Teachers: Between trade union and professional class

Abstract

This article develops along four sections. In the first section, after presenting some results of a sociological survey of teachers carried out by Manuel Braga da Cruz in 1989, I conclude that theirs is a growing social group, mostly female, that sees itself as underpaid and having little social recognition, politicized, unionized and deeply involved with the Catholic community, and that, at the time of inaugurating a new legal statute for the profession, the group has divided and contrasting opinions on the existing career model, where progression is mainly based on seniority, and a hypothetical selective and pyramidal model, based rather on an actual evaluation of the professional abilities of the teacher. In the second section I endeavour to describe the professional regulations that were in place when the PS (Socialist Party) government took over, in 2005, and the assessment I then made of the professional career of teaching. In the third, based on a book report recently published by the former education minister, I identify the measures that changed the professional situation of teachers, focusing particularly on the teaching career statutes and performance evaluation. Finally, in the fourth, I follow and discuss the analyses made by the sociologist Alan Stoleroff on the developing conflict between government, unions and teachers that marked that incumbency. I conclude that the professional power of teachers – still noteworthy in spite of their attrition and loss of authority – combined with the resentment they feel due to their poor social recognition and the assets made possible by an above-average social capital (skills of erudition and communication, integration in the ‘real world’, middle-class relational networks), determines, on the whole, that this professional group should resist, in this conjuncture, the ‘temptation’ to evolve into an occupational model that is internally more differentiated, more competing and more ‘professionalizing’, and should instead hold to the egalitarian model of security and predictability proposed by the union.