Pandemia e a espiral das crise: memórias de professoras e professores da Educação Básica durante a implementação do ensino remoto no Estado do Pará

Abstract

With the aim of understanding the social, professional, and emotional effects of the emergency political arrangements implemented by the Government of the State of Pará in the state public education during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the experience of teachers from the State Public Education Network in the Municipality of Ananindeua, in the metropolitan region of Belém, this dissertation brings an analysis of the memories that the 24 teachers I interviewed shared with me about their professional experiences. As I listened to them, I was also reliving my memories, and thus, I take on the position of a native/ethnographer (Peirano, 2014) in the text. I also analyze the main documents that regulated public education in the State of Pará in 2020 and 2021, relating them to the decisions of the federal government. Guided by what I heard in the field in January and February 2022, this study focuses on the period during the pandemic when the government of the State of Pará implemented "remote teaching" in the state public network, specifically from January to June 2021. The analysis of these experiences is in dialogue with anthropological and sociological perspectives on the topic. In Chapter I, I show how the state government managed basic education during the pandemic period when face-to- face classes were suspended in the public network. In Chapter II, I show how teachers experienced the changes resulting from the new standardization and regulation of basic education established by the state government. By analyzing the teachers' experiences, I realized that besides the contradiction between professionals and the State, other contradictions emerged as teachers practiced their profession from the domestic environment, elements to which I dedicate Chapter III. As results of this research, I argue that the pandemic deepened pre-existing crises and inequalities while producing new dynamics of crisis. According to the data, I show that as the state's educational public policies proved insufficient to contain the effects of the pandemic on basic education in Pará, teachers' lives became marked by a process of worsening precariousness of teaching work, expressed in the total flexibilization of the workday and physical and mental illness resulting from labor activities. Additionally, I highlight that in the case of women teachers who are mothers, daughters, and/or wives, there was also an endless workload of caregiving tasks, which was multiplied by the suspension of public services offered by the State, making the period one of overlapping labor and class inequalities with gender inequalities.