Being a High School Teacher during the Portuguese 'New State'. Teachers' Discourse in the Pedagogical Press

Abstract

This article intends to analyse high school teachers' representations about themselves and their profession, just as these representations are conveyed by the pedagogical press. Our source is one of the main journals of education directed toward high school teaching and written by teachers-- Labor . The period under analysis essentially includes the so-called Portuguese New State, a difficult and contradictory period in terms of assertion of teaching professionalism, due to the political and ideological constraints. The key words of this study are the following: professional, artisan, intellectual, representations, ethics, identity, autonomy and control. We shall use recent literature about the teaching profession in terms of clarifying the profession's past direction and under the supposition that the (re)construction of its memory is an important condition in the assertion of teachers' professional identity.