Escolha ocupacional pela carreira de professor da Educação Básica: uma resenha com ênfase na situação atual no Brasil

This paper contains a survey of the literature on attracting and repelling factors associated with the teacher profession, with an emphasis on the current situation in Brazil. It is composed of three main sections, devoted to: a synthesis of the most important theoretical developments, an appraisal of selected international empirical evidence, and a detailed analysis of the available literature (essentially empirical) concerning the relative attractiveness of the teacher profession in Brazil. The main conclusion is that the perception of compensation (initial wage and career perspectives) is the key variable to attract and maintain teachers in the profession elsewhere and in Brazil. Other variables also play important roles, such as: the relative odds of becoming unemployed as a teacher as compared to alternative occupations, intangible preferences (“vocation”) in specific contexts, the extent to which it is possible to reconcile labor market and family concerns (esp. childbearing) and a series of other, non-pecuniary, pros and cons of the teacher profession vis-à-vis alternative occupations. Gender differences in terms of the relative importance of each factor have been registered in the literature. Teachers are not well paid in Brazil and their social status is definitely low, which might explain why the profession does not attract a large proportion of individuals with high scores in usual proficiency tests. (This paper is part of a broader research which will include a field work to be conducted in April-May 2015 consisting of interviews to a nationally representative sample of Brazilian would-be teachers.)