This study aimed to understand teachers’ conceptions of their pedagogical practices upon the phenomenon of medicalization. A qualitative exploratory method was used, as well as transversal data. A total of 563 teachers, ranging in age from 19 to 66 years (M = 34.2 SD = 9.23), from 26 Brazilian states and from the Federal District, participated in the study through responses to semi-structured interviews and sociodemographic questionnaires, whose data were analyzed by Iramuteq Software. We analyzed 502 responses, generating 196 text segments, with 9297 occurrences and 1507 forms. The retention was 86.55% of the corpus. Two classes of words originated, the first one with a significance of 60.96% “Teachers do not medicate, so do not medicalize” and the second with significance of 39.04% “Teachers are able to identify and solve problems.” The teachers’ belief in being able to identify possible behavioral and learning problems is evidenced, which is in line with the medicalization process

Abstract

This study aimed to understand teachers’ conceptions of their pedagogical practices upon the phenomenon of medicalization. A qualitative exploratory method was used, as well as transversal data. A total of 563 teachers, ranging in age from 19 to 66 years (M = 34.2 SD = 9.23), from 26 Brazilian states and from the Federal District, participated in the study through responses to semi-structured interviews and sociodemographic questionnaires, whose data were analyzed by Iramuteq Software. We analyzed 502 responses, generating 196 text segments, with 9297 occurrences and 1507 forms. The retention was 86.55% of the corpus. Two classes of words originated, the first one with a significance of 60.96% “Teachers do not medicate, so do not medicalize” and the second with significance of 39.04% “Teachers are able to identify and solve problems.” The teachers’ belief in being able to identify possible behavioral and learning problems is evidenced, which is in line with the medicalization process