Moral harassment, continuing education and institutional culture in public higher education institutions: an educational and psychosocial approach

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between moral harassment, continuing education and institutional culture in public higher education institutions, based on an educational and psychosocial approach. It is a theoretical-bibliographic study, of qualitative approach and interpretive character, grounded in five previously selected academic sources: Soboll (2008), Barreto (2005), Manduca (2022), Gatti (2003), and Borges, Sarmento and Ferreira (2025). Apud citations are used whenever authors addressed indirectly by these sources are mobilized, such as Hirigoyen, Leymann, Vygotsky, Espinosa, Sawaia and Ciampa. The article draws on the distinction proposed by Soboll (2008) among isolated aggressions, organizational harassment and moral harassment, the latter understood as a processual, personalized, ill-intentioned and aggressive form of psychological violence. Based on Barreto (2005), the phenomenon is examined as a subtle form of violence, marked by ethical-political suffering, power relations and processes of naturalization and trivialization. With Manduca (2022), the article argues for the institutional recognition of moral harassment in public universities, not reducible to subsequent individual accountability. With Gatti (2003), it argues that continuing education cannot be restricted to the transmission of content, since the incorporation of knowledge depends on socio-affective and cultural processes, not only cognitive ones. Borges, Sarmento and Ferreira (2025) allow initial and continuing teacher education to be situated as a matter of relevance in contemporary educational debates. The article concludes that preventing moral harassment in public higher education institutions requires the articulation of institutional recognition, continuing education and the construction of an institutional culture guided by dignity, solidarity and collective responsibility.