Banca de DEFESA: VALÉRIA FERNANDES DE ABREU

LISTENING TO NARRATIVES, (CON)RELING MEMORIES AND CHALLENGES OF EARLY EARLY EDUCATION TEACHERS ABOUT THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Keywords: Teacher narratives; Pedagogical practices; Early Childhood Education; COVID19 Pandemic; Return to in-person Activities.

The theme surround this thesis gained significant global attention in 2020, when humanity became a ware of the new coronavirus. The crisis that intensified in that year shook the world, paralyzing economies, schools, and other institutions, spreading fear and altering people's daily lives. Since the Brazilian Law of Education (LDBEN) No. 9.394/96, Early Childhood Education is the first stage of Basic Education, and its guiding principles, interactions and play, were adapted during the pandemic. This research aims to analyze, based on the narratives of Early Childhood Education teachers, the emerging challenges for pedagogical practices during the pandemic and how these practices guided and/or modified the period marked by the return to in-person activities, questioning Early Childhood Education about its objectives and functions beyond the pandemic period. This research seeks to understand how discourses, curriculum, and practices were experienced by these professionals and how all of this helps us tho think about an agenda for Early Childhood Education in the coming years. Considering that since the pandemic, different initiativies have been taken to continue the school year, this research was built upon the following question: how did Early Childhood Education teachers conduct their pedagogical practices during the critical period of the pandemic, during social distancing, and during the period of return to in-person activities? To answer this question, we conducted a dialogue between education and philosophy throughout the text. The house, as an allegory, has its land in the municipality of Duque de Caxias; through the narratives of seven early childhood education teachers, we built its foundation. The choice of their rooms, the colors of their walls, the definition of their architecture stemmed from Walter Benjamin, but also benefited from the collaboration of Slavoj Žižek, Mark Fisher, and Ailton Krenak. The qualitative research constitutes a narrative study. Regarding the empirical field, we entered the homes of seven early childhood education teachers located in the four districts of Duque de Caxias: Centro, Campos Elíseos, Imbariê, and Xerém. As a result, the research revealed that the pandemic exposed the structural weaknesses of early childhood education, and at the same time revealed the creative potential of the teachers in the face of the collapse of their routine, even without specific technological training, adequate infrastructure, and the necessary governmental support. The teachers' narratives showed that, even amidst absence and fear, teaching resisted from a collective perspective. The analysis of these teachers' voices also revealed the risk of increasing early schooling and the technologization of teaching work, intensified during the pandemic, which threaten the sensitive essence of Early Childhood Education. In light of this, reaffirming the achievements made implies recognizing that educating in childhood is an act of encounter and shared creation, where knowledge is woven between bodies, voices, and imaginations. The experience lived during the pandemic revealed to us that the school only remains alive when it pulsates with presence, when it embraces the unpredictability of life and the daily invention of relationships. Preserving this vitality is what allows us, with Krenak, to postpone the end of the world.