Voices from teaching experience and management in academic life

Abstract

This paper discusses teaching work against the background of critically understanding the tensions that permeate the work process of higher education faculty, considering, centrally, the exercise of management activities related to positions of leadership, coordination or direction and representation in collegiate bodies in University. The research problem is linked to the author's professional practice in view of the perceived silence regarding the work of higher education professors in these activities. As a strategy to achieve the general objective of the research, it was sought to understand teaching work and the place that academic management occupies in its professionality, identifying the implications of the training process in the practice of the profession. In a qualitative approach, the study was developed through the analysis of Memories of Promotion to Full Professor of five professors from an Academic Unit of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. The investigation had Narrative Research as its methodological choice and as object of analysis the narratives of the professors of higher education to understand the experience from the perspective of management. Bardin's Content Analysis (2008) was used as a method to operationalize the exploration of the research object, as well as the treatment of results. The research results recognize that professionals in higher education face the challenge of being a teacher-researcher-manager on a daily basis within the logic of capitalist society, permeated by contradictions that are expressed in the education and work of this professional.