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Revista Brasileira de Educação

versión impresa ISSN 1413-2478versión On-line ISSN 1809-449X

Rev. Bras. Educ. vol.27  Rio de Janeiro  2022  Epub 25-Feb-2022

https://doi.org/10.1590/s1413-24782022270014 

ARTICLE

Analysis of the movements of senses about pedagogical work in education research

Liliana Soares Ferreira I  
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9717-1476

IUniversidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, RS, Brazil.


ABSTRACT

Research is reported with teachers about the meanings of pedagogical work at school. As data production techniques, interviews and bibliographic research took place. The whole research was based on the theoretical and methodological analysis of the analysis of movements of senses, which consists in the in-depth and comparative study of the speeches, aiming at clarifying the meanings, which constitute the analytical categories. As the research is approached, it is also described and indicates how to proceed in the analysis of the movements of senses in research in education. The analysis made it possible, in addition to the deepening of the categories, to understand that teachers, social subjects, whose historicity and pedagogical work are produced daily and collectively, in the specific and dynamic environment of the school, in their speeches, denote the understatement of their understanding and of their work, because they no longer have the time and space to talk about it.

KEYWORDS pedagogical work; analysis of movements of senses; search; praxis

RESUMO

Relata-se pesquisa com professores sobre os sentidos de trabalho pedagógico na escola. Como técnicas de produção de dados, aconteceram entrevistas e pesquisa bibliográfica. Toda a pesquisa teve como fundamento teórico-metodológico a análise de movimentos de sentidos, que consiste no estudo aprofundado e comparativo dos discursos, visando a esclarecer os sentidos, os quais constituem as categorias analíticas. Na medida em que se aborda a pesquisa, também se descreve e indica como proceder na análise dos movimentos de sentidos na pesquisa em educação. A análise possibilitou, além do aprofundamento das categorias, compreender que os professores, sujeitos sociais, cuja historicidade e trabalho pedagógico produzem-se cotidiana e coletivamente, no ambiente, específico e dinâmico da escola, em seus discursos, denotam obnubilamento da compreensão de si e do seu trabalho, por não terem mais o tempo e o espaço para discursivá-lo.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE trabalho pedagógico; análise dos movimentos de sentidos; pesquisa; práxis

RESUMEN

Se informa de investigaciones con los profesores sobre los significados del trabajo pedagógico en la escuela. Como técnicas de producción de datos se realizaron entrevistas e investigaciones bibliográficas. Toda la investigación se basó en el análisis teórico y metodológico del análisis de los movimientos de los sentidos, que consiste en un estudio en profundidad y comparativo de los discursos, con el objetivo de esclarecer los significados que constituyen las categorías analíticas. A medida que se aborda la investigación, también se describe e indica cómo proceder en el análisis de los movimientos de los sentidos en la investigación en educación. El análisis permitió, además de la profundización de las categorías, comprender que los docentes, sujetos sociales, cuya historicidad y labor pedagógica se producen cotidiana y colectivamente, en el ámbito específico y dinámico de la escuela, en sus discursos, denotan la subestimación de la de su trabajo, porque ya no tienen tiempo ni espacio para hablar de ello.

PALABRAS CLAVE trabajo pedagógico; análisis de los movimientos de los sentidos; investigación; práctica

INTRODUCTION

In the studies and researches carried out, the description of the pedagogical work of teachers at school has been highlighted, problematizing it in relation to educational policies, an imaginary of the profession, the daily speeches heard and given about this work, and, above all, to a theoretical-methodological perspective. Even permeated by subjectivity, the speeches indicate a social position and a position that subjects1 attribute to themselves, in mediation with the objectivity that their work demands, with the guidelines of the institution that employs them and in which they work2.

The approach to pedagogical work implies thinking of it as a concept: what does the expression mean, its description, and as a category: how is it articulated in the speeches of teachers, interlocutors of the studies, and research carried out? This note is fundamental for understanding that it is not one or the other, but both. Pedagogical work is treated as a concept and as a category of analysis.

At first, it is worth explaining that the concept of pedagogical work referred to has characteristics related to and deriving from Pedagogy. From this perspective, the “pedagogical”, as qualification and potential, is always political, as it implies human choices and actions, within the social contexts where it takes place. And, still, it is work, but the “pedagogical” adjective characterizes it and this, as a modulator, encompasses the set of characteristics that interfere and enhance the production of knowledge, from the school infrastructure to the interaction between teachers and students, from colors that decorate the environment to the organization of the class, going through all the cultural, political, and social aspects that make it possible to have a relationship between subjects who seek to know. Based on these considerations, it is possible to systematize, initially, a conception of pedagogical work as being the whole of the teacher’s work at school, in social, political, and cultural contexts, intending to produce knowledge (Ferreira, 2017).

Without losing sight of these introductions, the objective of this text was, at the same time, to systematize research with professors about their pedagogical work and to present how the research was carried out, based on the Analysis of Movements of Sense (AMS). This double intention is associated in the argumentation, as a kind of metalanguage, in which the theme is approached, and the research is reported and explained.

It is important to highlight that the purpose of the investigation now systematized in this article consisted in attributing meanings to the speeches of teachers about their pedagogical work. Therefore, the speeches of interlocutors who experience positions marked by subjectivity, by the characteristics of the profession and by inclusion and belonging to the school were analyzed. In all the research carried out, historicity was understood as a determining and transforming element of discourses on education, as it configures the social dimension that operates in their articulation, starting to establish the cultural values involved in the subjective elaboration of the subjects.

The group of interlocutors was made up of teachers from the Central Region of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, men and women, who participated in interviews carried out in recent years, with 70% of them being over 30 and up to 56 years old. The interlocutors responded to the invitation and registered to participate in the research3. Selection criteria were: working in the final years of public elementary school and having completed a degree. Such criteria are justified as a way of creating a certain common characteristic among the interviewees and, as a result, as they are intervening elements in the meanings of pedagogical work, as they create belonging4 to a group of workers, that of graduate teachers working in Elementary Education, from the sixth to the ninth year, in the public education system. Another highlight concerns the fact that the research interlocutors are called by fictitious names, chosen by them, in order to protect their real identities.

