THE FEDERAL INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AND THE CONSTITUTION OF A NEW PROFESSIONALITY OF TEACHING IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This work discusses policies centered on the career and professionalization of teaching in Brazil, focusing on the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology (IFs), and on the verticalization of teaching. Verticalization refers to teaching at two levels on the courses that encompasses technical professional teaching at secondary level and higher education, according to the demands of each region. Considering the character of this new structure, this research aimed at examining the working conditions of teachers, and the processes of professionalization, as well as different configurations of the teaching career and professionality that result from the reorganization of the federal institutions of professional education. A qualitative methodological approach was employed, involving extensive gathering of document data and empirical research with the application of questionnaires and interviews with teachers from two campuses, one in the state of Bahia, and one from São Paulo. The theoretical concepts were taken from classic and contemporary authors of the areas of sociology and education. The analyses of the verticalization of teaching promoted by the Federal Institutes allowed us to identify three simultaneous and dialectic movements. One of professionalization, which takes place through the structuring of the career and increase in professional recognition; one of deprofessionalization, characterized by the intensification of work and destabilizing of identitarian references; and other of reprofessionalization, issuing from the peculiarities of the career and from the creation of new structures of teaching work at the two levels of teaching. This context of changes has engendered dialectically a process of reprofessionalization, in the sense of developing a new professionality of teaching.