Construcción de subjetividades: una perspectiva de género, en la elección de la carrera de Educación Inicial en la UNAE

Abstract

This study focuses on the understanding of the construction of subjectivities of gender perspectives of pre-service students in the pre-school education undergraduate program at the National University of Education (UNAE). The objective of this study is to know how, why and what for, students chose this program in relation to the educational and social process from which their naturalized cultural patterns come from. The categories of gender, construction of subjectivities and “power” from Foucauldian theory as a configurator of the subject are conceptualized in this study; in a hegemonic, heterosexual and patriarchal established in power and knowledge structures which result in inequality, oppression and domination in the differentiated and hierarchal relations according to sex. From a qualitative paradigm, this is a phenomenological research which departed from a concrete reality in the socio-educational and cultural context aiming to describe, understand and interpret the construction of subjectivities in relation to gender and career selection. This interpretative and descriptive design has allowed me to approach the students’ reality, their actions and decisions regarding their relations in the socio-educational and cultural context of the key respondents: students and teachers from first to seventh semester as well as some teachers and academic authorities that direct the pre-school education undergraduate program at UNAE. To collect data, interviews, micro stories and focus group discussions with the key respondents were used. The results were analyzed using a gender perspective which allowed the identification of the existence of socio-cultural stereotypes which lead to educational, social and economic inequalities. Finally, through this research, it was possible to identify the most relevant characteristics of the process of re-meaning and appropriation of the reality and gender from the construction and identification of the subjectivities in the socio-educational and cultural contexts and their interactions. It was also possible to identify, describe and interpret some cultural patterns of gender that have been naturalized by students. Patterns that have influenced their actions and decision making, specifically in the selection of their teaching careers. Some notions of knowledge and conceptualizations of pedagogy of children and care previous to the selection of the pre-school education career have also been identified.