Percursos de vida, formação e atuação docente: Maria do Rozário Pereira Valente (1951-2022)

Abstract

This dissertation dealt with the themes of biography, history and teaching memory and aimed to investigate the life paths of Maria do Rozário Pereira Valente, observing aspects of her childhood, schooling, training and professional performance. We identified the figurations occupied by the collaborator throughout her life, we analyzed her training paths and teaching activities and understood the trajectories and motivations that constituted her as a teacher. The research was carried out from a qualitative approach, constituting an investigation of an exploratory nature. The method used was the Oral History of life, which allowed the use of open interviews and the use of oral sources, as well as the use of documentary sources from the collaborator's personal collection. As a theoretical reference, the research dialogued with Norbert Elias from the concepts of individual, figuration, interdependence and society. The biography was used as a thematic approach to approach the theoretical thinking offered by authors in the area and concepts necessary for the process of investigating and writing Maria do Rozário's life story. The time frame began in the year of birth of the collaborator, 1951, and ended in 2022, the year the interviews were carried out, and was justified, in part, by the methodology of Oral History of life, considering the time of the interview and the narrated historical time, and, in part, for the interest in understanding the process of formation of the collaborator throughout her life. In the research procedures, aiming to answer the guiding questions and the proposed objectives, we identified the figurations composed by Maria do Rozário throughout her life and used, for analysis, three that we judged to be broad and existing throughout her life, formed in spaces, periods and with different individuals, but similar to each other due to the institutionality they propose: family, school and religious figurations. In these figurations, Maria do Rozário developed roles with different characteristics: in the family figuration, sometimes she appeared as a student, sometimes as a child; already in adult life, sometimes as a teacher and co-worker, sometimes as a woman, wife, grandmother, catechist and minister, characteristics that we name and list as facets and through which we envision her different performances in each figuration. Maria do Rozário's biography was strongly marked by her studies and teaching profession. In the interviews, she said that from an early age she was influenced and encouraged by her family to dedicate herself to her studies. Her paths taken from childhood to adolescence were mainly motivated by the continuity of her schooling process with a view to her future teaching career. Her maternal grandfather was a teacher and founder of the first school he attended, whose building was also used for masses and to house the family business. Her aunts were teachers; her mother, catechist and minister, and she kept with her the unfulfilled desire to follow this profession, revealing it in the words and actions of enculcment so that her daughters would follow the teaching career. Already in adult life, she dedicated herself to her training and teaching work, functions that she managed in parallel with those of being a mother, wife, housewife and positions in the local church. Finally, we consider that the constitution of their identity took place, from an early age, through immersion in a teaching and religious culture. This dissertation contributes to the writing of the History of Brazilian Education, through the personal and professional life of Maria do Rozário Pereira Valente.