Meanings production in the initial training of science and biology teachers: a discursive approach to investigating a subject on gender, sexuality and education
teacher training; discourse; pedagogical devices; training processes.
The research focused on analysing the meanings produced in the initial training of Science and Biology teachers, specifically from the subject Reflections on Gender and Sexuality in Science and Biology Teaching (RGeSex), offered at the University of Brasilia (UnB). Guided by a perspective that understands gender and sexuality from their historical and cultural inscriptions, in which discursive and non-discursive practices produce and are produced, I set out to look at teacher training as one of these regulatory institutions, a producer of meanings and part of the complex network of power relations that make up the complex device of sexuality. To do this, I used a discursive approach, in dialogue with Michel Foucault and some of his interlocutors, in order to provoke debates capable of generating strangeness in the deterministic logics and effects of truth that usually underpin the systems of thought of the pedagogical processes of Science and Biology. By analysing a wide range of sources, including transcripts of classes, interviews with participants and their textual productions, I was able to identify and understand the meanings produced in the discipline, based on discursive regularities and the conditions of possibility that allowed the statements to emerge and disperse. In this context, giving visibility to the statements proved crucial for a critical analysis of the discourses related to gender, sexuality and teacher training itself. Furthermore, in line with the theoretical-methodological perspectives that guided me, I analysed how these discursive events can be translated into pedagogical potential, aiming to produce other ways of thinking in different pedagogical devices and training processes. Multiple statements were identified, some of them of pain, fear and expectations in relation to the themes of gender, sexuality and education. Others of welcome, care and love in training. The pedagogical potential of interactions with fellow teachers was highlighted as a powerful teacher training strategy. In this sense, the unique and rare statements that emerged in this context enriched perspectives and multiplied new ways of thinking, allowing access to the order of discourse.