1 Introduction

The paths taken in this research follow through cultural history, with emphasis on the history of Brazil, in the scenario that involves the twentieth century, situating its approach with the biography of Ceará professor Fátima Sampaio da Silva, taking as a focus her training process and performance in the coordination of the University Unit for Early Childhood Education of the Child Development Center (UUNDC) at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), with dedication for 22 years (1972-1994). This institution is innovative in the proposed model for early childhood education in the city of Fortaleza, in the state of Ceará, whose historical legacy of the biographer evidences her intervention as founder of the nucleus in the 1990s.

Thus, understanding who Professor Fátima Sampaio da Silva is in the Brazilian and Ceará national scenario worries us to want to understand the historical, social, economic and family aspects present in her professional career, which also makes this study challenging, given the historical records that so postponed the role of women in official historiography, especially in the history of education. In this regard, Stascxak points out (²⁰²¹, p. 21):

It is notorious that the historiography of Ceará that dates from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries lacks records that deal with both training and female performance, given that the forms of dissemination of these practices were limited to thematic magazines or newspapers that provided space for this, prioritizing, above all, the experiences carried out by men, leaving teachers on the margins of this context.

Thus, externalizing into the realm of science and research the history of biographies of women educators, especially that of Professor Fátima Sampaio da Silva, adds to the efforts of the micro-history debate. It becomes possible to make visible women educators who were previously academically unexplored, considering their lack of expressiveness, the unsaid aspects about them, and their professional contributions (Xavier, A.; Vasconcelos; ^{Xavier, L., 2018}). Biographing teacher Fátima Sampaio da Silva is to take ownership of this new way of making history, which resulted in a history that, after being recorded, can contribute to the memory of education in Ceará, at UFC, in Brazil.

The blossoming of the third generation of the Annales puts on the scene, therefore, the visibility of women as producers of history, also making use of popular culture, collective social movements (^{Burke, 2010}). As the biographical genre is a place capable of demystifying great heroic feats, “[...] the biography of an individual is still a popular theme for books and films, but many of these biographies are anti-heroic in the sense that they demystify rather than glorify, emphasizing weaknesses as much or more than powers” (^{Burke, 2010}, p. 34).

The biography of teacher Fátima Sampaio da Silva is presented in a tangle of situations revealing countless experiences of an individual, social, collective, educational order, thus forming the interconnections of her life, which will be analyzed hermetically, with discussions from the theoretical-methodological and epistemological point of view, of the multiple readings and rereading - of the life of the biographer -, in an attempt to discover and understand the knowledge that will build the singular and collective aspects and interpretations present in her network of relationships (^{FIALHO; Freire, 2018}).

As ^{Dosse (2020}, p. 80) describes, “[...] biographical identity is no longer considered as frozen in the manner of a statue, but always subject to mutations. It cannot be reduced to the simple transcription of fingerprints [...]". Therefore, it brings to light real, flesh-and-blood women educators, full of imperfections, but also possessing the meaning of power, endowed with knowledge, who have every right to occupy their research space.

It is not a question here of exalting the professional life trajectory of Professor Fátima Sampaio da Silva, however it is necessary to realize that historically there is a debt in the field of knowledge production with the history of women, compared to the place of men. "[...] Canonical authors of historiography and biography are all men, devoted to researching illustrious men, those considered, for a long time, as the true agents of history" (^{Pereira; Zalla; Karawejczyk, 2019}, p. 6).

That said, bringing up the aforementioned teacher is pertinent, after all, there were so many years dedicated to teaching, which, even after her retirement, remains active as a volunteer, making herself available to this institution. Its practices carry a long training path, today occupying a prominent place as a pioneer at UUNDC, with scientific publications of the aforementioned initiative, articulated with the tripod between teaching, research and extension.

Based on this premise, to meet the memories of our biographer is to perceive, as emphasized by ^{Carvalho and Fialho (2021)}, the sensitive value of memory, which refers to the understanding of subjective aspects intertwined with the psychological dimension of each one. "Memories are constituted by the reconstruction of the past through the present, and Biography, however, would be the result of this moment of bringing forth memories and/or forgettings" (^{Carvalho; Fialho, 2021}, p. 32).

