Abandoning Teaching: Bounds and Ruptures Regarding the Teacher's Work

Abstract

This study deals with the teacher's abandoning of their jobs in the public educational system in São Paulo, Brazil. It is an attempt to describe and characterize this evasion of teachers which has been increasing over the last years. It aims at understanding the relationship of various determinants involved in this phenomena from a particular perspective. We try to identify factors beyond low salaries and the social devaluation of the teacher's work. The factors we are after would compose what we call the abandoning process which we see as formed through-out the teacher's professional life. The actual reasons for the abandonment can be seen as external to the individuals or internal, or most likely, as a combination of the two. Nevertheless, by focusing on the analysis of ex-teacher's professional life stories, we seek something beyond these reasons, we seek the way in which the facts and events are perceived and experienced by each individual and how they are combined into a particular form to constitute the abandoning process.