Childhoods in a Territory of Belonging: Teacher Memories, Pedagogical Practices, and Records in Early Childhood Education in Riverside/Pantanal Areas.Early Childhood Education; Riverine and Pantanal Childhoods; Teachers’ Memories; Socioaffective Relationships; Territory
This dissertation analyzes the interfaces between Early Childhood Education and the riverine and Pantanal territorialities in the municipality of Cáceres–MT, investigating how everyday school practices may either enhance or render invisible children’s vernacular knowledge, cultures, and experiences. The study adopts a qualitative approach, grounded in narrative and ethnographic research, and is situated within the field of studies on memory, territory, and socioemotional development in Early Childhood Education, guided by decolonial theoretical frameworks. The objective is to understand how teachers’ childhood memories, their pedagogical practices, and institutional documents influence the construction of children’s socioaffective relationships, potentially strengthening cultural and identity belonging or, conversely, contributing to the silencing of riverine and Pantanal experiences. The methodological path articulates teachers’ narratives, analysis of institutional documents and pedagogical records, and observations of daily school life documented in field notes. The findings reveal a process of curricular narrowing, marked by the predominance of a universalizing language that tends toward the epistemicide of local knowledge. However, teachers’ narratives demonstrate pedagogical agency as a space of epistemic disobedience, enabling the construction of a pedagogy of belonging. The study concludes that strengthening Pantanal identity in Early Childhood Education depends on contextualized practices that are sensitive to the territory and committed to valuing teachers’ memories and local knowledge as legitimate dimensions of the educational process.