Usos e abusos do conceito de gênero nas publicações recentes sobre homens na educação infantil

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to analyze the concept of gender in recent studies of male teachers in early childhood education. The main question is how this concept has been approached in studies on presence and/or absence of male teachers in this first stage of Basic Education. In order to answer this question, we analyze papers from the thematic dossier Men Teachers in Early Childhood Education: dilemmas, tensions, disputes and confluences, published in 2020 by Revista Zero-a-Seis. The main result is the use of the concept of gender in three different ways: i) marker of the difference between women and men, ii) instrument for analyzing the relations between women and men, iii) sense of a relational concept. In these analyses, we highlight several mistakes in the use of the concept of gender, with emphasis on the need for conceptual improvement in studies and research on male teachers in early childhood education.