It is important to mention that it is in the problematization of the socio-historical, educational reality of a given time that it is possible to perceive and extract the life trajectory of these educators, the institutional spaces where they are inserted, the relationship with their peers in this place, the most varied experiences, the methodologies used in school daily life, etc. (^{Carvalho; FIALHO, 2021}). Without losing sight that, from the elaborated narratives, it is also possible to problematize the history of education itself, its pedagogical model adopted in the second half of the 20th century (^{Fialho; Braga Júnior, 2015}). Yet, adds ^{Carvalho e Fialho (2021}, p. 11):

The biography of a woman, an educator, launches links that can lead us to other women, also educators, whose ordinary experiences and practices help us understand the teaching profession, school institutions, the fabric of diverse relationships (political, social, religious, family) always present in the organization of education in Brazil.

Given the above, our concerns arose in wanting to understand the paths taken by our biographer, leading us to answer the following problem: as an upper-middle-class educator, with parents who had an integralist view of education, did she become a teacher of early childhood education at the State University of Ceará (UECE), with considerable recognition and prominence in her performance at UUNDC? To answer the problem raised, we elaborated the objective of biographizing the educator Fátima Sampaio da Silva, with emphasis on her life trajectory, educational training and professional performance at UUNDC. We then took as a parameter his family and educational process, linked to his training in the United States, Arizona, whose interest proposed to methodologically build knowledge and apply it to improve the quality of life of families and UFC employees.

2 Methodological paths: a path full of possibilities

The paths taken in this study are qualitative, which, according to ^{Minayo (2002}, p. 21), "[...] works with data that cannot or cannot be measured, such as: beliefs, values, attitudes, situations". Thus, the author shows that the use of this type of approach is related to the understanding of a certain phenomenon from the perspective of the individuals who experience it. The study took place through biographical narratives taking oral history as a methodological apparatus, considering that “[...] it is individual, particular to that deponent, but it is also an indispensable element for understanding the history of his social group, his generation, his country and humanity as a whole [...]” (^{Alberti, 2004}, p. 24).

Bringing to light the reminiscence of such memories of the life of teacher Fátima Sampaio da Silva, henceforth only Fátima Sampaio, will require, through oral history, the understanding of her experiences, the memories of her childhood, the relationship with her parents in the process of her learning, the knowledge passed on in the classroom, her pedagogical practices, the relationship with UUNDC. Therefore, according to ^{Alberti (2004)}, it implies the organization of the instruments used through free interviews, without a questionnaire, or direct questions that are inductive and/or concerned with an absolute truth. At the same time, it will require work guided by approaching and adhering to the found data, questioning sources, and maintaining respect and commitment to the scientific method with methodological rigor (^{Vasconcelos; Araújo, 2016}).

Thus, based on the perspective of ^{Bourdieu (1989)}, the object to be investigated in this research takes as a premise the search for scientific knowledge thought not as absolute truth, of definitive knowledge, based on the construction or reconstruction of scientific paths and methods capable of directing us, of enabling us to translate our concerns and questions about what was not said, revealing socially relevant and scientific analyzes.

The act of biography or biography is not an isolated action; it has a strong relationship with history; it is not only inscribed in the life of that person who is being biographed, but in the movement of lives, of relationships that intersect in society. ^{Avelar and Schmidt (2018}, p. 28) position themselves in this regard:

Through the biography, not only the life of a person is written, but the account of a people, the paths of a society. If thinking, investigating, producing and disseminating the history of one or more people is free, how could one make conform to the constitution what reaches its essence, that is, the right to freedom of thought and to disseminate thought, maximum in taking care of intellectual production resulting from research on the life it imposes as a reference to a society?

Based on this understanding, the study in question excelled in the systematic search for narratives capable of reconstructing the life of the biographer, with her prior authorization, in which, for the realization of these collections, we were careful to record all audio information with recordings, which were duly clarified through the Informed Consent Form, appreciated by the interviewee, signed and authorized according to Opinion No. 2.5885.705/2018 of the National Research Ethics Council, inserted as part of a larger project on “Education and educators in Ceará of the twentieth century: practices, readings and representations”, coordinated by Professor Lia Machado Fiuza Fialho.

