BRAZIL: THE GROWTH OF DISTANCE EDUCATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN TUTORSHIP: CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES

Distance Education in Brazil has gone through periods of advance and recession, having finally reached certain consolidation condition due to its expansion in the last decade, a situation enabled by the Brazilian new legislation (LDBEN, 9.394/96) as well as by the growth in the area of information technology. In spite of the economic crisis, there is significant increase in relation to the number of students who enroll in a Distance Education undergraduate course. The other side of this reality points to a process of intensification in work among Distance Education professionals. Faced with this conjuncture, the objective of this article is to analyze how this greater amount of work may affect not only the tutor himself but also his professional activities. Our hypothesis is that the way the tutors have reacted in face of the crisis and the fear of unemployment have taken them to an ambivalent situation and auto-intensification of work. The data analyzed are part of empirical observations of the authors of this article, considering their professional activities in Distance Education.