Gender relations in Early Childhood Education: structure and agency in the process of building meanings about being a boy and being a girl¹

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the ways children experience gender relations in an Early Childhood Education institution are analyzed, in order to highlight the articulations between the structural dimensions and the agencies of boys and girls. The research object is the relations between the institutional regulation and the actions of boys and girls of 4 and 5 years old, in the choices and uses of the environments of an institution of Early Childhood Education. From a theoretical point of view, the text is anchored in gender studies and studies of childhood and Early Childhood Education. From the methodological point of view, the study is configured as ethnography developed throughout 2015 with 7 girls and 11 boys of 5 years old and their teachers in a public Early Childhood Education institution located in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, having as instruments of data production: participant observation, interviews, drawings articulated with the orality of the children. It was verified that the regulation exerted by teachers influences the action of children in the process of choice and use of the spaces of Early Childhood Education, since boys were more expansive than girls concerning the use of the spaces of the institution.

Keywords:
Childhood; Children; Early Childhood Education; Gender relations; Structure and agency