Masculino, educação e ciência: autoetnografia de um professor-homem na educação infantil

Abstract

The presence of men in Early Childhood Education constitutes a field of tensions shaped by scientific, cultural, and institutional discourses that have historically associated the care and education of young children with femininity. This dissertation investigates how social and scientific constructions of gender, sexuality, and masculinities shape and influence the work of men at this educational level. The study is grounded in the author's professional trajectory in public Early Childhood Education institutions, where he has worked as an early childhood educator, teacher, pedagogical supervisor, and school principal, adopting Autoethnography as the methodological approach. The research articulates autoethnographic accounts, critical analysis, and theoretical dialogue with gender studies, particularly drawing on the contributions of Judith Butler, Raewyn Connell, and Joan Scott, in order to problematize the ways in which scientific and social discourses produce regimes of truth about bodies, identities, and practices of care. The aim of the study is to understand how such discourses contribute to legitimizing, challenging, or restricting the presence of men in the care and education of young children, as well as to identify the strategies of persistence, negotiation, and re-signification employed by men working in this professional field, which is symbolically regarded as feminine. Methodologically, the investigation mobilizes the researcher’s memories and professional experiences, articulated with the analysis of academic literature on autoethnography, gender, and masculinities, situating these experiences in dialogue with broader institutional, cultural, and historical dynamics. The findings reveal that the presence of men in Early Childhood Education continues to be marked by estrangement, surveillance, and normative expectations that associate child care with femininity. At the same time, the study demonstrates that men’s participation in this field produces shifts in social perceptions of gender, pedagogical authority, and practices of care. In this way, autoethnography emerges as a powerful methodological tool for understanding how individual experiences are intertwined with social structures and scientific discourses that regulate the presence of bodies and identities within educational spaces. It thus contributes to broadening the debate on masculinities while challenging the naturalization of what is symbolically constructed as feminine in the context of care within early childhood education.