A (re)configuração do trabalho docente de uma instituição federal de ensino na pandemia de covid-19: sob o prisma do ambiente de trabalho saudável

Abstract

The pandemic has increased the occurrence of emerging risks related to productive process change and has boosted new ways of work structure. Mostly the need for social isolation, among other outcomes, made the education institutions restructure the way of working, in order to ensure that the distance education model would keep on going. Such a restructuring is not free of risks, which can be avoided or reduced with the placement of legal devices and activities that are part of an effective security culture and of a Healthy Work Environment. Due to these facts, the purpose of this study was to understand the reorganization of the way of working through the perspective of teachers from a Federal Education Institution during the COVID-19 pandemic following the Healthy Work Environment. It is about research of a qualitative nature with a holistic single-case study design, which data collection was made by means of individual interviews, following a script prepared previously. The participants of this study were 19 teachers of a Federal Education Institution located in Minas Gerais. The evidence source was the individual interviews and the document analysis. The data was analyzed through the content analysis method of Bardin, along with ATLAS.ti. software. It is important to reinforce that the study was approved by the ethics committee, and it was aligned with all the ethical and legal aspects when conducting research with human beings. The document analysis consisted of a corpus of 65 documents, which were responsible for many of the processes that reconfigured the teaching work (and that also were mentioned by the participants during the interview) were identified. Furthermore, after data processing and analyzing, three categories emerged, which were: Strategies to face the pandemic; Challenges in the teachers’ work environment during the pandemic; Improvement opportunities that came with the pandemic context: what remained and what could have been done? The first category included institutional and individual strategies to face the pandemic; availability of personal health resources; availability of resources within the institution and strategies of resources acquisition by the teachers. The second category presented the challenges lived by the teachers in the work environment during the pandemic, which resulted in the work remodeling referring to the workplace environment; the work performance; the student learning and the pandemic impacts in the personal life. The third category approached the guidance that can be inferred related to the teachers’ job in an education institution according to the context experienced during the pandemic, focusing on the learning of new technologies, advances at the teachers’ job and strategies that were expected by the teachers in order to face the issues imposed by the pandemic. The efforts of the institution and the teachers to adapt to the education restructure and to guarantee that the learning would keep on going during the pandemic were clear. However, the challenges faced by the teachers resulted in consequences, reducing the quality of the work environment and confirming the need to invest in the Healthy Work Environment. Besides the discoveries, the results show improvement opportunities coming from the pandemic context. It was possible to conclude that the work restructure during the pandemic affected the way the teachers connect with the work environment, the staff, as well as with their personal and professional life, with their physical and mental health and with the community. It is necessary that the education institutions have a different point of view when it comes to the employees’ health and security management, based on the Healthy Work Environment, ponder about the potential in favor of the teachers’ work improvement on a pandemic scenario, and that they are more prepared to other possible moments of crises.