As for the research procedure, a study was carried out, using an interview as a data production technique, consisting of semi-structured questions. Bibliographic research was also carried out. Afterwards, data analysis took place. This entire process was guided by the AMS, which is explained below.

For the production of data, initially, several works were studied, whose authors consider work as an essential category to explain the social. A scrutinizing reading at the beginning, insofar as it was meant in the discussions promoted by the study group, it gradually turned into criticism and subsidy to the analysis of the social. A conceptual elaboration was carried out. This reading resulted in the selection of initial analysis indexes and, with them, the interview was formulated, with its centrality in the semi-structured questions and in the characteristics of the reflective interview (Szymanski, Almeida and Prandini, 2011). Acting in this way, interventions, resumptions, interruptions, clarifications were allowed, in short, actions aimed at an effective interaction between the subjects: those who occupy the place of researchers and of interlocutors.

The questions that composed the interview called on the teachers to describe their pedagogical work, the social conditions in which they carry out this work, their perceptions/understandings and interpretations of this work, in addition to the general characteristics regarding the educational processes they completed to work, age, and employment time as teachers. In agreement with the AMS, the interviews were read several times and organized according to the age and self-description of the interlocutors; then, the undergraduate course and the work area were taken into account; as to the similarities in the choice of words to organize the speech; finally, as to the recurrence of words, indicating positions in agreement and disagreement. Then, the second phase took place, the moment to analyze the movements of senses in the speeches, based on the discursive organizations described above.

All this action aimed at the “reappropriation of the real” (Wachowicz, 2001, p. 176), through analysis, this essentially dialectical process. Such perspectives and research procedures required keeping in mind the fundamentals that guided the investigation, which resulted, imbricately, in a reading of the meanings, which, generically (given the characteristics of this text), are now described.

In the first section of this article, the theoretical and methodological contribution, the AMS, is characterized, highlighting the categories and descriptors applied in the process of production, reading and analysis of the speeches. Assuming the specificity of the data production and analysis methodology, part of the text is dedicated to describing it. For this reason, this excerpt has preponderance over the others, as it characterizes the research and, simultaneously, exposes theoretical-methodological beliefs and processes. Continuing, the discourses related to the pedagogical work are analyzed, highlighting the meanings and relating them to the discourses of the teachers, even though excerpts from the discourses integrate and are addressed in the other sections. Following are final considerations that aligned the argument.

THEORETICAL-METHODOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS: RESEARCH AND ELEMENTS OF THE ANALYSIS OF MOVEMENTS OF SENSES

As a theoretical-methodological framework to support the study of the speeches of the research interlocutors, we used the AMS, understood as a way to study the data in a dialectic, in-depth and creative manner. According to Löwy, Marx characterized dialectics as differentiated from a positivist analysis5 because it would give rise to the understanding of social and political phenomena, organized in accordance with the “so-called laws of economy and society”. In addition to being understood, they could be transformed, because these laws “[...] result from the action and interaction, production, and reproduction of society by individuals and, therefore, can be transformed by the individuals themselves in a process that can be, by example, revolutionary” (Löwy, 1988, p. 15).

It should also be clarified that the AMS is referred to as a theoretical-methodological foundation, whose centrality is in the discourse, “[...] understood as a materiality that can be analyzed in its contradictions, movements, meanings, indicating through these, its characteristics, which can be summarized in the form of categories” (Ferreira, Cezar and Machado, 2020, footnote 5). Discourses are human manifestations indicating the place that the interlocutors attribute themselves as workers and social beings:

These are utterances organized and expressed by the subjects, through an intention, an objective in relation to the interlocutor(s), pre-established and teleologically elaborated, because they anticipate reactions, understandings, interactions to be achieved through the expressive organization of language. To discourse, first, is to share in the social, going to meet the other, whether to share or to contradict. It is this dimension of the discourse that substantiates it as social production. Through speech, the subjects narrate, describe, plan, design, evaluate, reconstruct, and record their work. (Ferreira, 2020, p. 4)

By approaching the senses in its movements, the AMS enables researchers to be creatively inserted, urging them to have an active understanding of the world, not as it reveals itself, but as it has transformed or will be transformed and can or could be. In this aspect, it extrapolates the investigative models originating from positivism, reconfiguring the phenomena by their social and human characteristics, in addition to making researchers, when interacting with researched interlocutors or artifacts, protagonists, whose choices and analyses give them greater involvement in the research.

So, meanings are, from the AMS perspective, prior to categories. These are configured in a stage of stability, that is, they are a broader meaning that permeates texts, words, and speeches. It is considered that they are related or indicate that the subjects are under determinations. To understand these determinations, the categories are configured in the key, as they indicate discursive aspects related to living, and, therefore, to working.

It is important to clarify that, in this context, the notion of knowledge, the object of teachers’ pedagogical work, is related to social production, which takes place in language environments. In such environments, subjects produce language to express knowledge, which, through dialogue, compose, decompose, transform, reorganize, in short, are meanings, in what language, if considered its ideological marks, allows access. The formulation and apprehension of this meaning, isolating it, obviously depend on a certain degree of subjectivity, which makes the subjects perceive this or that meaning. All these aspects that characterize the production of knowledge and, in it, the processes of interpretation, are presupposed in carrying out a research and this research, in particular. The reading and re-reading of the speeches enabled the description of the categories and, these, constituted evidence of the stage of knowing in which the subjects are.