It is worth emphasizing that the contact established with the biographer to carry out the interviews took place in November 2022, in a place chosen by her, and her apartment was reserved, with a 93-minute interview, on November 22^nd, 2022, mediated by the researcher Aurinete Alves Nogueira. Careful details were being presented at this time by the interviewer to help bring light to the memory, especially when reporting to UUNDC.

Biographical interviews are constructions in this movement that goes from the data collected to the data to be interpreted, because “[...] each biographical interview is a complex social interaction, a system of waiting roles, injunctions, implicit norms and values” (^{Ferrarotti, 2014}, p. 73).

In this sense, the orality proposed here is integrated with the imagery sources, authorized at the time of the interviews by the biographer and/or located in other documentary sources, as we will see below.

The analysis of the oral source, intersected with the imagery sources, allowed us to weave the plot of the life story and formation of Fátima Sampaio, explained in the section that follows. Describe how the study was developed, in order to allow its replication, may contain information regarding: the research approach, the type of study, the place where the research was developed, the subjects who collaborated, the data collection instrument, the data analysis technique and ethical aspects.

3 The family relationship and the first school socializations

Professor Fátima Sampaio is from Barbalha, Ceará, a municipality in the Cariri Metropolitan Region, 504 kilometers from Fortaleza. In the 1950s, it went through a period marked by development, with the arrival of the railroad and electricity. We believe that the fact that our biographer has experienced this period of economic and cultural development has contributed to promote new social and educational experiences in her childhood and youth, bringing opportunities for discovery and breadth when visualizing a future with possibilities for growth.

Daughter of doctor Pio de Sá Barreto Sampaio and teacher Maria Letícia Ferreira Lima Sampaio, belonging to the upper middle class. His parents provided him with a quiet and safe childhood, encouraging different learning and encouraging different readings and studies. Her mother gave birth to eight children; unfortunately, one of the children passed away, leaving only seven descendants. Fátima Sampaio was the fourth daughter in chronological order among the siblings, who were named: Eudes Lima Sampaio, Lúcia Lima Sampaio, Roberto Lima Sampaio, Maria Teresa Lima Sampaio, Everardo Lima Sampaio, and Marciano Lima Sampaio. Her mother made a point of following the education of her children, lovingly taking care of school activities, telling stories and encouraging them to value education, as teacher Fátima Sampaio recalls in an interview (2022):

[...] there was a lot of storytelling, despite the little time my mother had; my father had none, [because] he worked all day, but my mother had; a person of a lot of reading too. Yes, it seems like you're mentioning a strong encouragement for literacy from an early age, right?

Mr. Pio de Sá and Mrs. Maria Leticia were associated with the integralist movement¹, an extreme right-wing movement whose mission was the construction of the integral state. The biographer recalls that her mother was director of the women's movement in Fortaleza and that, on the occasion of a meeting of that movement, she aroused the admiration of Dr. Pio de Sampaio, which sometime later led them to courtship and marriage. In this regard, the biographer, in an interview (2022), when reporting the memory of her parents, elucidates: “[...] she was very involved in social and political movements [...]. The whole history of Integralism refers to her name, see? [...]. My father was also an integralist”.

It was this common ideal that brought them together when, during a visit to Fortaleza, your father attended a lecture given by the biographee's mother on the feminine Integralism and the movement of the so-called "blusas verdes" (green blouses), with Plínio Salgado as its main ideologist². Ferreira recalls (2016, p. 88): “Integralist women were also called green blouses in allusion to their uniforms, which they wore in the meetings and solemnities that took place within the integralist movement”. Image 1 depicts the explicit reality.

Source: Diary of Pernanbuco (3/09/²⁰¹⁵).

