La búsqueda de buen vivir como manifestación de agencia colectiva e identidad profesional: una exploración teórica del movimiento docente con foco en chile y latinoamérica

This article is based on a theoretical exploration of the relationship between the concepts of teachers’ well-being and teachers’ agency. This is carried out through a qualitative- sociological analysis of the teacher’s movement in Latin America, particularly Chile. The article ́s purpose is to answer how the search for well-being in the teaching profession is an agentic expression that is collective not individual. We conceptualise agency and wellbeing from a Latin American perspective, where agency will be understood as enacted in the present, informed by past stories and inspired by a future hope that things can be different. The above, based on the ideas of Paulo Freire and the philosophy of Buen Vivir where it understands the teaching profession as dialogic and collective.

The concept of agency allows a view of the teaching professional identity and work as transformative and a producer of knowledge. The concept of well-being is understood from the philosophy of Buen Vivir where one cannot aspire to individual well-being if there is an absence of collective well-being.

Finally, we explore how in Chile there have been certain agentic movements, as exemplified by the Chilean teachers’ in 2019, which is considered as a struggle to move towards the reconstruction of education that everyone deserves which, without doubt, will echo in the Latin American region.