This study problematizes eight biographical accounts of public elementary school teachers in Capão do Leão, a small town in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It strives to contribute to understand better the transformations in teachers' work embedded in the late 20th century educational reform policies by establishing a dialogue among the following analytical categories: governmentality, intensification of teachers' work, care and gender. The intensification of teachers' work and self-exploitation is driven by: the precarious working conditions of elementary school teachers; low salaries; new administrative, curricular and instructional demands; official policies for teacher "professionalization"; and an official discourse that promotes norms of individual responsibility and guilt and aims to govern the subjectivity and emotions of teachers.
Educational reform; Teachers' work; Intensification; Self-exploitation