Figure 1 Uniform of women in Integralism 

Dona Maria Letícia, mother of Fátima Sampaio, had good intellectual training, but chose to dedicate herself, for almost ten years, primarily to raising children and domestic care. And later, when assuming a job outside the home, it was necessary to incorporate, in addition to the role of housewife and mother, the role of teacher. This brings to mind that integralist women, in general, held professions that reinforced caregiving roles, such as nurses, secretaries, and teachers. On these aspects, it is worth emphasizing that, in Integralism, although women actively participate in the movement, they should know how to reconcile militancy in the same perspective of domestic care and chores, as they consider this activity an extension of the home, whose main exercise of women as housewives would also require the responsibility of educating children for future citizens of the homeland within the precepts propagated by the movement (^{O que [...], 2023}).

In addition, the movement was characterized as the marker of the place of women in the sphere of the home, reaffirming this place in society and in the spaces in which they transit. Regarding such aspects, ^{Ferreira (2016}, p. 89) states: “[...] the female sex has the mission of being a mother, wife, housewife and, for the male sex, to provide the sustenance, thus preventing the woman from being forced to occupy public spaces”.

In the same way that women were called to the military in favor of integralist principles, they should be active in the roles of mothers and housewives, which accentuates machismo and patriarchy. Years later, as a result of the political involvement of his parents, Mr. Pio de Sá was elected as a state deputy by the Popular Representation Party (PRP). For this reason, when the biographer was around 18 years old, she moved with her family to Fortaleza, so that he could assume the mandate, where they ended up establishing residence and no longer returned to Barbalha, where they lived.

According to Fátima Sampaio, her schooling process began around the age of 4 or 5, together with her sister Lúcia. Even though Lucia was a year and a half older than our biographer, the sisters studied together in the same class until completing the pedagogical course in high school, now high school. They did kindergarten in a homeschooling setting at the home of Professor Iolanda Luna, who had brought innovative pedagogical materials from Rio de Janeiro: "I remember that there were even those lined up for us to do, some kind of painting came with it" (Fátima Sampaio in an interview given on November 22^nd, 2022).

It is worth noting that this level of education was offered in few private institutions around 1948, since the right to early childhood education was only effective in Brazil from the Federal Constitution of 1988, with few initiatives in this segment (^{Saviani, 2000}). Even though kindergarten was offered in some public schools, places were reduced, because it was not yet considered as a responsibility of the public authorities, as it was not part of the initial years of basic education.

About the beginning of the primary course in a public school, the biographer reports: “Then after kindergarten, I took the so-called primary course. "I started in public school; at the time, they called state schools 'grupo escolar' (school group)" (Fátima Sampaio in an interview given on November 22^nd, 2022). The biographer was a student who stood out with good grades. She bears in her memory the memory of a contentist and segregating school, where there were separate classes for boys and girls. In this regard, we highlight:

Educational legislation and the traditions of manorial and conservative society, with the marked influence of the Catholic Church and religious morality, determined the permanence of gender social relations and a differentiated education for boys and girls. [...] During almost the entire nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth century, most Brazilian schools and colleges remained separated by sex [...] (^{Gondra; Schueler, 2008}, p. 204).

The biographer completed her primary course still in Barbalha, in a school founded by her uncle, Antônio Costa Sampaio, a person active in politics and society, who was part of the Barbalha Improvement Center - a charitable entity whose ideal was to serve society. Its participants were known as centrists. Also considered an idealist, he founded the educational institution for the young women of Barbalha, Mater Salvatoris School, in 1948, under the direction of the mother of our biographee, Mrs. Maria Letícia. Only in 1954, the Benedictine sisters took over the coordination of the institution and the school was renamed Colégio Nossa Senhora de Fátima (CNSF), an institution still active in the city's education, which remains in the same building, built years before.

In this elitist, politically prestigious and privileged family environment, teacher Fátima Sampaio studied from the 3rd to the 5th grade. In 1950, she took an entrance exam to attend the 1st to 4th high school in Barbalha³. She recalls that she wished to become a doctor, inspired by her father. However, to achieve that, she needed to pursue the scientific track in boarding schools. In this regard, her father, who preached integralist ideals, believed that medicine was not a suitable profession for women, as elucidated by the biographer:

So, my father, he mentioned that [...] he didn't provide much encouragement; he believed that pursuing a career in medicine was not considered very suitable for women. There were very few women, and if I came here, I would have to come to the boarding school, there at Colégio da Imaculada Conceição (Fátima Sampaio in an interview granted on November 22^nd, 2022).

