Exploring Social Representations of Work and the Meaning of Work of Education Professionals in Mozambique

The changing nature of work in adaptation to socio-economic and cultural shifts has been widely addressed. The present research is aimed at identifying the Social Representations of Work (SRW) and the Meaning of Work (MOW) in education professionals settled in Mozambique. Two studies were conducted with 194 participants, including teachers, superior technicians, technical and operational assistants. In the first study a free association task and a professions classification task were employed to explore the SRW according to different socio-demographic profiles. In the second study, the influence of social justice and values on MOW dimensions was accessed through multiple regression analyses. The main findings suggest that conscientiousness and remuneration-related aspects are central to the SRW; that intellectual activities are perceived as more representative of work than manual ones by participants; and that MOW is positively associated with self-transcendence values and perception of procedural justice, but not with perception of distributive justice.