Afinal: quem cuida de quem cuida? Uma jornada poética e formativa a partir das cartas pedagógicas na escola de educação infantil

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how practices of care, affection, and loving-kindness constitute the experience and teacher training in the field of Early Childhood Education, taking as its empirical context a municipal school at this stage and the formative daily life of its teachers. It starts from the understanding of Early Childhood Education as a specific field of pedagogical knowledge production, in which teaching is constructed amidst relationships, times, bodies, materialities, and affections, requiring formative processes sensitive to the experiences lived with babies and young children. The overall objective of the research was to understand how practices of care, affection, and loving-kindness permeate and constitute the training of early childhood education teachers. Specific objectives included: (1) promoting discussion groups, encouraging critical reflection by teachers on their pedagogical practices and on themselves as subjects of teaching; (2) exploring the educational management´s perception of the importance and feasibility of welcoming training environments attentive to the dimensions of self-care, loving-kindness, and affection; and (3) creating writing spaces that would allow teachers to produce meaning about their pedagogical practices, anchored in the daily life of early childhood education. The investigation was developed from a qualitative perspective, with (self-)narrative inspiration, understanding training as experience and writing as a formative practice. The methodological approach consisted of formative devices such as discussion circles, pedagogical letters, a reflective deck of cards, personalized notebooks, and aesthetic compositions, understood not as technical instruments, but as ethical-aesthetic propositions that intertwine life, teaching, and training. From the investigative process emerged the analytical categories of time, teacher training, and affectivity/self-care. The analysis of these categories was supported by an admittedly audacious and, at the same time, valuable theoretical articulation between Michel Foucault and Paulo Freire. In Foucault, self-care is understood as a demanding, unsettling, and non-prescriptive ethical exercise that calls the subject to rigorous attention to their ways of being, acting, and thinking. In Freire, this movement expands into the dialogical, relational, and political dimension of training, sustained by love, listening, and responsibility towards the other. While maintaining the distinctions between these frameworks their articulation allowed us to understand self-care as a collective formative practice, constructed in the relationship and daily life of teaching in Early Childhood Education. The research also showed that aesthetics constitutes a formative principle and not an ornamental element, permeating the ways of organizing spaces, times, materials, and training experiences, provoking shifts and estrangements necessary for reflective processes. In the realm of technical production, formative materials directly linked to the specificities of Early Childhood Education were developed, such as: pedagogical letters as a device for self-writing and sharing; a reflective deck of cards as a trigger for formative conversations; personalized notebooks for recording teaching experiences; and aesthetic compositions that fostered environments of care, listening, and reflection. These productions, articulated with academic analysis, reinforce the professional character of the research and offer contributions to formative practices in Early Childhood Education, especially regarding the creation of ethical, sensitive, and collective formative spaces and times. This study recognizes that self-care, from a Foucauldian perspective, is an arduous, unsettling, sometimes painful and challenging exercise that demands time, rigor, and continuity. Although this dimension was not explored in depth as a systematic spiritual practice, the research considered pedagogical letters as an initial step in this direction, understanding them as exercises in self-awareness, writing, and shared reflection. It concludes that, in the empirical context of this research, self-care, articulated with affection and loving-kindness, constituted a structuring axis in the training of the participating early childhood education teachers, affirming teaching as a space for creation, care, and continuous invention.