We believe that, due to lack of family support to study medicine, Fátima Sampaio decided to dedicate herself to teaching, a profession chosen by most women in the 1950s. When starting high school, known as a pedagogical course or normal course, she recalls that there was no concern with the training of teachers to teach in high schools, as emphasized by the biographer when reporting to that time:

I remember that, at the time, there were no formally trained pedagogues. The Biology teacher was a dentist [...], History teacher was a lawyer [...], so it was like this: people from the community were trained, but they did not have the specificity [...]. There was a priest who ministered Psychology [...] (Fátima Sampaio in an interview granted on November 22^nd, 2022).

In accordance with Professor Fátima Sampaio's statement, we observe that this concern with teaching professionalism was not a reality in the city of Barbalha at that time. Regarding this issue, ^{Vicentini and Lugli (2009}, p. 24) highlight that, besides the difficulty of teacher training to bring quality education to schools, there was a continuous inequality based on the regions of our country, especially because there was no specific curriculum or course "[...] to prepare for the work of teaching." Regarding the professionalism of teaching, ^{Vicentini and Lugli (2009}, p. 24) show that:

[...] the history of the teaching profession, at least in Brazil, does not correspond to a continuous history, of progressive and growing professionalization [...] as it is a social group so diverse in its interior and subjected to such different conditions throughout the country, what can be said is that this history contains both professional and non-professional processes, depending on the place and group to which attention is paid, that is, in the same period part of the teachers may be more professional than others.

Continuing towards his training, after taking up residence in Fortaleza, he completed the pedagogical course together with his sister Lúcia at Colégio São João and, soon after, began teaching at a school of Jesuit priests called Externato do Cristo Rei, whose director and founder was Father Antônio Monteiro da Cruz. Years later, the school was renamed Colégio Santo Inácio, which is currently located in the Fátima neighborhood of Fortaleza, and serves children and adolescents.

A few years later, when Professor Fátima Sampaio was completing the Anglo-Germanic Letters course at Faculdade Marista in the city of Fortaleza, the opportunity arose, through the University of Arizona, through an agreement with UFC, to attend a training course for teachers with the objective of implementing the Home Economics course at UFC. We will address this issue in the following section.

4 From Arizona to Ceará: an innovative proposal for home economics

Professor Fátima Sampaio was selected along with three other young women, in 1964, to study at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, in the United States. She recalls that there was a family-friendly educator who worked in the rural extension service of Ceará, named Maria Gonçalves da Costa Leal, who indicated to her:

[...] She knew that I was a very studious person, proficient in English, and came to ask if I was interested in going to the United States to pursue a course in Home Economics. [...]. When I saw the curriculum and saw that one of the curricula was child and family development, I pointed my finger and said: ‘I want to do this’ (Fátima Sampaio in an interview granted on November 22, 2022).

Inserted in a family with a considerable socioeconomic condition and good friendship relations, it was possible for teacher Fátima Sampaio to follow a differentiated education, the result of her parents' awareness of the role of education for good development, accepting the challenge of studying outside Brazil and away from her family.

Enthusiastic about the possibilities of new learning, she started the Domestic Economics course in the second semester of 1964. It's worth noting that the first undergraduate course in Home Economics in Brazil emerged in 1952 at the Rural State University of Minas Gerais, now known as the Federal University of Viçosa. When it arrived in Ceará in the 1970s, more precisely in Fortaleza, the course already existed in other states, such as Rio Grande Sul, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

After the advent of the Industrial Revolution and with the arrival of many families from the rural environment to the city, significant changes occurred in the design of families. The woman no longer had only the role of housewife along with caring for the children, she now occupied the factory space to seek sustenance. It was in this context that, in 1909, the Domestic Economics course emerged. The creation of the course, at the time known as Science for Women, was focused on the organization of domestic tasks and constituted one of the few opportunities for women to enter higher education.