In order to settle the subjectivity indexes, at this stage of categorizing, a reference was used as a basis, a presupposition contained, in the case of this research, in the question asked to the interlocutors. Although this question may have been re-elaborated in terms of vocabulary choice, given the character of reflection that permeates the interviewing process, in its argument, it already reflects the basic categories of research interest, also foreseen when formulating the questioning. The categories, therefore, include the common discursive elements, the constitution of selective principles of these elements, the perception of their validity and suitability, having the theoretical-methodological contribution as a parameter. In this process, as strategies, the following are applied:

  • selection;

  • arrangement of selected items in organizing tables, created for this purpose;

  • reading and analysis of the material.

Tables are not usually presented in systematizations, but they were essential to organize and, consequently, analyze the data that are at the base of the arguments, configuring modes of thinking, analysis, study, and argumentation.

Therefore, the objective was to understand the movements between the totality and the specific, between causes and consequences, the contradictory ones, the recurrences, highlighting the guiding evidence of arguments and defenses, in addition to systematizations related to the original problematization of this research. This option is located in terms of what is considered significant for understanding the school pedagogical work: analyzing the speeches of the interlocutors, reading the meanings of their work, inserting them in the social totality, in the social relations of production, in the mediation between the subject and their membership of social groups. It is emphasized that totality is a fundamental category for the AMS, understood as the understanding and association between two assumptions:

[...] on the one hand, objective reality is a coherent whole in which each element is, in one way or another, in relation to each element and, on the other hand, that these relationships form, in the objective reality itself, concrete correlations, sets, units, linked together in completely different ways, but always determined. (Lukács, 1967, p. 240)

The totality, highlighted in the analysis, implies that the phenomena are only studied if they are linked to the “development of social classes, history, and political economy” (Löwy, 1988, p. 16).

Therefore, based on the AMS, analysis parameters capable of overcoming the bases established in impressions, judgments and cogitations, were intended to be created, seeking verifiable evidence within the discourse relating to the social totality. The concept of evidence refers to what is latent and, when analyzed, provides an interpretation and understanding and, as such, it is essential for understanding the discourse and, in this case, the meanings of pedagogical work.

As for its operability, the categories that make up the method and the categories that make up the scope of the research are differentiated, as evidenced in the problematization. Interpretation, therefore, is implied by these two levels of categories. This distinction is supported by Wachowicz (2001), when the author outlines the “content categories”, elaborated by the researchers from the problematization and the “methodological categories”, which are

[...] those that constitute the theory that will inform the way in which the researcher works with his object. If he contextualizes his object, then he will be respecting the methodological category of historicity. And if he chooses to study his object in the relationship established in his thought, between the aspects by which he took this object, and verifies that the relations thus studied are presented in a relationship of tension, then he will have arrived at dialectic, which is a conception that has its main laws in these methodological categories: contradiction, totality, historicity. (Wachowicz, 2001, p. 5)

It is reiterated that the categories are not being defended as a synthesis of possible senses related to the totality, to the social belonging of the subjects, in short, to their reality, at work and from it.

The dissociation between the senses and beings is not insinuating either. Human beings produce meanings and maintain them as manifestations, orienting themselves by them and reorganizing them as they live, interact, and produce knowledge. In other words, the senses are social, in the space and time in which subjects, through language, describe understandings of the world, systematizing them, appropriating them, in the form of knowledge. For that, the meanings in their individual perspective were not considered in the analysis, but in what they have as a collective and in their production conditions. That is, the subjects, the research interlocutors, although each one is interviewed as an individual, are understood as representatives of a social class, marked by their contingencies, historicity, work, and social places, from where they elaborate the senses that make up their speeches. This is because, in this perspective, category implies the senses in their social form, circulating through the social.

When referring to the conception of social class, another one is added, that of class consciousness. More than belonging, it is important to know and the proper knowledge of the group. According to Braverman (1987, p. 36), “[...] a class cannot exist in society without manifesting to some degree an awareness of itself as a group with common problems, interests, and expectations [...]”. This manifestation, of a discursive nature, is permeated by cultural and economic influences, and even the influence of another class, with a predisposition to remain immersed, obtuse or not revealed. Teachers, for example, rarely participated in the formulation of educational policies and other guidelines for their group of workers for centuries on end, starting a process of cohesion, unionization, and struggle for better working conditions only in recent decades, to which they have access through the speeches of teachers in their demonstrations or even in publications of their unions and organizations.

Thus, the AMS, in its complexity, presupposes that: “Since there are neither eternal principles nor absolute truths, all theories, doctrines and interpretations of reality have to be seen in their historical limitation” (Löwy, 1988, p. 15). Therefore, historicity, seen as a proper element in the analysis, leads researchers to the “[...] transitionality of all social phenomena [...]” (Löwy, 1988, p. 11). If guided by historicity, it is said that sense is, therefore, social. As a result, it can be concluded that the categories, these compounds evidenced in the speeches, resulting from the senses, reflect, relate to, and are the result of social interactions.

For these reasons, it is reiterated that the social is an indeclinable element for interpretation, as it contains within itself the movement of sense and interaction. Therefore, in this context, and due to participation in it, the processes of analysis and interpretation of the speeches of the research interlocutors take place.

As a result of these assumptions, the following indexes for categorization were based on the AMS, in the investigation reported herein:

  1. • work, generically, and pedagogical work, specifically: human beings produce culture and self-produce themselves, working while experiencing the general mode of production, the one that organizes society. However, they produce in the individual space, in their own space. The senses they attribute to what they live are configured in a confluence of this movement between the social, the general, their work, and their individuality. In this confluence, in addition to the senses, there are knowledge, as well as images, the symbolic, without an absolute separation, delimiting the aspects relating to the social and the aspects generated in private, as they are intertwined and continually renewing themselves. The individual mentioned here, only possible in relation to the collective, exists as part of a general and as part of that general. The individual encompasses singulars that compose it and generate similarly perceptible characteristics in other individuals, becoming collective, belonging groups. Still, the general is a set of particulars, each with its own characteristics and challenges.

