BODY CULTURE AS A TERRITORY FOR TEACHER TRAINING: THE POTENTIAL OF BODY PRACTICES

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the role of body practices in teacher training, highlighting the process of developing a culture of and in the body. To this end, it used the work carried out in the discipline EDM0677 - Body Culture: Foundation, Methodology and Experiences, taught to students of the Bachelor's Degree in Pedagogy at the University of São Paulo. The focus of the analysis is based on the experience lived in the first semester of 2022, a moment that marks a gradual return to classes, after the COVID-19 pandemic. The experience, as will be presented, meant an important resumption of studies of the body practices of teachers in training. This is because the lack of body-to-body contact, generated by the forced distance learning of the pandemic period, had caused many fears about interaction and touch. This article revisits concerns about teacher training and aims to focus on three convergent aspects: a proposal for the meaning of the concept of culture that is based on the body; the potential of body practices in teacher training[1], and the idea of ​​the classroom as a territory of cultures. To this end, a qualitative research methodology was used that articulates the practice experienced, the photographic records, the field diary, the students’ perceptions resulting from comments made during classes, and the lesson plans linked to concepts and propositions from authors who consider the body as the axis of teaching and learning, as well as an agent of transformation of the school reality. Based on the research carried out, it was possible to reflect and reaffirm the importance of body practices in teacher training, as well as to support debates on a way of thinking about the classroom that is based on the body and its possibilities of creation, reception, sensitivity, presence, teaching and learning.

[1] Throughout the text we will always speak of the students of the subject in the feminine, since the majority of the class was made up of women.