The Precariousness of Teaching Work in Higher Education: Some Reflections on The Last Years (2020-2021)

Abstract

The present work establishes a reflection on the precariousness of teaching work in higher education in the Brazilian reality and its relationship with some evidence cited by BOSI (2007). It consists of a bibliographic survey of this reality in view of the changes that occurred in the world scenario in the years (2020-2021), due to the health crisis triggered by COVID-19. As a result, we verified that teaching work was heavily impacted during this period and that the precariousness of these professionals’ work in higher education presents a historical configuration being established in a scenario of privatization of the means of production of their work and in an environment marked by extreme competitiveness and productivity that contribute to a context of illness and the strengthening of Distance Education. This scenario is characterized by challenges, uncertainties and illness among professionals, including teachers, revealing the devaluation and depersonalization of the teaching identity and where academic productivism and the uberization and alienation of work are ratified, in the face of conditions of vulnerability that result in illness of professionals who are left to their own devices, impacting other consequences that can be analyzed in the short, medium and long term. We conclude that the pandemic is not directly responsible for all these issues, but it shows a fertile ground for the financialization of higher education, increasing precariousness, overexploitation, the impoverishment of education with a utilitarian bias, affecting peripheral and central capitalist countries differently.

Presenters

Márcia Fragelli
Coordenação Educacional, Senac São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

Details

Presentation Type

Poster Session

Theme

Learning in Higher Education

KEYWORDS

Higher Education, Precariousness of Teaching Work; Academic Productivism