  2. Therefore, in the categorization process, it was taken into account that there are, implied, semantic values related to this general conception of work and the individual, in the case of teachers, of producing the pedagogical work, guiding the entire discourse. Senses that are of the general scope are indicated and are characteristic of certain cultures; among them, we can mention the school culture, permeating the speeches. Others are restricted to certain cultures, for example the school culture of a specific school. It is exemplified by the sense of the teachers’ pedagogical work, which was presented in a restricted way in the speeches. And there is a broad sense, enunciated as a consensus among scholars in the area: “the work of teachers”, for example. To apprehend the tension between these senses means a movement between the general and the particular, understanding them in their relationship with who said it and why they said it; therefore, along with the historical and ideological aspects that constitute them.

  3. Interpretation, considering the individual and the collective as a dialectical pair, allows for the criteria for evaluating and judging phenomena (in its broadest sense, everything that happens). Paradoxically, judging is a simple way of thinking, revealing, apparently, to reduce and level phenomena only to the scope of the particular, taken as a model, as truth, even if they belong to the general. When broadening the judgment, trying to apply it equally to the general, it ends up blurring it, and not rarely, leading to hasty generalizations, a fallacious argument. Often, the research interlocutors, in their daily lives, move between private and general judgments, moving between them and appropriating them to organize the meanings evidenced in their speeches, unable to analyze them as evidence of themselves. In this bias, the AMS presents itself as a rich possibility, through the techniques to compare, interpret, analyze, and find evidence of the understanding of the discourses in comparison with the subjects who produce them in their contexts of belonging.

  4. • senses: aiming to be apprehended, the phenomena are formulated and re-elaborated by the subjects in language, producing, therefore, knowledge. Knowing implies producing language about phenomena (Ferreira, 2017). It implies not only understanding the phenomenon, but understanding its continuous change, amid other generative phenomena or generated by the one who is the object of knowledge. Relationships of senses (pluralized, as they are multiple) are perceived between the discourses. Meanings, then, can be explained as “[...] alterable elaborations and the sense are configured in a way with more stability and precision” (Ferreira, 2020, p. 12).

  5. Interpreting the speeches of the research interlocutors - teachers, for example - allows visualizing the movements of senses regarding their pedagogical work and their condition as subjects. In turn, these movements make it possible to observe and interpret the speeches relating them to the subjects. In this study, through language, the perceived meanings indicate the interaction between the subjects, the understanding of the phenomena, the speeches, the perceptions of the totality, modifying each other.

  6. • the contradictory ones: the senses, in the speeches, as they are evidence of themselves and/or about the general, reveal elements in conflict with the characteristics of the different phenomena. They are in conflict, as they deny and claim, building and deconstructing themselves, revealing more about the subjects, cultures, and experiences, than about the phenomena themselves. Applied to the understanding of the social, they indicate references to changes and, thus, to the continuous movement expected from articulated collectives, such as, for example, the group of teachers within a school. In the process of analyzing the underlying meanings in the speeches of the research interlocutors, the relationships that these subjects establish within an elaboration were also found. Such relationships reveal their political and, therefore, professional formulations, since the references to professions are the sum of the subjects’ political formulations, especially those relating to the field of education.

Proceeding in this way, in accordance with the assumptions described above, it is possible to move on to another stage in the analysis, since, after categorization, there is an explanation of what has been read and its corresponding theorization, which will indicate this dialectical understanding facilitated by the AMS in the speeches of the interlocutors. This action, once again, required parameters of validity, credibility, and reliability, greatly facilitated by the categorization process, in the way it was explained.

MOVING MEANINGS IN THE SPEECHES OF THE RESEARCH INTERLOCUTORS

The importance of listening, reading, and interacting with teachers about their pedagogical work is reiterated. Having the opportunity to present speeches about their work, the teachers deal with the symbolic material with which they guide their movements and, hardly, in their troubled daily lives, they talk about this material. Discourse is, in this context, a production and, as such, it is the teachers themselves assuming themselves as teachers, projecting to the social the meanings that are at the base of the pedagogical work carried out.

As already mentioned, in view of this context, the senses that are read and analyzed in the speeches in movement and in the social sphere, generated categories. These, once grouped, were studied and the analyses are expressed in the following arguments.

SENSES FROM THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE COLLECTIVE AND FROM THIS TO THAT: PEDAGOGICAL WORK AT SCHOOL (DIALECTIC OF THE SOCIAL/INDIVIDUAL)

In order to characterize the school, Santomé’s observations regarding a growing process of commodification not only of each institution, but of the entire school system, are retrieved based on four points: “decentralization; privatization; favoring accreditation and competitive excellence; naturalization of the individual resorting to innateness” (Santomé, 2003, p. 39). And Pérez-Gómez similarly warns with reference to the commodification of school practices:

Culture conceived as a pure commodity loses its essential identity as a manifestation of differences in life forms, as a use-value in the singular satisfaction of needs in order to become pure exchange value. The syncretism that requires the free market trivializes everything, dissolving the unique value of moral, artistic, political or cultural identities in simple decontextualized manifestations that are displayed in the windows of the world supermarket. (Pérez Gómez, 2001, p. 94)

To contribute to this description of school, it is worth remembering that this institution is part of a capitalist social context where the concept of education as a consumer good is developed, which implies promoting a consumer mentality in its users: teachers and students. This concept encourages the perception of school work and education offers from the point of view of consumers, that is, taking into account only its exchange value in the market, the benefits of this or that course, specialty or resulting title from the school educational process. One of the interlocutors of the research describes the work of teachers as a means to achieve an objective demanded by the capitalist society:

[...] it’s something too broad to be defined in a few words, but I’ll try. I think that this work goes beyond transmitting knowledge; it is also a formation of opinion, of values, especially for those of us who work with Elementary School. So, it’s something like that, with a lot of responsibility. If you fail to address some topic, something, for example, if you work with History and you don’t work very hard on some aspect, the student will continue with this gap for the job market. We can’t do everything, despite education being a continuous thing, but we always have to do what we can, not to be charged for not teaching the student, for example, to pass the University entrance exam. (Teacher José)

