The Socio-Psychic Knots of Teacher Burnout in Brazil

Resumo

The literature indicates that teachers are among the professional groups most susceptible to developing burnout syndrome. To deepen understand this phenomenon, we analyze data collected in Brazil between 2020 and 2022, specifically through 16 socio-clinical interviews conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the framework of Clinical Sociology, our objective is to examine the socio-psychic knots of burnout in order to address it in all its complexity. We argue that burnout serves as a Dominant Social Symptom of contemporary teaching work, particularly as a consequence of the erosion of meaning in professional activities. This symptomatic exhaustion reflects the intensification of managerial frameworks within the educational field. Our conceptual approach seeks to challenge the prevailing narrative that tends to individualize teacher burnout, often by attributing it to psychological factors while overlooking the structural contradictions and conflicts inherent in teachers' work. Indeed, our data suggest that teacher burnout is fundamentally a collective and institutional phenomenon—an expression of a broader socio-historical process marked by the flexibilization and precarization of labor relations.