With the feminist movement in the 1970s, the curriculum of the course sought to break with the idea of training housewives and bring a really scientific character of the domestic economist in the labor market. ^{Oliveira (2008}, p. 105) refers to the course as science and art and emphasizes the importance of his studies for family care:

Home Economics can be understood as a Science and an Art whose mastery involves the care of home and family. The Domestic Economist is the professional whose training is focused on the daily family life with regard to the needs of food, housing, hygiene and health, consumption and clothing. [...] he can also dedicate himself to teaching, both in secondary and university education. And it is here that most graduates dedicate themselves, as it is in teaching that they find the greatest field of work.

The biographer defends the importance of knowing the course and highlights the breadth of areas it covers:

So, I think it's something that many people are not familiar with, the Home Economics course. It's a program that aims to build knowledge and then apply it to improve the quality of family life. Therefore, it encompasses various curriculum areas, such as nutrition, as families need to eat; health, as families need to maintain good health; clothing, as families need to dress; resource management, covering family budgeting; and child-rearing, including child development and family dynamics. (Fátima Sampaio in an interview given on November 22^nd, 2022).

In the speech above, the biographer defends the relevance of the course for the family as a whole and how it can be useful for the administration and organization of the economic, food and health demands of a home. Thus, in the 1970s, a period marked by changes in the course curriculum, Professor Fátima Sampaio returned to Brazil with the firm objective of bringing the Domestic Economics course, so that she could put into practice everything she had learned. About this initial deployment work, she reports the following:

We carried out a promotional effort to emphasize the importance of the course through extension programs. We conducted extension courses in nutrition, resource management, child development, in various schools, and even in other cities in the interior, undertaking this entire process (Fátima Sampaio in an interview given on November 22^nd , 2022).

She acknowledges that there was resistance on behalf of the university council for not knowing the course. According to her, some teachers who were part of the board and had studied in the United States and proved how important the Domestic Economics course was for that country's education helped in this fight. She cites as an example Professor Otávio Braga. In 1972, the course was officially created by the university council and began to operate at the Center for Agricultural Sciences of the UFC. From there, the need arose for a space where undergraduates could put their learning into practice, so laboratories were created:

Machines for the sewing part. We made the meal planning laboratory with the stoves, with the countertops, the family space planning laboratory, health. So, all these areas already had their laboratory, and we, in the area of child and family development? There was no point. It would be a much more complex laboratory, right? (Fátima Sampaio in an interview granted on November 22^nd, 2022).

While there was no school to support the undergraduates of the course, they did an internship in early childhood education in public and private schools. Only in 1986, the Domestic Economics course had been gaining many students, when it finally received a new building and, with it, a nucleus for early childhood education.

Before construction, I met with the architect, along with the other teachers, and we specified how we wanted it: [...] the rooms with such dimensions [...], having a balcony [...], low windows for the children to see outside [...] So, in 1987 [...], this space was already built. [...] I personally went to talk to the dean. [...]

[...] I said, 'I don't want these furniture pieces made [...]. I had catalogs [...] from the United States with models of all the tables and cabinets, everything as it should be, [...] and I hired a carpentry shop, and everything was made there' (Fátima Sampaio in an interview given on November 22^nd, 2022).

Source: Personal archive of the biographer.

Figure 2 Biographed in a classroom at UUNDC with children and two teachers 

The image also depicts wooden furniture and bookshelves full of books, as well as posters on the wall, which denotes a playful and literate environment. In the photo we can also observe teacher Fátima Sampaio in a room at UUNDC together with the children and two teachers, who seem to be observing the speech of some child. We can observe the playfulness and concern to have an environment that presents the children's productions, as well as posters with letters, numbers and words in which they can be explored: children's literacy and literacy, even though they are still in early childhood education.

