As práticas pedagógicas em saúde no IFRN como dispositivo de resistência à medicalização do corpo: rompendo os fios da marionete

Abstract

This thesis investigated the relationships between multidisciplinary pedagogical practices in health at the Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN) and the process of body medicalization in contemporary society. The study was based on the understanding that medicalization, by transforming human experiences into objects of biomedical intervention, also permeates the school environment, affecting bodies and subjectivities. In contrast, educational practices in health can act as devices of resistance, creating fissures in hegemonic discourses and producing new modes of subjectivation. The general objective was to analyze the discourses on pedagogical practices in health at IFRN in order to understand how this discursive production, by challenging the functioning of the body medicalization in contemporary times, constitutes a device of resistance. The specific objectives were: to discuss the body medicalization in contemporary times and its possible implications for Professional and Technological Education (EPT); to understand the conditions of possibility that give rise to discourses on pedagogical practices in health in the institutional documents of the IFRN; and to problematize the discourses of the multidisciplinary health team, highlighting the extent to which such practices operate as forms of resistance to medicalization. The research was developed under Foucauldian inspiration, using Discourse Analysis as a methodology. Institutional documents were examined and a hybrid discussion group was held with health professionals working on IFRN campuses. The analysis considered the historical conditions in which the discourses emerged, everyday practices, and the ways in which these practices strain or reinforce the medicalizing paradigm. The results showed that, although institutional documents show signs of a welfare-oriented and medicalizing rationality, they also open up opportunities for health education as a pedagogical practice linked to comprehensive human development. Similarly, the discourses of the multidisciplinary team revealed tensions between the institutional demand for clinical actions and pedagogical initiatives focused on listening, circulation in school spaces, and the promotion of expanded care. Thus, pedagogical practices in health are configured as strategies of resistance, capable of loosening the threads of medicalization and establishing movements of displacement within biopower. These findings allow us to affirm that the objectives were achieved, confirming that the discourses on pedagogical practices in health at IFRN are not outside medicalization, but rather traverse and destabilize it. The thesis, therefore, contributes to broadening the theoretical debate on medicalization and resistance in the field of EPT and to giving visibility to the daily actions of health teams, reinforcing the need for broader institutional articulation, including in selection processes and professional training policies.