Dupla dimensão ontológica do trabalho docente universitário no âmbito das Ciências Humanas e das Ciências Exatas

Abstract

The complexity of teaching work is especially exciting because of the different nuances it has. This characteristic is justified both by the discussion about the teaching activity being considered work or not, but also and mainly by the unpredictability in the conduct of work in the classroom, and even outside of it, as the number of variables involved in the professor's work is shown too big, generating dissatisfaction, but at the same time, it can also lead the professor to great satisfaction. Therefore, the teaching work does not only involve activities related to planning and teaching the class, but also other activities related to administration, coordination, productions/publications, lectures, etc. These activities are directly foreign to the classroom and that have power and power to influence the teaching work. Personal relationships with colleagues, general working conditions, availability of materials and the valuation of the profession are also other examples that can impact the professor's life, for better or worse. In addition, the professors' own attitudes act retroactively on them, leading them to situations of improvement and/or worsening of the situation in which they are inserted. Therefore, all this can positively or negatively interfere in the teaching work, identifying its double aspect in the sense that this activity can lead to great achievements, but it can also lead to an overload of work, generating dissatisfaction. This game of actions and feedback is what is defined - in a Lukacsian conception - as reflexive determinations, and knowing them is of fundamental importance to better understand how the various interferences act in order to create difficulties and/or facilities in relation to the teaching work university. Taking these considerations into account, this research has the central objective of investigating the reflexive determinations of the double aspect of work in university teaching activity in two major areas of concentration, human sciences and exact sciences, verifying whether the reflexive determinations of teaching work in these two areas are similar and what are the impacts of such determinations at work for the professor's personal and professional life. Within this context, we ask: does the teaching work in the area of human sciences and exact sciences present a double aspect according to the Marxian positions? Are the reflexive determinations that affect these areas of knowledge similar? What are the impacts of teaching work on the professor? Our central hypothesis is that the dual aspect of teaching work is present both in the area of human sciences and in the area of exact sciences and that, therefore, the reflexive determinations that fall within it are similar for these two major areas, although their impacts are different for the person of the professor in each area of knowledge. To prove and/or refute our hypothesis as a whole and/or in part, we conducted a survey through an open questionnaire, applied to professors from public universities in these two major areas. From the exact sciences, the chosen courses were Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry; in the human sciences courses in Pedagogy and Philosophy were chosen. Therefore, we chose as theoretical reference mainly the German philosopher Karl Marx with his works The capital and The economic and philosophic manuscripts, accompanied by the thought of the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács with his work The ontology of social being from which we discuss about the double aspect of work and about the proof of the professor's activity as work, at the same time, outlining the issue of reflexive determinations of work in the teaching activity. Still using mainly works by Saviani, Romanelli, and the Laws of Directives and Bases, in addition to several laws and decrees, we developed a historical overview based on Higher Education in Brazil and pointed to work as an educational principle at the university level. Finally, the analysis of the questionnaires allowed us to largely reject our initial hypothesis, since, despite verifying that the double aspect of work is present in the areas of human sciences and exact sciences, the reflexive determinations, which in them focus, are different, as the positive and negative points mentioned by professors from both areas diverge in variety and number; however, their impacts were shown in similar ways in both areas since the relationships of satisfaction, dissatisfaction and recognition of the importance of their profession were quite similar. This allowed us to know a little more about the peculiarities of university teaching work by making this parallel between the two areas. In our final considerations, we emphasize that, even with the various problems arising from their activities, the professors were not totally dissatisfied with their profession. On the contrary, the vast majority of them stated that they feel satisfied with their profession, in addition to unanimously recognizing that their role brings positive changes in the social context. Importantly, in their answers, the professors said words like accomplishment and love. This, together with the fact that they know about its importance in social construction, becomes a bias for thinking about ways to overcome the double aspect of work in relation to the characteristic of utility characteristic of the capitalist system.