Saberes do trabalho de professoras e auxiliares na prática educativa da educação infantil : cuidado, organização e divisão do trabalho.

Abstract

This dissertation is dedicated to the study of the work carried out by teachers and assistants who work with young children in a public early childhood education institution in Santa Cruz do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It is grounded in the understanding that work in Early Childhood Education constitutes a collective practice in which care and education are intertwined through the actions of different workers. The general objective of the research was to describe and analyze how the work of teachers and assistants in Early Childhood Education is organized and how this organization affects collective work, as well as the production and exchange of knowledge among these workers. The specific objectives were to understand how educators’ knowledge is articulated in pedagogical practice; to analyze how teachers and assistants define and differentiate their roles in educational practice; and to describe the properties and characteristics of the knowledge mobilized by educators in their work in Early Childhood Education. The study is supported by theoretical frameworks that analyze educational work as a social, collective activity shaped by power relations, as well as perspectives that understand work-related knowledge as historical productions, constructed through experience, interactions, and the organization of work. The research adopted a qualitative approach and involved four teachers and four early childhood education assistants. Data were produced through semi structured interviews and observations of the participants’ practices. Data analysis showed that work in Early Childhood Education is constituted as collective work, organized through a social division of labor that establishes boundaries, hierarchies, and limits between the roles performed by teachers and assistants. Knowledge is produced in the intertwining of care and education, emerging from concrete experiences in activities with children and from interactions among workers. The results also show that the organization of work reproduces unequal forms of recognition, contributing in particular to the invisibilization of assistants’ knowledge, often naturalized as personal dispositions related to care rather than recognized as professional knowledge. This devaluation stems not only from the organization of work but also from sociocultural processes that have historically associated care with femininity and positioned it as hierarchically inferior within the organization and division of labor. The research thus contributes to understanding work in Early Childhood Education as a social practice marked by contradictions, reinforcing the importance of recognizing and valuing the knowledge produced by all workers involved in the education of young children.