O mal-estar docente no trabalho de professoras da educação infantil e a busca de alternativas para minimizar seus efeitos.

Abstract

Living with reports of education professionals on health problems aroused my interest in investigating the factors related to work that result in the physical and mental illness of teachers. As I went through the studies on the subject of teacher malaise, I noticed that few referred to early childhood education teachers. These professionals, mostly women, are the ones who meet with the children for the first lessons outside of family life, performing their work with dedication, requiring a great deal of physical and emotional effort during activities. The research aims to identify, analyze and describe the main work-related health problems reported by early childhood education teachers from daycare centers in the city of São Luís (MA), as well as the alternatives that these workers seek to prevent or minimize their effects. The study will bring contributions to the knowledge of health problems, which most affect teachers who work in this stage of basic education. The research was supported by empirical information, using as an instrument semi-structured interviews with teachers of early childhood education of public and private schools. In the analysis of the information, it was found that the symptoms most mentioned by the interviewees were musculoskeletal problems. Other symptoms were also identified, such as voice-related problems and emotional problems, due to activities with children. The alternatives that teachers seek to prevent and/or alleviate suffering are activities performed outside of work, such as walking, dancing and alternative treatments, but which were not considered as priority or continued practice. The dissertation is structurally organized, in addition to the introduction, in six chapters, the second of which presents the theoretical bases of malaise and teacher well-being; the third presents a brief survey of research on the subject of malaise and teaching work; the fourth chapter brings a discussion about the teaching work and the work process and its proletarization; the methodology is described in the fifth chapter; the sixth chapter presents the main factors of unwell in teachers; in the seventh chapter, the alternatives that teachers seek to alleviate suffering are presented. Finally, the final considerations and the theoretical framework used are presented.