Childhood professionals' formation: an analysis of speeches within teachers' initial formation, in times of democracy in Portugal

Resumen

This article was intended to summon a reflection focused on the importance that knowledge about the transformations on childhood conceptions has for the understanding of the sociabilities and subjectivities that settle on the scholar institution. Some results are presented gathered from a study which aimed to know and understand the childhood conceptions that are expressed at, or related with, first basic course teachers' initial formation, in Portugal since April 1974, endured in the scope of a PhD thesis in Educational Sciences, presented in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto. The teachers' initial formation was considered in the study as the most determinant modern institution, both socially and historically, for the spreading out of the childhood conceptions included in the scientific, pedagogic and educational speeches. In this text study methodology and problematic are concisely presented, and results are shown with respect: to the identification of narratives about childhood and their articulation with narratives about scholar education and the professional component of teaching; to the social mapping of these narratives; and to the implications of childhood dimension on the construction of the professional component of teaching. Concluding remarks are that the negotiation between different types of knowledge about childhood and children, and between microactors and macroactors responsible for their scholar education becomes unavoidable. Moreover, the reflection about the impact that scholar education has on children's life and the place that teachers' initial formation occupies there reveals itself as an ethical imperative.