Autoethnography on the insertion of a novice teacher in a Country School in the Southern Region of Brazil

Author(s):

Rosane Kreusburg Molina(submitting)Vicente Molina Neto(presenting)Rodrigo Lopes

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Poster

Session Information

19 SES 05.5 PS, General Poster Exhibition

General Poster Session during Lunch

Time:

2012-09-19

12:30-14:00

Room:

FCEE - Poster Exhibition Area

Chair:

Contribution

In Brazil, the countryside population comprises around twenty-seven million people, 15% of the total population (IBGE, 2010). According to the Ministry of Education (MEC) “country” is a concept that, more than a non-urban perimeter includes spaces pertaining to forests, livestock farming, mining, agriculture, fisheries and extractivism. The country is a space where life, new social relations, history and culture are produced (Molina, 2006). The Ministry of Education defines the identity of Country Schools according to their connection with issues inherent to collective memory, culture and history of the local territorial contexts (MEC, 2012). Given the broad meaning of the concept of “Country School” and the multicultural aspect of this universe, respect for differences is central to research in this field. Therefore, in this study, we are referring to a Country School in the rural area, with small farmers in the Southern Region of Brazil, where the socio-historical base and cultural matrix are rooted in German immigration of the 1820s. The local population is German-speaking due to the effect of skills generated and learned within this tradition. Brazilian teacher training policies still have an urban bias, educating teachers who are not prepared to acknowledge the country as a specific space for human life and realization. Professional insertion of teachers is a continuous process, but for novice teachers it strongly depends on help mechanisms guaranteed by the insertion policy defined by the school where they begin their career (Marcelo, 2009). The research process described here refers to the first three years of teaching by a young teacher at a Country School located within this context. Through autoethnography, the teacher describes dilemmas and constructs answers to their initial question: how can anybody with a non-German and urban cultural capital teach at this Country School? The purpose of the research was: a) to transform the experience into self-education; b) to build a retrospective and prospective understanding about how the Country School is configured in the context investigated; c) to identify the challenges present in the process of insertion into teaching at a Country School. The concept of teacher identity is structured based on the arguments of Dubar (2005); Berger and Luckmann (2010); and Lahire (2001) about social identity construction and validation processes.

Method

Aiming to understand how the teaching is constituted as a process at a Country School, based on their own initial experience, the study identifies with the agendas of autoethnography (Chang, 2008; Reed-Danahay, 1997; Ellis, 2004; Ellis and Brochner, 2000; Spry, 2001). It covers the descriptive line (graphism), the context of local social group practice (ethos) and also personal senses (auto). The evidence produced during the first three years of teaching was collected and organized using field notes, field diary, ethnographic observations and autobiographic narratives. The analytic process places results into three categories that, metaphorically, refer to the three main stages of farming the land: sowing, cultivating, harvesting. The first category describes the teacher inserted into the context of the school community (autobiography); the second category describes the way the interpersonal and professional relationships of this teacher occurred within the context of the school and the community (notes and field diary); the third category records what the teacher learned during the process of this experience, professional objectives attained, those not attained, and those abandoned during this time (narrative).

Expected Outcomes

When experience of the three first years of teaching becomes a self-education project, through autoethnographic investigation, initial contact with the profession is given the status of a reference framework for future experiences. The study includes the following results: a) teaching requires permanent training and self-education to reduce possibility of mistakes in constructing alternatives to solve specific professional problems. b) school is an area of dilemmas, with political-pedagogical disputes that impact the work of teaching; c) pedagogical work in the context of this school, identified with the culture of the local community, reduces the isolation of a novice teacher with urban cultural capital; d) considering the characteristics and needs of the local cultural context without giving up the sense of plurality in education was the greatest challenge of this experience; e) educational processes at this school encounter the dilemma of the cultural double dimension. On the one hand entire humankind and the possibility of learning more about the world. On the other, specific, different knowledge, connected to the economic universe, history, beliefs and values of the local rural community.

References

BERGER, Peter; LUCKMANN, Thomas (2010). A construção social da realidade. Petrópolis: Vozes. BRASIL- MEC/SECAD (2012) - Educação do Campo, www.mec.gov.br/secad Acessado em 23/01/2012. BRASIL- MEC (2001) Parecer 36/2001 sobre as Diretrizes Operacionais da Educação Básica nas Escolas do Campo, www.mec.gov.br Acessado em 23/01/2012. CHANG, Heewon (2008). Autoethnography as method. California: Left Coast Press. DUBAR, Claude (2005). A socialização: construção das identidades sociais e profissionais. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. ELLIS, Carolyn (2004). The ethnography: methodological novel about autoethnography. California: Walnut Creek. ELLIS, Carolyn; BROCHNER, Arthur (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: researcher as subject. In: DENZIN & LINCOLN (Eds). Handbook of qualitative research. California: Sage, IBGE, (2010). Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística – Síntese dos Indicadores Sociais. LAHIRE, Bernard (2001). O homem Plural. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget. MARCELO, Carlos (Coord.) (2009). El profesorado principiante: inserción a la docencia. Barcelona: Octaedro. MOLINA, Mônica (Org.) (2006). Educação do campo e pesquisa: questões para reflexão. Brasília: MDA, 2006. REEd-DANAHAY, Debora (1997). Autoethnography. Nova York: Berg. SPRY, Tami (2001). Performing autoethnography: an embodied methodological práxis. Qualitative Inquiry. n.7, 706-732.

Author Information

Rosane Kreusburg Molina (submitting)

Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos -UNISINOS

Porto Alegre

Vicente Molina Neto (presenting)

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Physichal Education

Porto Alegre

Rodrigo Lopes

Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - UNISINOS

São Leopoldo

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.