ENTRE “ENSINAR PREVENÇÃO” E “FALAR SOBRE O CORPO”

desvelando os sentidos dos conceitos de sexo, sexualidade e educação sexual nas falas de professoras da educação infantil

Abstract

This article sought to unveil the understandings of early childhood education teachers regarding the concepts of sex, sexuality, and sex education, analyzing how these concepts are shaped by training marked by silences and reductionist views, and how they can influence teaching practices. Based on historical-dialectical materialism and content analysis, the study identifies how these conceptions are traversed by social, cultural, and formative references that directly influence pedagogical practices. The reflections demonstrate that, although the responses are anchored in biological and normative pedagogical perspectives, reflecting historical processes of repression and the absence of qualified discussions, signs of conceptual shifts also emerge, indicating openness to a more critical, humanizing, and emancipatory approach to sex education and sexuality. The contradictions present in the teachers' statements highlight the complexity of the educational reality and reveal tensions that, far from being negative, represent possibilities for transformation. These movements indicate that, even in the face of social and institutional taboos, there is room for progress towards an emancipatory sex education, based on autonomy, human rights, critical thinking, and the recognition of sexuality as a constitutive dimension of human life