Productivism in postgraduate programs from the perspective of the activity-centered ergonomics

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the higher education teaching work, identifying the constraints faced by this professional category mostly due to the system of intellectual production evaluation linked to postgraduate programs. We studied the activities of the faculty that works in the Department of Production Engineering (EP) of a federal public university located in the countryside of the state of Sao Paulo. This theme has been chosen because teaching work started having a new logic in academic routines, based on the acceleration and intensification of activities and stimulus to productivity, which reproduces the characteristics of flexible work in the university scope. As to the methodological design, it is a qualitative descriptive research, complemented by the application of a single case study, outlined by the methodological approach of the Ergonomic Work Analysis (EWA). The results show that the professors who work in the postgraduate program of the selected institution are submitted to constraints and experience frustration because of the demand for publication in detriment of other activities that they consider to have more meaning and purpose. Some of the professors consider the intellectual production evaluation an oppressive process, which motivates productivism with no results and that does not reflect the good professors' performance when exercising their teaching, research and extension activities.