The excerpt from the Teacher’s speech indicates a commitment to his pedagogical work with a final result beyond the school. The school experience is, in this perspective, preparation for beyond that. As a result, the school institution becomes essential as a resource to obtain, in the future, important private benefits, to favor individually (Santomé, 2003). For these reasons, Santomé criticizes the media, especially some television programs, which he calls alarmist, inciting violence and negativity, alongside ideological discourses that preach chaos and easily reach the media, pointing to a work centered on the subject. After reporting it, the author is optimistic and understands that it is possible to transcend this publicized chaos, when thinking that there is meaning for education, even in the neoliberal context, and, it is understood, it can also be applied to more recent experiences, this period of pandemic caused by COVID-196, which substantially changed human life, relationships, and work:

Educating means offering citizens knowledge and skills to analyze the functioning of society and to be able to intervene in its orientation and structuring; this also includes generating capacities and possibilities to obtain information to criticize these productive models and these State institutions when they do not function democratically and favor the most privileged social groups. (Santomé, 2003, p. 38)

Inside the school, hired by the latter or by the State, teachers make up an organizational system and work in accordance with guidelines, plans, regulations which they do not always participate in the elaboration of. Their autonomy and ability to work seem to be determined by factors external to their choices. They reproduce the effects of the capitalist system on their lives, in what is most perverse: the loss of the right to manage and apply the knowledge of the science with which they work.

As a result of these impacts, on which they cannot always reflect, regarding the aspect of participation in the community, the school, teachers feel isolated, even though they live in the everyday collective. Perhaps they feel and present themselves that way because there is a certain resistance shown to remain isolated amid discourses preaching the collective, belonging, and insertion. Resistance is used to explain that unconscious desire not to commit oneself, remaining in the commonplace. This perception occurs when the interlocutors’ speeches claim that decisions are collective, with the involvement of everyone, but professional action is still lonely.

Well, my job is to try to transmit the knowledge accumulated by society and try to work on awareness about the maintenance of life. Here at the school, we have a collective project on valuing life. There are several group activities, but I do my part within my class, according to my planning. It worries how young people do not value life. We spent years teaching how to take care of yourself, take care of the other, be a citizen, be responsible. Then, one day, they take their parents’ car and speed away, ending up causing accidents. All of this seems to come back to us, to our work: “What have I failed as a teacher? That’s why, in the middle of my Science classes, I talk a lot about the value of life”. (Teacher Rochele)

In other words: teachers report that they are already able to plan collectively and jointly; however, in the classroom, they act individually. From the point of view of the group of interviewed teachers, there is reality and a plan to act on this reality. In turn, individually, within the classroom, there is a repetition that refers to inertia, to the lack of the desired change, making room for a complaint that is also repeated, generating more and more complaints and less collective action. In the sphere of complaint, the place for action is subsumed. The complaint can accommodate and generate the impression that, in this way, the subjects are contributing by reporting it. The complaint is similar to a reporting; however, it is apparent, as it does not become a critical discourse in the sense of proposing analysis, interpretation, and action arising from what was observed and denounced. In the meantime, the pedagogical work tends to continue the same, repetitive, leaving the unequal, innovative and non-routine only for those who manage to transgress and impose non-accommodation, learning to work together, without a preponderant place for the complaint.

Another aspect applied in the speeches, even unconsciously, for accommodation rather than for criticism and, thus, to transform, was the intensification of work, this process immersed and accentuated by capitalist society in the current stage. It is known that, in order to improve their salaries, teachers have divided themselves into two to three class shifts (this aspect was highlighted in the interviews). It does not even remotely indicate that it is a simple situation; on the contrary, it generates the dissatisfaction of not fully being in a school and participating, belonging to it. It is difficult to circumvent the time, as this is humanly impossible, so they seek to adapt it. Joint action and planning were mentioned as alternatives for this temporal redimensioning, even more when it comes to a solidary action, in the collective, adding efforts, articulating moments, speeches, and conditions. The interlocutors indicated that they wish to carry out a characteristically pedagogical work and aim at permanence, coexistence, and opportunities for debate within the school, and that this starts to be understood as an academic community, aiming to:

[...] a more integrated work around common goals, enhancing individual characteristics that become vectors for the collective production of knowledge. In the community, then, one goes beyond, producing the intersection of readings, arguments, experiences, subjectivities that, when moving, recreate themselves and demand analysis, interpretation, and systematization. (Ferreira, 2017, p. 106)

In short, it was inferred from the speeches that the school is constituted, primarily, in the time and place of the teachers’ work, which, “because of its purpose and its peculiar nature, presupposes special organizational criteria. Such criteria must be established based on the characteristics of the work that takes place there” (Silva Júnior, 1995, p. 21). In this time and place, in dialectical movements from the individual to the collective, teachers develop their pedagogical work.

THE CONTRADICTORY: SENSES CLOUDED BY THE (NON)PERCEPTION OF BELONGING (DIALECTICS OF WORK AS PRAXIS AND OF THE JOB IMPLICATED IN PEDAGOGICAL WORK)

At school, the work that teachers carry out and the pedagogical work they believe should be carried out in order to meet social demands is associated in imagination. And an interlocutor, describing her work, regarding these aspects, expressed herself in this way:

I think that, in addition to mediating knowledge, teachers are expected to make students research, learn, read, write, in short, they have a role to help in the construction of values. I think this is the most responsible role because it shapes the human being. That’s if we teachers could do such a job. Also because knowledge is extremely important, but you acquire knowledge today even on the Internet. There is the formation of values, provided for in the PP, which requires a very committed adult to convey what is right, what he thinks, what society considers right. (Teacher Ângela)

A reading of this excerpt from the speech of one of the interviewed teachers, allows us to observe that the goals she attributes to her work are configured in other people’s goals: of social, of students, of public policies. Professionals understand that it is their duty to propose conditions for the production of knowledge, to create desires and shortages in terms of learning, but they expect the student, the other subject, to reveal they have in fact learned. Perhaps, as a result, they sometimes feel distanced or unsure of the effectiveness of their production and disconnected from professional historicity.

