De professor a diretor: um estudo sobre trajetórias e transição de carreira

Abstract

This research seeks to understand the processes constituting the professional identity of teachers in career transition contexts, analyzing how the shift from teaching to school management resignifies subjectivity and professional practice. The study is grounded in the premise that teacher identity, when transitioning to management, experiences processes of fragmentation and reconfiguration, discussed based on the theoretical contributions of Hall (2006) and Dubar (2005) on identity crisis and professional socialization; Nóvoa (2022) and Lück (2009) on the professionalization of management; Larrosa (2002) regarding the knowledge of experience; and Huberman (1995) on the life cycle and teaching trajectories. Methodologically, the research adopted a qualitative approach supported by quantitative data, using a semi-structured questionnaire applied to 37 teachers participating in a training course for prospective school managers offered by a municipal education network, in addition to conducting four in-depth narrative interviews (PE1, PE2, PE3, and PE4). The treatment of quantitative data and the corpus of narratives were submitted to the perspective of Content Analysis, according to Bardin's (2016) assumptions. The results show that the transition to management is perceived as an act of biographical transcendence, motivated by the desire to overcome teacher exhaustion and the search for a new place of pedagogical authorship. Therefore, the thesis defended is that the transition to school leadership acts as an inseparable mechanism of resistance and project: resistance to illness within the traditional teaching model and a project to safeguard professional integrity. However, the narratives reveal the fragility of this movement in the face of a vacuum of support. To address this gap, it is proposed to think about career phases. These phases are not understood as mere administrative passages, but as a path that integrates three dimensions: the formative link, institutional articulation, and mediation between teaching and management. The concept articulates the need for a subjective reconfiguration of the educator, demanding theoretical and practical support so that this process does not turn into professional isolation, especially given the persistence of clientelist practices in the organizational culture. It is concluded that managerial identity constitutes a frontier space, in the tension between personal ethics and the impositions of a system that still lacks professionalization mechanisms. The study points to the urgency of institutional training and selection guidelines that ensure impersonality and configure a perennial policy capable of surpassing government management cycles, overcoming clientelist logics in filling leadership positions.