A history of the present: the creation of an early childhood education school that promotes genders equality

Abstract

This article analyzes the conditions that enabled a Municipal Early Childhood Education School (EMEI) in a municipality in the southern region of Rio Grande do Sul to constitute itself as an institution that promotes an engagement with issues of gender and sexuality. We draw on the understanding of history proposed by Michel Foucault (2004), while also engaging with other concepts at the interface of gender and sexuality studies, enabling a consideration of these terms in conjunction with early childhood education. Data production was carried out using a narrative inquiry methodology, including interviews with members of the EMEI’s administrative team and with two teachers who participated in the Gender Equality Promoting School Project; the compilation of a field journal; and other sources of narrative data, such as academic works by the teacher after whom the school is named, the EMEI’s Political-Pedagogical Project, and a book chapter produced by members of the teaching staff. In the analysis, we problematize events in the EMEI’s historical trajectories, as evidenced in the community’s struggle for the school’s establishment in that space; in the participation of children’s families in the activities and daily life of the institution; in the academic trajectory of the teacher for whom the school is named; and in the incursions of the anti-gender movement. Based on the findings, we point to the need to expand opportunities for teacher education addressing gender and sexuality, with the aim that schools—beginning in early childhood—collectively rethink the norms that (re)produce discrimination and prejudice.