Social representations of teaching work and retirement for two federal universities professors
Retirement; Social Practices; Social Representations; Teaching.
This study aimed to analyze social representations of teaching and retirement based on the social practices of professors from two public federal universities. For this purpose we tried to identify the structure and content of social representations that permeate the discourse on these issues and to associate information on sociodemographic characteristics, perceptions of work conditions and family situation with the social representation of these issues and their social practices. The study tried to answer the following questions: what are the social representations of teachers from federal public institutions regarding their work and retirement? How do social representations of work and retirement become associated to construct the practices of this professional group? In order to reach the objectives, quantitative and qualitative techniques were applied in parallel, with an online questionnaire (313) and narrative interviews (20). The results indicated that social representations of teaching encompass four dimensions: being, doing, knowing and feeling, which suggests that this type of work involves identity, knowledge, action and emotion. The professor-student relationship helps build more significant representations of work. The teaching practices that stood out the most were research, teaching and management. Teaching practices build a professional identity that interferes in the social representations of retirement in the sense that retirement may be delayed due to the great identification with the job. The strongest positive social representations of retirement were: returning home, better family living, a new phase and time for leisure and travel. The strongest negative representations were: fear of idleness, illness and aging. There were no significant differences between institutions. The study fulfilled its objective of theoretically advancing in relation to associations between social representations and different phenomena and the association between social representations and social practices. It aims to help construct policies for professors that plan to retire, as well as policies to combat ageism in institutions.