Construcciones y disputas de sentido sobre el trabajo docente en dos escuelas secundarias de Argentina

Abstract

This article presents results of a qualitative-interpretive investigation about the meanings of teaching work in two public secondary schools in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. With the purpose of reconstructing the ways in which the task of teaching is assumed by teachers, field work consisting of in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations was developed. The findings show how these conceptions reflect definitions related to equality and commonality, showing how teaching “is being”, as a dynamic and disputed arena. The analysis is presented around two axes: work with school knowledge and pedagogical interventions that include contemporary languages ​​and communication dynamics. The results presented show that, in working with knowledge, positions dispute meanings around the limits that teaching work should construct and the characteristics of the centrality of teaching. In some cases, this notion appears in opposition to affectivity and work with the social problems that arise in the daily lives of students. In others, these meanings are disputed by another position that articulates the possibility of teaching with the review of the ways of addressing students to summon them from other languages, formats and styles to work on school knowledge. These ways of understanding teaching reconvene the place of pedagogical authority, positioning it as something that cannot be waived and linked to the involvement of students in educational activities.