Trabalho do(c)ente e saúde do trabalhador: compreensões de coordenadores de programas de pós-graduação stricto sensu de instituição federal de ensino superior

Abstract

The interrelationships between work, health and the life of graduate program coordinators stricto sensu in a federal institution of higher education constitute the research theme. The objective was to analyze how the coordinators understand the teaching work and its impacts on worker health. The specific objectives were: a) to evaluate how extensification of work and presenteeism impact on the invisibility of illness processes; b) identify the immersion of teachers in digital technologies and the possible dilution of barriers between work and everyday life; c) understand the relationship between health and teaching work in the experiences of coordinators and their peers. Of qualitative nature, the construction of the data used the technique of interview with semi-structured script. The participants are seventeen coordinators of academic master's courses, professional master's and doctorate of a federal institution of higher education, contemplating the areas of knowledge defined by the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development. The interviews were audio-taped, transcribed and thematically analyzed. In the analysis, the following categories emerged: "teaching work", "teacher identity", "digital technologies", extensification and intensification of teaching work" and " "health of teaching worker". The study evidenced the existence of a plurality of senses and meanings for the teaching work. The coordinators combine management, teaching, research and extension. The metric built by academic capitalism focuses on the teaching career and the performance evaluation and permeates the dimensions of the participants' performance. Teaching work confers teachers' identity and expresses themselves in experiences permeated by pleasure and/or suffering. The organization and working conditions have a direct impact on the health and life of postgraduate coordinators who assume the status of full time workers, with evident intensification and extensification of work, a reality aggravated by the use of digital technologies. Illness and its relations to the work are invisibilized. In the individual dimension, there is the denial of illness and its relations to the work. The narratives indicate the continuity of work even in poor health conditions and serious illnesses. Commitment and responsibility justify presenteeism. In the collective dimension, even if identified, the sickness of the peers is not a priority in the agenda of interests, because ties and empathy are contrary to the productivist dynamics.The study demonstrates the consolidation of the logic of academic capitalism in postgraduate courses and its impact on the different dimensions of the life of teaching workers. Although the relationship between work and workers' health are deep, this does not make up the list of priorities of the federal institutions of higher education, government policies and development agencies. It is urgent to expand a critical view on the health of the teaching worker and the construction of collective coping strategies.