TEACHER’S MEDICAL LEAVE AND ILLNESS AT THE UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss teacher illness in Higher Education, based on data on absences from work. Illness expressed in the individual dimension is particularized in University data – a space of contradictions that problematize a dehumanized daily life and points to a social, universal process of illness. Methodologically, data were presented from 2005 to 2019 regarding the professors’ medical leaves from a public university, indicating that the meaning of teaching practice has been permeated by the process of alienation and the forms of resistance to illness have been passive. As a data collection instrument, absence reports were used, which record the medical leaves of University professors and the content of research interviews carried out by the authors. The perspective is based on the approach of Historical-cultural Psychology, in the dialogue among its main representatives and educational theorists. As a result, the need to oppose the obscurantism that permeates society is highlighted, without succumbing to neoliberal ideas, which insist on
defending that nothing can change, which naturalizes illness and medical leave. We understand that illness is the result of a complex historical process, which includes the subjective scope, the specificities of work activity, the political, social and institutional context. Therefore, the confrontation has to be collective, towards proposing better working conditions.