Children, Gender and Sexualities: An Action-Research with Teachers of Early Childhood Education

Abstract

The aim of this study was to know the subjectivation process of teachers about gender, sexuality and childhood in their educational practices. For this, an intervention research was conducted with the purpose of organizing dialogues with early childhood educators of a Municipal Center of Early Childhood Education. Workshops and interviews were conducted to collect data. We identified the use of gender technologies by teachers in the production of normalized childhoods, and how the school acts as an agent that puts this normalization into action. Among them, we identified ways of acting in the pedagogical process with children, the strength of discourses such as the identification of sexualities based on binary gender stereotypes, as well as interventions to correct deviations in the route of sexualities and genders. We perceive the effects of play and the relationship of the sex / gender mechanism that permeates play through the mediation of adults and the naturalizing and normalizing discourses. The research aimed to create a space for training and debate between researcher and educators in which questions about the normalization of genders and sexualities could be put in motion. It concludes with some considerations about the potential possibilities of early childhood education in breaking from binary and heternormative discourses about genders and sexualities from an early age.