It was also observed that the teachers, research interlocutors, are characterized as professionals; however, denoting a tendency to lose or mischaracterize their professional condition, acting in accordance with this social system that reproduces the logic of capital. In turn, capital propagates and feeds a “metabolic social reproduction” (Mészáros, 2005, p. 43), generating, as already stated, the intensification and devaluation of the work of teachers. It is also noteworthy that the devaluation was felt in moments when the interlocutors described their work and profession.

I think that currently we teach, transmit knowledge, and help the student. We have to understand their personal problems and we must understand about the time they are going through, if they have problems in the family, what is happening to be able to help them. We have to be doctors, we have to be psychologists and we have to be very up to date. We are criticized because we only chase content, which we must update, because today we have super- informed children, they demand that, they demand different classes; they don’t want to know about small things. They want more, a different class, and we are not prepared for that, we don’t have the will or we don’t have the conditions. (Teacher Daiane)

The highlighted excerpt from the Teacher’s speech exemplifies the intensification that her pedagogical work undergoes and the dissatisfaction for having difficulties in meeting all the demands perceived as a professional, a dissonance between her context and the social totality. She feels charged as a collective, as she is responsible for a collective subject, a “we”, but denotes taking responsibility for meeting this demand as an individual subject. This sense was also indicated in the following speech:

I go to the classroom and try to solve everything myself. Sometimes, we rely on our colleagues. One colleague helps another. We call the parents, we talk to them separately. So, often, the Supervision doesn’t even know about it. A vice direction and direction, never. Thus, there is no monitoring of the direction of the issues that happen to the students. Am I able to work? As far as possible I think so. But I leave a lot up to chance on this other side. We could do a lot more if we had a support, this support. (Teacher Denise)

Arroyo reports the subject’s alienation within the school, when he states that, if the topic is health, one thinks not of the hospital, but of health professionals: “[...] Health reminds us of doctors. Education reminds us of the school, not its professionals, the educators. These are not the reference, but the institution is” (Arroyo, 2000, p. 10). Subsumed within the school, professionals have limits when submitting a pedagogical work described as praxis. And, paradoxically, the production of knowledge, the object of teachers’ pedagogical work, takes place “[...] in and through praxis. Praxis expresses, precisely, the indissoluble unity of two distinct dimensions, different in the process of knowledge” (Frigotto, 1994, p. 81). Teachers assume that there is a dissonance between their production and the social totality, but alternatives are often rare. As a result, they perceive the conditions and opportunities to act on and overcome it become scarce.

SENSES, LANGUAGE, AND PRAXIS (DIALECTICS OF PEDAGOGICAL WORK)

Work goes beyond practice. Work is not just activity either. It’s more, it’s praxis. Reducing work to practice or activity consists, at the limit, in reducing human beings to the condition of being and feeling like a labor force, reducing their expectation of thinking, planning, and premeditating their entire doing. Why isn’t it just about practice? An answer is found in the speech of one of the research interlocutors, when she suggests that the practice requires repeating to reach its effectiveness:

We set up a committee to organize the vegetable garden. Every day, we go to the garden, water and, if possible, harvest. This needs to be done daily, because they forget about it, about how to take care of a vegetable garden. And, if they practice every day, we believe they will value cultivation. (Teacher Iris)

The words praxis and practice in some languages cannot be dissociated7, but in Portuguese, they can. They have different meanings. Within this difference, it is argued, defending the need to overcome conceiving the work of teachers as a practice alone, which immediately relates it to its most utilitarian aspect. It is proposed to think of it effectively as work, intentional, historical, and human praxis, which in turn is material and carried out by the social human being. Praxis is not neutral. It has a clear political connotation, from how and if it is planned.

In his “philosophy of praxis”, situated as critical transformation and knowledge of reality, Sánchez Vásquez (2007, p. 394) clarifies praxis as: “human material activity”; “transformer of the world and of man himself”; “real, objective is, at the same time, ideal, subjective and conscious”. And he explains that there is a unity between theory and practice, and, simultaneously, a difference and autonomy: “Praxis does not have such a broad scope for us that it can even encompass the theoretical activity itself, nor so limited that it is reduced to an activity merely material” (Sánchez Vázquez, 2007, p. 394).

Unlike praxis, practice is established, in the profession of teachers, as their work, showing it as localized, presentified and, above all, technologically elaborated. From this perspective, educational technologies (especially at the current time when teachers work remotely, due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19) appear in the form of strategies, which are not without intentionality, on the contrary, in the educational field, technology ends up, in certain situations, subtly making up the relationship between education and social class, relegating the school and professionals to the responsibility for any problems if they do not carry out the pedagogical work. Thus described, the practice is restricted to contributing to capitalist production, engendering value in production, creating surplus value, producing goods, consuming labor, and evidencing it in the exchange value of the goods and, as such, it is just a stage of a praxis that can be reiterative or transformative (Sánchez Vázquez, 2007).

A deep dive into practice can generate, according to Sánchez Vásquez (2007, p. 34), depoliticization, when it creates “[...] an immense void in consciences that can only be useful to the ruling class that fills it with acts, prejudices, habits, common places and concerns [...]”, capable of contributing to the maintenance of social standards, isolationism, and the very frequent discomforts among teachers. In this direction, two processes are configured, called by the author of “practical and apolitical”, which only contribute to, apparently, defending the interests of practical human beings, and, effectively, accommodating them by ideological mechanisms in this direction, a practice that ultimately benefits the advance of capital. And he warns that “practical” politicism and apoliticism constitute “[...] part of the ideology of the bourgeoisie, especially when considering that its politics from power have lost all its attraction force for the oppressed and exploited classes” (Sánchez Vásquez, 2007, p. 34).

