Compreensões de educação para a sexualidade em discursos de professoras(es) de ciências e nas pesquisas em ensino no Brasil: olhares foucaultianos

Abstract

Discussing sexuality in school environments is a necessary and, at the same time, challenging task for some teachers, such as those in the sciences who, because their subjects include content such as genital systems and adolescence, end up being held responsible for discussing sexuality because of its relation to biological content. Considering the above, our aim is to problematize, from the perspective of Foucauldian epistemology, the understandings of science teachers about sexuality. To achieve this goal, we first discuss some theoretical foundations and relate them to education and sexuality, based on Foucauldian thinking. Next, we present the methodological paths with a new possibility for analyzing articles and papers, the Textual Scenario Compilation, which we have already used in the sequence to build a panorama of research in the Annals of the National Meeting of Research in Science Education on the theme of sexuality. Next, we present and discuss the responses to a form filled in by 72 teachers from all regions of Brazil, describing how they work with sexuality and how they understand it. The questionnaire was made up of closed and open questions, the latter also prompting correlations between socially recurrent terms. The data and results are discussed in conjunction with the works of Michel Foucault and with authors aligned with his thinking, which allows us to get closer to a discourse analyzed in an epistemological and methodological way with Foucauldian bases. This research shows how sexuality is understood and worked with by the research subjects who work with it in school institutions, including a plurality of methodological strategies and conceptual understandings. In addition, the concepts presented by the teachers show that they are searching for scientific meanings, but that sometimes there is still no mastery of this, constructing concepts that can detract from their scientific. Thus, science teachers seek to approach sexuality in the classroom beyond biological concepts, even though they lack conceptual and scientific mastery over some terms and nomenclatures. Despite movements that appear to make the subject of sexuality invisible in schools, it resists and persists by being worked on with a focus on enabling students to become self-aware and respectful of others. Thus, our thesis is because science teachers should be seen as mobilizers of knowledge and power for sexual education within school institutions. We hope that the results of this work can also be a source of inspiration for researchers and teachers in the areas involved: Education and Sexuality.