CURRICULUM, THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IDENTITIES AND TEACHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This paper reflects on the curriculum, articulating it with the production of gender identities in basic education and teacher education. Grounded on curriculum and gender studies, meetings were set up with basic education teachers, in which semi-structured interviews were conducted. These meetings showed that the teachers have embraced a traditional concept of curriculum that is related to their difficulty of including discussion about the construction of gender identities in the school environment. We have observed that the teachers’ reflections are based on heteronormativity. This is because teachers (like all subjects) are not subjects ‘themselves’, but rather the result of discourses that have been, and are being unfolded in their bodies, producing specific ways of talking about/silencing gender identities. To subvert heteronormativity, we have pointed out the space/time of both initial and continued teacher education as a significant context for understanding that gender identities are historically and culturally constructed by social power relationships, hence, they can be re-signified.