This context, associated with the immediacy and the cult of the object, which are very frequent, contributes to the impacts on work narrated by the teachers: “In my work I live in constant challenge: how to better guide the class? How do I get my students to learn? These are issues that haunt me every day” (Teacher Nice). In search of answers, these workers can, in some perspective, become short-term practitioners, reducing their work to just attending to what is emerging, without theorizing or reflecting about it, on the contrary, moving away from theorization as it requires time, which they lack. In this context, practice is something fast, without implications, responding to what is demanded to be fulfilled, seeking solutions, based either on the action itself or on the experience that is always repeated, rather than on implications, analyses, and inquiries. It ceases to be transformative, because it lacks involvement, even though it is the result of historical subjects, carrying out a practice or a primary praxis, “[...] in a utilitarian, individual and self-sufficient (theoretical) sense” (Sánchez Vázquez, 2007, p. 35).

Considering these considerations, it is reiterated that the work of teachers is described as pedagogical work, as it is understood to be the way of acting in the social sphere, contributing to its transformation, through a set of planned actions. From this perspective, it indicates being pedagogical because it is intentional; intentionality having language as a primordial element.

Language, organized in the form of discourse, materializes the meanings produced by the subject in relation to the social, to itself as a social being, it is, therefore, a work and, as such, it produces. That is to say: a discourse is material, because it is composed of language and this, of a historical character, is human production with which the social is organized and, therefore, it is work, the element by which humans produce humans. Language is not discourse; it is composed by it, in a political way, as it is a choice, limit, possibility and is consistent with the social position of the subjects. (Ferreira, 2020, p. 16)

In short, the work of teachers privileges the production of knowledge in the classroom, both theirs and that of students, through language, something that has been repeated, in order to demarcate where and under what conditions teachers work. The action that integrates the work of teachers produces knowledge, and in addition to it, it also implies the application of that knowledge. That is why we speak of knowledge production, which semantically encompasses apprehending and applying it. In this zeal, it is important to emphasize that there is a distinction between practice and pedagogical work through the production of knowledge. This is because, since this is the reason for the existence of that, it means to show that it is not restricted to practices and techniques, which, at most, diversify the relationships between subjects, without necessarily putting them in a position to know, as these conditions denote political and transformative character, that is, pedagogical character.

PEDAGOGICAL WORK AND TEACHERS AS SOCIAL SUBJECTS (SENSES OF PEDAGOGICAL WORK)

The analysis of the speeches of the research interlocutors indicated that they intuited that their work was no longer unquestionably regarded as representative in the broader social context. In their speeches, they describe that they only seem to reproduce functions, in the form of a job, denoting that they have difficulties in seeing pedagogical workers, capable of producing and self-producing8. Arroyo (2000, p. 10) also complements, toward such an argument: “[...] there was a depersonalization in the imagination about education that does not happen in other social fields”. This process is related to a characteristically dehumanizing living logic, arising from the enormous neoliberal effort to globalize and regulate all social segments. Such effects end up generating in teachers the search for alternatives to make them feel better as professionals and they express this search in their speeches, appealing to metaphors with which they organize their imaginations regarding their own pedagogical work:

A teacher’s job is a boomerang, learning and teaching, not knowing when you’re learning and when you’re teaching. As teachers, we always seem to want the best, wanting our students to learn more. I realized, after years of work at the Magisterium, that I like what I do, I renew myself every year, trying to do my job better. Teachers need to believe more in themselves, in what they do and also excite the students. (Teacher Silvia)

This search often becomes decontextualized, it does not occur in environments where the relationship between capital and work is understood, tending to a certain romanticism that is manifested, for example, in the option to declare oneself an employee or employee, rather than a worker. However, as already mentioned, it is known that function and employment (the social allocation of the labor force through a sales contract) differs from work. Especially with regard to teachers, there are demands for understanding their work beyond technicality or a function. More than a specialized occupation, it requires belonging to a group of professionals, having as reference a social totality, in which they are included and practically seek to contribute.

Such arguments were raised, for example, by the analysis of Teacher Maria’s speech, when describing what it would be like to work as a teacher: “Look, for me, being a teacher is a very big job that you do, I think, a very big responsibility, right? It’s my job to train students, train future citizens” (Teacher Maria). The teacher discursively isolates her work at school, disconnecting it from historicity and social totality, so that she can explain it. It also reveals self- intensification, as the professional brings to her individual responsibility the “training of future citizens”, assuming it, seeming to conform to and even justifying herself with this place meant to meet broader, almost unattainable goals. In the transit of a perception of the general, applying to her particular condition as a worker, Teacher Maria ends up conforming to the logic of capital. Mészáros, in his work, clarifies:

The general determinations of capital profoundly affect each particular sphere with some influence on education, and by no means just formal educational institutions. These are strictly integrated into the totality of social processes. They cannot function properly unless they are in tune with the general educational determinations of society as a whole. (Mészáros, 2005, p. 43)

Teachers organize their speeches according to their immersion in the social, including the image of themselves as subjects. Their understanding of the work they carry out, expressed in the speeches, tends to resemble the distancing (probably in an unreflective way) from pedagogical work as social and political action. The pedagogical work, due to its dimensions, is always political, implies choices arising from and related to the social contexts in which the subjects - pedagogical workers - are immersed. Perhaps the difficulty in assuming this sense regarding their production at school concerns the fact that pedagogical work “[...] requires the subject to move between what is demanded of him by the capitalist context and what he believes as a worker” (Ferreira, 2017, p. 8). With this objective, the pedagogical work is highlighted, politically and socially enhancing the production of knowledge at school and, as a result, the teachers themselves, as pedagogical workers.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The AMS in the speeches of research interlocutors made it possible to read the meanings demarcated by social positions, by belonging to a professional group, by the consequences of working in a school inserted in the capitalist social totality and as an effect of this insertion in the pedagogical work. The interlocutors were teachers, both men and women, who develop pedagogical work, however, the meanings of this work are diversified, assuming what is required, at school and from it, and by their own beliefs, in the context of their degrees and in everyday life of which they participate, with a view to studying to carry out their work. They express themselves in a staggering way, because they seem to express something external: their pedagogical work seems strange to them, it is and goes beyond them. They prefer, then, as shown in the excerpts, to refer to students, to the school, to public policies, given the estrangement regarding the result of their professional action. They draw, as a protective mehcanism, senses of idealization and romanticism to cover up this estrangement.

