NARRATIVE IDENTITY OF EARLY EARLY EDUCATION TEACHERS

Abstract

This article is the result of biographical-narrative research, in which six teachers from a public preschool located in the urban area of a city in the countryside of Maranhão narrate their personal and professional experiences and present evidence of narrative identity. The objective is to understand these teacher’s narrative identities. We use the narrative interview as a tool for data production, and the analysis is carried out based on Fritz Schütze's proposal. Data reveal that autobiographical narratives represent, express, and constitute the self and help to find the bond that establishes the necessary relationships between who the Early Childhood Education teacher used to be and who he or she is today. We can state that the narrative establishes a mediation between the past, the present, and the future; between the experiences and the meaning they currently acquire with their future projects, constituting the teacher identity. In the act of narrating, one becomes aware of that constitution. The teachers, when they join the group of teachers at this stage of Basic Education, build their thinking and knowledge, the group's ways of thinking and speaking, and constitute their professional identities. Narrative identity is not just what a person does or how others see him or her, it is the scope to build a particular chronicle of life, an ongoing story of oneself.