Burnout and professional identity: teaching between pedagogical meaning and the logic of capital

Abstract

This study examines the process of functional readaptation of teacher Alessandra Alves Ferreira, highlighting mental illness among educators as an expression of the contradictions between the pedagogical meaning of teaching and the logic of capital. Grounded in the New Cultural History and in biographical-hermeneutic Oral History, the research reconstructs the educator’s trajectory, marked by a diagnosis of burnout syndrome and by the precarization of teaching work. The findings indicate that teachers’ psychological suffering cannot be reduced to individual fragility, but must be understood in light of alienation and the commodification of education, which weaken the emancipatory dimension of pedagogical practice. The narratives also reveal practices of resistance, self-care, and solidarity among colleagues as strategies for persistence and identity reconstruction. The study further points out limitations in Ceapro’s actions and reaffirms the need for public policies that recognize mental health as an essential condition for educational work.