Identity Formation and Constitution Process in Teachers’ Narratives Debate about the Social Responsibility of the University

Abstract

In the last decades, there has been a movement of re‑elaboration of the social role of the university to encompass the constitutive dimensions of its reorganization from the perspective of the university social responsibility (USR). In this sense, this article aims to discuss the formation and the process of identity constitution of teachers as fundamental nuances of the USR, which can be evidenced in teachers’ narratives. From the  (auto)biographical perspective, we discuss the tensions experienced in this context of changes by two professors in the process of insertion into university teaching, who work in undergraduate courses in different Brazilian federal universities. We are guided by the question: how to think the university in which the process of formation and constitution of teaching identity is tied to the necessary conditions for the university to structure itself from a broader perspective of its social role? The narratives presented indicate that an important dimension of the USR is the guarantee to the right and to the conditions of formation, insertion and work of teachers related to their social surroundings, favoring the break of mercantilist conceptions of teaching and formation.