After construction, it was time to select teachers and staff in general to start classes with the children. Finally, in 1991, it began its activities, constituting itself as a model institution in the segment of early childhood education that serves the children of teachers, servants, administrative technicians, undergraduate and graduate students and the community in general. The UUNDC is located within the Pici campus of UFC, installed in the Center for Agricultural Sciences of the university. Among its objectives, it offers an educational program for children from 3 to 5 years of age, provides an internship opportunity for UFC students, conducts research on Early Childhood Education, among others.

This institution is an early childhood education center with an academic function of the UFC, with a pioneering project aimed at an education from a socio-interactionist perspective. It is worth noting that in Brazil there are currently 17 university units of early childhood education, which are part of the National Association of University Units of Early Childhood Education, which was created to defend university units against attempts by federal governments to extinguish them claiming that early childhood education is the responsibility of municipalities. The association explains that these educational units comply with the university tripod: teaching, research and extension, and not just the formal teaching of children.

Allied to her work at UUNDC with experience in a differentiated school, the biographer collaborated and guided theses and dissertations, was a scholarship holder of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and coordinator of the agreement with Canada and the Domestic Economy course.

I coordinated an agreement with Canada and also had the opportunity to visit nursery schools and preschools in conjunction with Home Economics in Canada. I visited daycare centers in Toronto, visited daycare centers in Alberta, Canada, and in Vancouver, in three different regions of Canada, all in the same style (Fátima Sampaio in an interview granted on November 22^nd, 2022).

The work developed by teacher Fátima Sampaio was inspired by the opportunity she had to learn about other approaches to child development in school units in the United States of America. Her pioneering work in Fortaleza was a contribution to the unique performance at the head of UUNDC, whose existence turns 31 in 2023, of which 22 years of dedication of the biographer in the creation and implementation of a differentiated early childhood education stand out. An innovative experience in the early 1990s, whose roots continue to educate countless generations of teachers at UUNDC.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The biographical writing of Fátima Sampaio invites us to know how her insertion in the UFC Domestic Economy course took place in the 1970s and its importance in the historical context of that time for education. We also know the implementation of UUNDC by historically resuming the personal and professional life of the biographer. To this end, we went through familiar aspects that provided their differentiated educational background, explored historical, political and personal contexts and, finally, acquired the contextualized reconstitution of their professional experience with UUNDC.

Based on the time frame from 1972 to 1994, we follow the personal and professional history of our biographer. We emphasize that, in order to understand her professional performance as an educator, we have been researching since her childhood, because we understand that, knowing her family context, going through her family and primary education, we can understand the actions and postures of the biographer in view of the various aspects outlined in this research, which aimed to biographize the educator Fátima Sampaio da Silva, with emphasis on her life trajectory, educational training and professional performance.

We methodologically rely on oral history to, through their reports, collected through an open interview held in their apartment, and the written and imagery sources that made up this study, pursue the intention of achieving the proposed objective of scientifically biographizing the life of this educator, who contributed to the education of Ceará, especially early childhood education, UUNDC's work cycle, as well as the training of numerous professionals, including pedagogues who are welcomed by the institution in their internships provided for in the curricula of UFC courses, fulfilling the tripod that proposes to favor teaching, research and extension.

The life of teacher Fátima Sampaio, her privileged school education in good schools and the opportunity to study outside Brazil resulted in the implementation of the Domestic Economics course at UFC and, consequently, in the creation of UUNDC. This context presented here allowed us, throughout the article, to make relevant reflections on education as a whole in the time frame researched.

Thus, we attest to the professional trajectory of the biographer and her important contribution to the education of Ceará, especially for undergraduates of the Domestic Economics course and other courses that insert their students in the institution in the period of supervised internships. In addition, due to the amount of scientific research carried out on the institution, we can recognize the importance of the segment that arouses interest in many researchers.

Based on the results found in the research, we believe we have achieved our goal of bringing to light the life of this woman, mother and educator who made a path of donation and pioneering in education. We also emphasize that this work may have other research possibilities by looking away to areas not yet researched. We hope, with this study, to collaborate with the history of the UFC with regard to the now extinct Domestic Economics course, especially highlighting the contribution of Professor Fátima Sampaio and her experiences at UUNDC.