"Mais Professores" (More Teachers) and the Valorization of Teaching

Adhesionism, Control, and Crumbs

Abstract

This article analyzes the Brazilian state's policy for teacher training and professional valorization, focusing on the Mais Professores (More Teachers) program. It articulates this analysis with the National Pact for the Recovery of Learning and the BNCC Computing component. The article examines how these policies promote an adhesionist logic, encouraging individualized compliance of teachers with governmental initiatives and public calls, while concealing the broader implications of state intervention in the reconfiguration of teaching labor and the fragmentation of the professional category. It argues that, under the discourse of improving educational quality, the integration of so-called “Private” Apparatuses of Hegemony (PAHs) into the formulation, management, and oversight of educational policy is intensified, subordinating such policies to the interests of what is referred to here as educator capital. The analysis highlights the articulation between the state and these PAHs, revealing how the private appropriation of public funds is also operationalized through them. The article concludes that the so-called state-driven “valorization of teaching” operates as a political-ideological strategy of control, aimed at the reconversion of the teaching profession, legitimizing the precarization of teachers’ work under the guise of selective and conditional incentives.