A reflection on the epistemological obstacles that affect the process of constructing knowledge about childhood in teacher training

Abstract

The incorporation of the subject “La educación Inicial en el contexto actual” in Profesorado and Licenciatura de Educación Inicial, pursues the theoretical and practical objective of getting students to understand the role of Educación Inicial as the first level of schooling. The responses we obtained when enquiring about what childhood is, can be classified into two groups which result from basic experience and the naturalization of the hegemonic discourse rooted in common sense: those responses that account for an idealised childhood and those that explain childhood from the concept of natural development. These responses also evidence an invisibilization of the multiplicity of contemporary childhoods. In this work we take up Bachelard’s ideas in order to reflect on the epistemological obstacles that students encounter in the process of constructing scientific knowledge about childhood. In the first part we introduce the issue and the problems observed in relation to the appropriation of knowledge about childhood. Then, we elaborate on the thought of some of the obstacles that students encounter in the act of knowing, and finally we state some teaching strategies that would constitute useful tools in the overcoming of those obstacles.