Discursos e identidades: a emergência do termo trabalhadores do ensino

Abstract

This dissertation examines the identity representations made by two entities representing teachers in Minas Gerais in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to understand the ways in which teachers' professional identities are overhauled. For such, an analysis was conducted, ofthe moment of institutional rupture occurred in the Elementary teachers' Association of Minas Gerais APPMG and the creation of a new entity, the Union of Education Workers of Minas Gerais UTE-MG. The emergence of the term "education workers" and its implications on the representations that are built on teachers' identities were analyzed. Thesurvey was conducted through a qualitative methodological approach, using the documentary analysis of newsletters published by these two bodies in a particular temporal clipping. For processing the data collected, the discourse analysis was used, having as reference the works by Norman Fairclough and Dominique Maingueneau. The bibliographic search established three sub-themes: conceptions of professional identities, conceptions of social identity and repercussions of the association movement on teachers' identities. The researched studies comprise different conceptions about the concept of identity, underlining, however, a tendency to treat identity as a sole unit. The study presents two basic aspects of understanding the process of constructing individual and social identities: one that emphasizes the construction of identities from relational processes of socialization, centered on thepropositions of Claude Dubar, and another that highlights the construction of identity from social struggles. The analysis concludes that there is permanent tension that pervades the identity formulations and the teachers' identities, being formed from dynamic processes,which can meet ruptures, phases of continuity or restructuring, comprising multiple dimensions, either related to the socio-historical contexts, or to the many individual and collective relational experiments which teachers go through, both in professional practice andin terms of social inclusion. From the documentary research, it can be proved that the image of the teacher as an "education worker" was a formulation which, a posteriori, became stronger, which had its discursive array as the result of memory restructuring and the past ofthe teachers' claiming movement. Even the question of identity not being the central concern of the UTE-MG in its origin, the reference to the idea of "education workers" in the discursive plan was the strategy used by the entity to establish argumentative, political action other than that used by the APPMG. Discursive practices around the notion of education worker made it possible to constitute a differentiated organizational identity, have a diverse union posture and dispute with the APPMG as a representative entity.