ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the teaching profession in Brazil through the identification of historical segmentations that have interfered with the constitution of teachers as a professional group. The chapter is organised in three sections. The first seeks to explain the historical forms of segmentation that characterised the original constitution of the teaching profession within the country. The second demonstrates how some of these inherited segmentations were deepened while other, new, forms of segmentation were created as a result of the educational reforms that began in the country in the 1990s. These reforms were guided by the principles of New Public Management and prompted important changes in the organisation and management of education, as well as in policies related to teachers’ professional and career development. A short concluding section identifies a tendency in current policies related to the teaching profession of promoting greater individualisation and competition among teachers and of strengthening a meritocratic culture that might result in further professional segmentations.
