Avaliação, gênero e qualidade na Educação Infantil: conceitos em disputa

Abstract

This article aims to undertake an historical review of the process of the consolidation of the debate between evaluation, quality and gender in public policies on Early Childhood Education, before then presenting some aspects of the São Paulo City Early Childhood Education Quality Indicators, a participative institutional self-evaluation tool that includes gender as part of the dimensions of quality. Quality is understood as being negotiated and a concept in dispute (BONDIOLI, 2004; MOSS, 2002; DAHLBERG; MOSS; PENCE, 2003). We consider it essential to highlight, among the research findings, the configuration of this quality assessment policy devised by women-teachers who shared theoretical concepts of childhoods and Early Childhood Education agreed on in national and international documents in this area from a gender perspective (SCOTT, 1988). In a dimension that emerges with the demand for racial issues, the gender dimension enters the intersection. The group of women-teachers responsible for building this specific dimension, referred to as “guardians of the issue”, used the document as an instrument of struggle and, as a political option, put gender and ethnic-racial differences and inequalities on the agenda in Early Childhood Education in São Paulo. In this sense, their reflections pose some important challenges for the necessary intersection between evaluation, gender and quality in Early Childhood Education.