Inert, Standardized and Vacuum pumped: National Common Base and Teacher Training in Chemistry for Alienation

Abstract

The development of the National Common Curricular Base and the New High School has drastically reconfigured public education in Brazil within a context of coup and denialism. In order to implement these neoliberal curriculum policies, it was also necessary to change teacher training. There are several criticisms in the literature regarding teaching work, such as loss of teacher autonomy, job mischaracterization, and devaluation of scientific and pedagogical content. Thus, the objective of this theoretical article is to contribute to these criticisms from a psychological perspective, the Cultural-Historical Psychology, aiming to understand how the subjective dimension of teachers can be affected by the National Common Base – Teacher Training. Through the categories of personality and alienation, we comprehend how the personality of a Chemistry teacher is formed and the potential obstacles that the National Common Base can generate in the teacher's identification with their role. We have found that the National Common Base, given its origin and objectives, does not contribute to quality training and tends to deepen issues of suffering and/or psychological illness through work regulation, the breakdown of teleology in teaching activities. As an alternative to this process, we propose collective actions to revoke these curriculum policies and other paths to rethink teacher training.