Abstract
The correlations between gender, diversity and education are present in society and in school. In childhood education, in general, there are almost no male teachers, as the task is believed to be more appropriate for women. However, this view is different in some indigenous cultures, which has aroused the interest in understanding this reality. The aim of this study was to investigate the opinion of the school community of an indigenous village, located in the town of Tacuru (MS), about the work developed by indigenous male teachers in early childhood education. The field research is qualitative in nature and the data were collected by semi-structured interviews, initially conducted with four subjects: a teacher, a school manager, a child´s mother (all of them indigenous), and one non-indigenous municipal manager. The results were transcribed, analyzed and named as primary data. This study also had the participation of a researcher of the indigenous culture who reported his opinion regarding the results obtained from the interviews of the first four participants. Such participation was termed secondary data. The findings show that, in the indigenous culture, children live in a community where everybody is a potential educator, regardless of gender, and the post of a teacher can be considered a prestigious position. In addition, for indigenous women, it is more difficult to leave the village in search of training, which may explain the significant male presence in early childhood education in the indigenous village at issue.
Diversity; Gender; Male Teachers; Indigenous culture