Understudied school teachers’ work/life balance and everyday life typologies
Jefferson Peixoto da Silva, Frida Marina Fischer
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.