dynamics and participant observation were the main instruments used in the production of information. The research findings were organized into two thematic axes. The first analyzes the social subjective configuration of teachers’ suffering in professional practice, crossed by processes such as the weakening of bonds, medicalization, school violence, social vulnerability, and the erosion of collective instances in public teaching, as well as by issues related to school management that specifically shaped the investigated context. The second axis addresses the subjective suffering of a teacher, as well as the subjective resources mobilized by teachers in response to contemporary challenges of the profession, considering the diversity of professional trajectories across the life course. The study highlights the need to understand teachers’ suffering as a relational, historical, and socially situated phenomenon, emphasizing the importance of investing in the construction of high-quality dialogical spaces, strengthening collective instances, and recognizing teaching as a profession that is central to social life.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 3171415 - DANIEL MAGALHAES GOULART
Externa à Instituição - GEANDRA CLÁUDIA SILVA SANTOS - UECE
Externa ao Programa - 2686011 - SANDRA FERRAZ DE CASTILLO DOURADO FREIRE - nullExterna ao Programa - 1549024 - WILSA MARIA RAMOS - null