Teachers’ health and research: subject or object, seldom as affect

Abstract

The article presents the construction of a strategy for research in worker’s health, according to the profound desire to say, about the workers, focusing on the basic education teacher. It discusses aspects of the research that point to the subject or object of investigation, suggesting the power of affecting and being affected as a relevant opportunity of qualitative research. A level of affections is constituted more as a difference between what is lived in common and identity representations than a lived experience or a representation. The article reports part of an ongoing doctoral thesis in education, which uses narratives of teaching, supported by writing of the self, as well as life stories, in the manner of “escrevivências” (“writtenlived”) and that, in an original way, appeared as “escreversões” (“writtenversions”). The referential to find the active doing of teaching comes from the activity clinic. The proposal was named as “co(m)texts of the teaching work: suffering and joy in school teaching” and has been under experimentation since 2019. The situations of affective engagement are a necessary factor to persevere in teaching; it is at this point where lies resistance and creation, but above all the ability to fight for a better and healthier school, teaching and the political construction of school education.