Processos formativos de professoras de Educação Infantil em uma instituição pública federal

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the way continuing education occurs for teachers working in the Early Childhood Education sector at a federal public institution in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. The importance of this topic lies in children's rights to quality Early Education and in the rights of professionals working in this sector to be properly qualified. The investigation happened between 2019 and 2023, during the global COVID-19 pandemic. With the mandatory social distancing, which led to the closure of public and private schools between March 2020 and November 2021 - period that coincided with the field study -, the research was therefore conducted exclusively online with fourteen teachers and one teacher who was working at the mentioned institution at the time. The Bakhtinian concepts of dialogism, alterity and exotopia were the theoretical and methodological guidelines for the study. As such, the methodology used in the research comprised conversations with the subjects via Google Meet which, inspired by the Bakhtinian principles, established a horizontal relationship between the researcher and the research subjects. Conversations as a theoretical-methodological procedure favored the fluidity of exchange between participants, enabling the researcher to share their own stories and create new meanings through the encounter of words. Beyond moments in which mutual affection, memories, complicity and reflections were exchanged between the researcher and the research subjects, the conversations also showed that continuing education at the institution in question is a process that combines different aspects of education, such as: understanding that teaching is not a vocation, valuing the role of the Other in the choice to teach; listening to children, seen as fundamental mediators of education; believing in teaching as an ethical-political action. The structure provided to teachers for the exercise of teaching, whether in the appropriate physical space for young children, diversity of settings, curriculum authorship, dual teaching management, remuneration compatible with the level of training and an attractive job and salary plan, among others, Circumstances also present themselves as conducive to continued training at the institution studied. The incentive for teaching staff to improve themselves is great and in many aspects it is similar to the teaching career in higher education in terms of training conditions, remuneration, autonomy and authorship both in managing work and in daily life with children. Thus, the teachers point out that the training they currently experience differs from their previous experiences in municipal networks.