Saberes do cuidado no trabalho de professoras das creches de um município da região Centro-Serra, RS.

Abstract

This study is part of the Education, Work and Emancipation research line of the PPGEdu/UNISC and the research group “Teaching Work, Care and Social Class”. The rese arch topic is the knowledge of care in the work of nursery school teachers. One problem that guides our study is: how is the knowledge of care present in the teaching work in Early Childhood Education carried out by teachers who work with babies in daycare centers in a city in the Central Region - Serra do Rio Grande do Sul (RS) characterized and in what ways are these forms of knowledge manifested and produced in the life and work experience of women? The general objective of this study is to describe, analyze, and explain how the knowledge produced by teachers who work with babies in daycare centers in a city in the Central-Mountain Region of Rio Grande do Sul is characterized, and to understand how this knowledge manifests itself and is produced in the women's life and work experiences. The specific objectives are to describe and analyze the care work performed by teachers in daycare centers; to analyze and understand the nature of social reproduction in teaching work in day care centers; and to understand and describe the conditions and organization of teaching work in daycare centers in a city in the Central-Mountain Region of Rio Grande do Sul. The thesis of this study is that no teacher who works in daycare centers produces and mobilizes knowl edge that has been modified in their professional trajectories and life experiences on a daily basis. In their care work, daycare teachers make use of what they have most advantageously while working: their ability to worry about, to care for, and to watch over the reproduction of the lives of young children, in a social practice where they produce new knowledge as much as they reproduce knowledge that has already been acquired. They use this knowledge in their work situations, where they develop specific knowledge about the teaching profession based on a dialogue between knowledge produced in the private and public spheres. To collect data, we conducted a focus group session, interviews, and field observations. The main categories that emerged from the data analysis were: care work, teaching knowledge, work knowledge, recognition, division of knowledge, working conditions, recognition, and motherhood. We found that teachers' knowledge of care has three sources of acquisition: professional training, experience, and interactive relationships, from which teachers learn to care. As the main char acteristics of care knowledge, we highlight its social dimensions of gender, history, econom ics, and class. In addition, it is relational and interactive knowledge, as it is offered in the so cial relationships expected between those who care and those who are cared for. These rela tionships enable the production of knowledge, as teachers learn to identify basic care needs based on the interactions experienced and the knowledge already established. Other character istics, mainly arising from the gender issue, are attention, anticipation, surveillance and hy giene. Care knowledge also involves an emotional dimension, since workers use their per sonal experiences and relate affectively to those they care for, as well as specific knowledge of the teaching profession, such as curricular, professional and disciplinary knowledge.