DISTANCE EDUCATION IN THE FEDERAL INSTITUTIONS OF EDUCATION

new relationships in the process of teachers’ work

Abstract

The article is the result of an investigation that aimed to analyze the organization of teachers’ work resulting from the expansion of distance education in federal institutions of education. To this end, we have analyzed, by means of a qualitative research, the implantation of the Open University of Brazil (UAB) and of the Open Technical School of Brazil (Brazil E-TEC), through the courses of Distance Degree in Mathematics, of UFPel, and of Technical Biofuels, of IF-Sulriograndense, respectively. We have investigated the working conditions to which are subjected the teachers at both these distance education programs, their work relations, as well as how their work process has been constituted, in terms of its fragmentation and intensification. We have verified the existence of a profound division of labor among the different levels of teachers’ work, as well as the outsourcing of teachers’ functions, which brings up workers in education, in the federal institutions of education, who do not have an employment relationship with such institutions. Both flexibilization and new forms of regulation between capital and labor are evidenced within the federal public education.