Understudied school teachers’ work/life balance and everyday life typologies

ABSTRACT

Teachers comprise a unique and understudied occupational; their duty hours extend beyond the work setting and can impact the quality of life and work–life balance. Unlike employees of other occupations, teachers and the teaching profession have received relatively little study. To call attention to this deficiency, we conducted in-depth interviews of 29 teachers employed by public schools in São Paulo, Brazil. Their narratives revealed three different everyday life typologies, i.e. duty–duty, duty–need and duty–pleasure, plus compromised quality of life when supposedly off work. Collectively, our findings contribute to a greater understanding of the unfavorable work–life balance of teachers and its potential for risk for disease processes that ought to motivate future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers
• everyday life
• off-work
• typologies
• occupational health

Acknowledgements

FUNDACENTRO; Graduate Program of Public Health, School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, Brazil.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundacentro.