Midia e representações docentes na sociedade do cansaço

Abstract

The teaching professional is situated in an educational context marked by the intense proliferation of (mis)information through media channels, and rapid technological diffusion in Brazil, since at least the 1980s, a series of successive collapses culminated in the crisis of its own professional representation. Therefore, the discussion of this research starts from the influence that the mainstream media exerts in this process, on the teacher’s representation that is constructed in contemporary times. What image is this? Who benefits from it? What are the reasons and interests underlying this representation? Under such reflections, from a prototypical analysis, this research analyzes the image of the teacher created by the media and also analyzes the representations about teachers created in this crisis-ridden context, based on the concept theorized by Byung-Chul Han in his work published in 2015 called Burnout Society. Our central objective is to understand the phenomenon of teacher fatigue and occupational burnout through the lens of the social representations that educators construct about their own professional practice, recognizing it as a social phenomenon. We also seek to identify how the intensification of teaching work, coupled with the structural conditions under which the profession develops, undermines teachers’ physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. Furthermore, the discussion examines how the media contributes to shaping social representations that reinforce a negative image of these professionals within society. During the analysis period, we composed the corpus by adopting two criteria: thematic section and temporal section. The thematic section includes texts that deal with education, teachers, and the intensification of teaching work load. As for the temporal section, it emplots texts published during the period of May 2023, the month in which the Missão Professor series was published. This article adopts a qualitative approach, as this work does not only evaluate statistical data, but also analyzes the quality of the professional practice, thus seeking to reflect on the teaching role. This study is based on a documentary research, which analyzes the series of reports entitled “Missão Professor” (Mission: Teacher), which was published in May 2023 by the Folha de São Paulo newspaper after several attacks occurred in schools in the post-pandemic period, in which schools were reopened. The study revealed that the media reinforces negative stereotypes about teaching, thereby contributing to the devaluation of the profession and the weakening of teachers’ professional identity. It was found that these workers face structural precariousness, task intensification, bureaucratic overload, loss of leisure time, as well as physical and psychological violence in the school environment—factors that have led to illness, occupational stress, and Burnout syndrome. Such conditions result in fear, career abandonment, and the deterioration of the quality of the educational environment.