Não sou tio, nem pai, sou professor!

Abstract

The primary objective of this research is to identify how gender and power relations occur in the space and time of public pre-schools when there are men teaching. This study was conducted with a teacher from the city of Piracicaba in São Paulo, Brazil from August 2012 to August 2013, and with a teacher from Rome, Italy in March 2014, along with children aged 3 to 6 years old. This research is qualitative with an ethnographic inspiration that observed the close relationships between teachers and young children, as well as the relationships between the teachers and adults in space and time of the preschools. The methodological procedures used to analyze included field work, interviews and photography, as well an investigation into how men teaching in preschool education challenge and/or strengthen the power relationships marked by male chauvinism and sexism, which create a hierarchy between the sexes and in gender relations. The theoretical assumptions from the fields of the sociology of childhood, feminist studies and the pedagogy of early childhood education aided the analysis of this universe of adult-centric relations that perpetuate an androcentric vision of society. The data indicates that the processes of normalization and standardization of the ways of being a teacher and teaching reproduce the sexual division of labor in contemporary society, a process which is present in the daily life of little young boys and girls through a logic imposed by capital. From this perspective, the separation of care and education is evident, especially when it comes to young body care, as there is an understanding in capitalist society that preschool spaces are formed through in order of hiearchization and subordination of gender, and this mechanism is naturalized when there are men teaching young aged children. There is also the fear of physical violence against children, raising doubts about the integrity and intentions behind this relationship, as inevitably, there is a potential "abuser" disguised by the pretext of teaching. By focusing on men teaching in this institutional context, this research allowed teachers to reflect on their teaching identities and the differences between male and female teachers that reinforce the male and female gender binary, which is still ruled by a biological perspective in which gender inequalities are present. Yet it is still possible to observe that teaching in early childhood education has been undergoing transformations, being re-edited and re-invented. The challenge lies in constructing a non-sexist preschool pedagogy that is emancipatory, creative, and a product of preschooler's culture.

Homens na docência da educação infantil

“…Os trabalhos desse período vão ratificar, cada vez mais, a importância da presença desses profissionais em creches e pré-escolas. Os estudos (Souza, 2010;Ramos, 2011;Sousa, 2011;Alves, 2012;Pereira, 2012;Castro, 2014;Gomides, 2014;Santos, 2014;Rigato da Silva, 2014;Lopes, 2015;Hentges, 2015;Teodoro, 2015;Oliveira Carvalho, 2015;Sciotti, 2015. Silva, 2015Mendonça, 2016;Aguiar Júnior, 2017;Ferreira, 2017;Sousa, 2017;Moreno, 2017;Souza, 2018;Faria, 2018 10/15 Educação, Porto Alegre, v. 46, n. 1, p. 1-15, jan-dez.…”