Ser menino e ser menina: construção das Identidades de gênero em contexto de Educação Infantil

Abstract

This research of master's degree was developed at the Postgraduate Program in Education of the Federal University of Alagoas. The study investigates how the gender, to be a boy or a girl, is lived, what it means and how it represents, by the children. Which knowledge, knowing and social and cultural elements are active on this process of gender construction and how the children use what they know and learned about these elements in social interactions they establish with their pairs and the adults in an early childhood education context. Therefore, the attention is focused on children, bringing them as main talkers of the investigation. The study, ethnographic bias and qualitative approach, was done with thirteen children, at 4, 5 and 6 years old, five boys and eight girls in a class of second period of a public early childhood education institutions in the city of Maceió/Alagoas. For the research, four procedures were used for generating data, with the intention of capture different perspectives of the children, including: free play workshops and directed ones, performed in an environment full of fun from multiple areas of interest such as little houses, toys, beauty and fantasies, in the institution's playroom; conversation workshop with the children about the games conducted; conversation workshop about movies; conversation workshop about images. For the free play workshops and the conversation ones, the children were divided into two mixed groups. On the play workshop directed with induced theme, the children were divided by gender. All the workshops, (in a total of nineteen) were recorded by filming and a diary, being transcripted and analysed later. The database were presented through episodes drawn from the various workshops sessions on the four methodological procedures used. The analysis from the episodes showed that children experience and attribute meanings to the gender during the playing, the talking, gestures and movements. An action that reveals concepts and practices of male and female reinterpreted the realities experienced by them in broader cultural routines and it takes effect on the way they position themselves as boys and girls, building their gender identities in interactions established between pairs of the research context.