A Research into teacher training in Early Childhood Education

consolidation of a contemporary teaching laboratory

Abstract

This article shows the consolidation of the Contemporary Teaching Laboratory (LABDOC/CNPq/UNISINOS) as a potential space for teacher training. The research was carried out as a collaborative co-training in a laboratory with Early Childhood Education teachers from São Leopoldo (RS), who were important mobilizers of the training power. In this section selected for analysis, we used data from an experience developed during six meetings held in the laboratory in the first months of 2022. As a theoretical basis, we used studies on Early Childhood Education, teaching, and teacher training, by the authors mentioned in the text. The methodology was the critical analysis of the processes, with the use of concepts that enhanced the analyses. LABDOC has shown to be powerful to produce an empirical corpus of research on Early Childhood Education and useful for teacher training, through both the conception of training adopted and the work with experiments that emerged from the proposals of the teachers participating in the laboratory. We also explain the functioning of this laboratory with Early Childhood Education teachers. Preliminary analyses have enabled us to defend this conception of formative and collaborative research as potent for self-training, co-training, and training in Early Childhood Education. We have noticed that teachers move away from teaching practices rooted in the pedagogical tradition and justify their new understandings of their teaching in Early Childhood Education and the specificities of contemporary childhood. In this sense, the experiences at LABDOC represent a challenge for teachers in Early Childhood Education as well as in different grade levels: the challenge of creating their own training, which leads to the transformation of themselves and others, although this may not be possible without overcoming a passive training culture.