Identidade profissional docente

: perceções dos professores sobre a (des)motivação e a (in)satisfação

Abstract

If we closely look at the teaching profession we immediately come across a paradox, passion / reason / satisfaction on one hand, and disbelief / dissatisfaction and demotivation on the other. We are living times of dissatisfaction at work, or because school insists on being exceedingly bureaucratic, or because there is a social and economic devaluation, or because an identity crisis has been set at school or because there isn’t a democratic culture in the school’s life and management. The teaching uneasiness is thus associated to motivational factors of satisfaction or dissatisfaction within the working praxis. Motivation can embolden the development of the teacher’s work on one hand, and improve the human well-being on the other. Reversely, demotivation can lead to burnout levels and consequently to the abandonment of the teaching profession. This work intends to research on the Portuguese teachers’ animist state, in public schooling, identifying which intrinsic or external factors are associated to this issue, through the revision of bibliography on educational political measures throughout the last ten years (2007-2017); on professional cultures, leadership and the head teacher’s way of practicing, on motivational theories in the management of organisations and leaderships. We have privileged a methodological quantifying descriptive and inferential approach, on which 5823 teachers enrolled in the DGAE (General Board of Schooling Administration) platform have participated in. From the teachers’ perceptions, the results, mostly, reveal a high demotivation and dissatisfaction translated into tiredness and burnout, due to the impact of educational political measures (Teaching Career Status and Teachers’ Performance Assessment), to social recognition, to working conditions, to the schooling environment and working relationships, thus compromising expectations and the teachers’ professional future. The study results have furthermore shown that the external factors are the ones that have increased and promoted the professional demotivation / dissatisfaction.

Date of Award	28 Nov 2019
Original language	Portuguese
Supervisor	Joaquim Azevedo (Supervisor) & Filipa Sobral (Supervisor)