NARRATIVES OF LIFE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF IN TEACHER TRAINING

Abstract

This research presents an ethnographic scientific investigation carried in a Catholic Christian School, in the Northeast Region of Brazil. It aims at meeting the needs of socially vulnerable and underprivileged  students. Twelve school teachers who have volunteered to participate in the research chose twelve students living in poverty in order to  get to know their social context, through the ethnographic research. The ethnographersresearchers-teachers joined a Cultural Therapy group, in the same model as  George and Louise Spindler, in Circles of Literacy created by Cavalcante Junior, where they could talk about the culture of the students, as well as their own, and how the latter influenced upon relationships, especially in classrooms. As they joined the Cultural Therapy group, the teachers, concomitantly, realized that they, themselves, were living in the same contexts of the students’, where they ended up rescuing their own values, realizing how interacted their actions are by one another’s culture. Such social-cultural experiences, from the teaching group, had repercussions in its construction, thus dignifying man power and constituting the identity of the teacher-subject. During the production of data, through Cultural Therapy, the thinking process proved to be inherent, supporting the produced narratives, which were being altered during field work. It also brought to the teachers who collaborated in the experience, the opportunity of recollecting their life stories: their childhood, their youth, their beginning in the path of teaching, nevertheless, the reconstruction of themselves. Beginning with the stories and the narratives, the training model of teaching practice revealed itself, as well as the spontaneities and the bonds  formed within the group.