This article aims at understanding how the preparation of first letter teachers happened in the province of Sergipe from 1827 to 1879, especially after the creation and implementation of Atheneu Sergipense and the Normal Course in 1870. The timeframes posed here refer to the Law of October 15th, 1827, and the extinction of the Normal School and its incorporation to Atheneu Sergipense. It is necessary, then, that studies on the teaching profession configuration consider the law as a source. The analytical categories of Pierre Bourdieu (1996) and Norbert Elias (1990, 2001), helped the understanding of how the teaching profession had its organization started in the primary teaching and how the professional habitus was thought concerning the ideal for constitution of a Brazilian nation, within a civilizing process. It can be said that the teaching profession was set between advances and drawbacks, permeated by organizing attempts related to primary teaching legislation. The creation of the Normal School has emerged as an action that would bring about a standardization of knowledge to be taught, and as the importance of setting up the teaching profession had become urgent, there was a need to leave the teacher training by practice behind and implement an institutionalized training at Normal School.
Normal School; Sergipe; teacher professionalization; legislation