The research was developed to analyze the discourses of teachers about pedagogical work, having as reference categories related to historicity, totality, contradicts, causes and effects underlying the discourses. In such a way, equally, it was intended, through the interview, that the teachers, when producing language, could understand each other and agree to be understood in their speeches.

Once the study was completed, it is believed that, by expressing the senses attributed to their work at school, that teachers had the opportunity to commit themselves, as, in rare situations, they formally express about themselves as workers and about the work they perform. In this process of expressing and committing, it was conjectured, based on the AMS, about a general element indicated by the interviews: that the pedagogical work of teachers needs to be discursive, socialized and, therefore, assumed as production of knowledge. And the school, as an articulated academic, social, and political community, appears as a favorable space and time for this undertaking.

In short, the analysis indicated that teachers, social subjects, whose historicity, and pedagogical work are daily and collectively composed, above all in the specific and dynamic environment of the school, in their speeches, denote a clouding in the understanding of themselves and their work, for lack of more opportunities to discuss it, which would contribute to materializing it as belonging. Some interlocutors also revealed that, when alone in the classroom, they repeat themselves in a practice disconnected from a critical pedagogical project. All of this happens within the school, in discourses about the work of knowledge production, disseminated in the social sphere.

Based on the speeches, joint possibilities of overcoming the repetitive everyday senses were also glimpsed, which can contribute, if they are not the object of reflection, little by little, to the distance between teachers and their work, making this a reiterative and powerless practice. What remains is the wish that teachers, as stated by some interlocutors, in their collectives, create alternatives and walk together toward the pedagogical work, conceived as argued, as critical, political, and capable of supporting a collective educational project.

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1 Subject understood as a being of possibilities, subjectivities, and responsible for their actions. From this perspective, teachers are responsible for the work they carry out, for which they choose, plan, carry out, and evaluate, in accordance with their beliefs and understanding of the context of production.

2 For the purposes of this text, a difference is established, without excluding one or the other, between work and employment. Work is understood as “[...] any excessively social process, through which human production and self- production take place. On the other hand, employment and the bureaucratized application of work, is related to belonging to the social, the need to survive by obtaining economic resources with the sale of labor force” (Ferreira, 2017, p. 599).

3 The interviews were conducted between 2015 and early 2019, in person. Thirty-two public school teachers participated. The interview script was divided into modules: a) description of the subjects, their personal and professional characteristics; b) description of their work at the school, as teachers.

4 By belonging, specifically, by professional belonging, the chance of the subjects to include their condition of workers and work is understood: “belonging to the profession takes place in the context of mediations, and cannot be understood at first, but based on relationships of work in a given socio-historical context. Professional belonging [in the case of teachers] refers to a political bias of teaching as it conceives that teachers perceive themselves as belonging to the context through work and social recognition through it in the community” (Amaral, 2016, p. 27).

5 As is well known, instead of describing concepts, the counterpoints to positivism are presented, with arguments by Schaff, when approaching research in history, which are consistent with those defended in the text: “[...] in historical knowledge, the subject and the object constitute an organic totality, acting on one another and vice versa; the cognitive relationship is never passive, contemplative, but active because of the subject who knows; the knowledge and commitment of the historian [researcher] are always socially conditioned; the historian [researcher] always has a “party spirit” (Schaff, 1986, p. 105).

6 Data production took place before the pandemic caused by Covid-19 and the writing of the text was completed during this period: “COVID-19 is a disease caused by the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, which has a clinical spectrum ranging from asymptomatic infections to severe conditions. According to the World Health Organization, the majority (approximately 80%) of patients with COVID-19 may be asymptomatic or oligosymptomatic (few symptoms), and approximately 20% of detected cases require hospital care due to respiratory difficulties, of which approximately 5% may need ventilatory support” (Available at: www.coronavirus.saude.gov.br. Accessed on: Sept. 20, 2020).

7 According to Sánchez Vásquez, “Also in Italian one can say ‘praxis’ and ‘practice’. In French the term ‘practique’ is used almost exclusively, in Russian only the word ‘práktika’ is used, and in English the corresponding word is ‘practice’. In German, the original Greek term is preserved, transcribed in the same way as in Spanish and Portuguese (that is, ‘práxis’), with the particularity that only the latter is available, contrary to what happens, as we have just seen; with other modern languages that have their own term used exclusively or together with the Greek word ‘práxis’” (Sánchez Vázquez, 2007, p. 27, footnote 01).

8 “The work - production - is what elevates man above external nature and over its own nature, and it is in this overcoming of its natural being that its self-production properly consists” (Sánchez Vázquez, 2007, p. 128).

Funding: Text prepared from a project developed with funding from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq), process 306603/2019-5, and the Research Support Foundation of Rio Grande do Sul (Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul - FAPERGS), process 2333-2551/14-7.

Received: October 29, 2020; Accepted: April 26, 2021

Liliana Soares Ferreira has a doctora in education from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). She is a professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM). E-mail: anaililferreira@yahoo.com.br

Conflicts of interest: There is no conflict of interest.

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