A permanência e o abandono da profissão docente entre professores de matemática

Abstract

This study researched the permanence and the dropping out of mathematic teaching, according to the perspective about the individuals identity construction. Two groups of mathematics teachers participated in this research: one group of nine teachers who worked at public state schools of Belo Horizonte and other eleven people who have dropped outteaching. It started from the assumption that the elements that guide the career choices of the subjects are associated to the images that they incorporate to their identities. These images refer to themselves, their functions, their practices, their formations and their historical relations (social, economic, cultural and political) in the search for shaping the meaning of the job. In turn, this search for a meaning for the profession is closely linked to the construction of identities. It was taken as the main theoretical orientations the contributions by Gee (2000) about identity. This researcher believes that people are as they are because of their positions in different social contexts in which they participate, and the process of identity construction is dynamic, always subjected to changes. The research was qualitative and, for the construction of the data, semi-structured interview was used. The data were presented as narratives constructed by the researcher. In these narratives, it was portrayed the experiences reported in the interviews in terms of the kinds of identity proposed by Gee (2000): natural identity, institutional identity, discursive identity and affinity identity, trying to relate them to the phenomenon of permanence and dropping out of the teaching profession among the survey participants. For the most part of the individuals-participants, it was the life circumstances that directed them to the teaching profession. The reasons that led teachers to support their institutional identities staying in the teaching profession were: professional vocation, difficulty of designing new career prospects, reaching a professional position, ensuring job stability and having a profitable activity. However, the support of this identity in the permanence of teaching proved to be, in most cases, suffering because of a strong tension between the institutional and discursive identities of this group of teachers. In the case of the group of former teachers participating, it was produced evidence that the main reasons that led them to drop out the teaching were the experienced tensions between its institutional anddiscursive identities. The working conditions that supported the institutional identities of these former teachers showed up conflicting with the work experience they would like to or believed that they should practice. As pedagogical implication of this study is recommendedan opening of educational institutions for mathematic teachers to negotiate their institutional identities in order to minimize the effects of tensions alluded to in their professional practices.