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Acta Scientiarum. Education

versão impressa ISSN 2178-5198versão On-line ISSN 2178-5201

Acta Educ. vol.44  Maringá  2022  Epub 01-Ago-2022

https://doi.org/10.4025/actascieduc.v44i1.55263 

TEACHERS' FORMATION AND PUBLIC POLICY

Teacher education, gender and sexuality in brazilian academic production

Ann Letícia Aragão Guarany1  * 
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1504-8026

Lívia de Rezende Cardoso1 
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4091-9110

1Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Av. Marechal Rondon Jardim s/n, 49100-000, São Cristóvão, Sergipe, Brasil.


ABSTRACT.

This paper intends to make a situation map of Brazilian’s researches that addresses issues of gender and sexuality in teacher education. Searches were made for articles on the Scielo platform, which mapped publications from 1998 to 2018, and academic productions defended and posted in the period 2010 to 2020 at the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD, in Portuguese). Inspired by the state of the art research type, to present the gaps, potentialities and trends of the research in the area, which can help to give visibility and strength to a currently contested field of study. The results indicate an increase in production, in the last two decades, a recent intensification of post-critical research, a change in the concepts of gender and sexuality that go from categories linked to biological aspects to social constructions and to a strong relationship between the context of public policies for education and academics production. The research describes teacher’s education that, in general, develops only punctual and poorly based actions, thereby reinforcing gender and sexuality patterns standards. Thus, they attest to the need for these courses to discuss and consider gender and sexuality studies to contribute to overcoming the practices of normalization, exclusion, prejudice and inequality.

Keywords: teacher education; gender; sexuality; scientific research

RESUMO.

Neste trabalho, fazemos um levantamento das pesquisas brasileiras que abordam questões de gênero e sexualidade na formação docente. Foram feitas buscas por artigos na plataforma Scielo, que mapeou publicações de 1998 a 2018, e por produções acadêmicas defendidas e postadas no período de 2010 a 2020 na Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (BDTD). Inspiradas no tipo de pesquisa de Estado da Arte, buscamos apresentar as lacunas, potencialidades e tendências da pesquisa na área, o que pode ajudar a dar visibilidade e força a um campo de estudo tão contestado atualmente. Os resultados apontam para o aumento da produção nas últimas duas décadas, a recente intensificação das pesquisas pós-críticas, o deslocamento dos conceitos de gênero e sexualidade, que passam de categorias vinculadas a aspectos biológicos para construções sociais, e a forte relação entre o contexto das políticas públicas na educação e a produção acadêmica. As pesquisas descrevem aspectos da formação docente que, em geral, desenvolvem apenas ações pontuais e pouco embasadas, reforçando com isso os padrões de gênero e sexualidade. Assim, atestam a necessidade de que essa formação discuta e considere os estudos de gênero e sexualidade para contribuir na superação das práticas de normalização, exclusão, preconceito e desigualdade.

Palavras-chave: formação de professores; gênero; sexualidade; produção científica

RESUMEN.

En este artículo, revisamos las investigaciones brasileñas que abordan temas de género y sexualidad en la formación docente. Se realizaron búsquedas de artículos en la plataforma Scielo, que mapearon publicaciones de 1998 a 2018 y producciones académicas defendidas y publicadas en el período 2010 a 2020 en la Biblioteca Digital Brasileña de Tesis y Disertaciones (BDTD, en Portugués). Inspirándonos en el tipo de investigación del Estado del Arte, buscamos presentar las brechas, potencialidades y tendencias de la investigación en el área, que pueden ayudar a dar visibilidad y fuerza a un campo de estudio tan controvertido en la actualidad. Los resultados apuntan a un aumento de la producción en las últimas dos décadas, la reciente intensificación de la investigación poscrítica, un cambio en los conceptos de género y sexualidad que pasan de categorías vinculadas a aspectos biológicos a construcciones sociales, y una fuerte relación entre el contexto de las políticas públicas en educación y la producción académica. Las investigaciones describen aspectos de la formación docente que, en general, brindan solo acciones puntuales y pobremente fundamentadas, reforzando así los patrones sexuales y de género. Así, dan fe de la necesidad de esta formación para discutir y considerar los estudios de género y sexualidad para contribuir a superar las prácticas de normalización, exclusión, prejuicio y desigualdad.

Palabras clave: formación docente; género; sexualidad; investigación científica

Introduction

In the last two decades in Brazil, resolutions, laws, decrees, plans and programs for education have been approved, revoked and edited in a constant trend of educational reforms and establishment of institutional goals that impact basic education and teacher education. The discussions around the National Education Plans (PNE, in Portuguese) (2001-2010 and 2014-2024), the Common National Curricular Base for Basic Education (BNCC, in Portuguese), and the National Curricular Guidelines (DCN, in Portuguese) for Teacher Education have been prominent. In the formulation of these documents, the inclusion, maintenance or removal of issues related to the discussion on gender and sexuality were at the center of the disputes not only in the field of education but also in all other social spaces.

We emphasize that the clamor for the removal of the terms gender and sexual orientation from the curriculum guidelines, from the didactic materials, from the curriculum base for basic education and, therefore, from teacher education itself, reinforces that the curricula are already produced by generified and heteronormative discourses, as gender studies have been highlighting. However, this presence goes unnoticed because it bets on the reproduction of the standard ways of being a man and a woman and on the assumption of a natural binarism (Butler, 2018).

When entering the reading of research in the educational field based on gender studies, we notice an emphasis on the need to provide teachers with more subsidies to deal with differences at school and thus combat forms of prejudice and normalizing forces that 'abnormalize' those who deviate from it. Even though the school is not the only responsible for the constitution of individuals, it is a privileged field for the contradictions that make us who we can be and, for this reason, it is the target of investments, interests, and desires expressed in public policies, including those of teacher education.

In view of these considerations, we ask: what do the researches on teacher education reveal from the perspective of gender and sexuality? How are gender and sexuality presented in the teacher training curricula? How are these issues being dealt with during this teacher education? What needs, potentialities and perspectives are posed for research in the area and for the training courses? In order to discuss these questions, we proposed to conduct a survey of Brazilian research on teacher education regarding gender and sexuality issues, based on the search in Scielo platform, without delimitation of initial and final period, since the results were few, and theses and dissertations in the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD, in Portuguese) defended in the last decade (2010-2020). The surveys were conducted in May 2020, inspired by the State of the Art type of research.

Romanowski and Ens (2006) state that to develop the State of the Art or state of knowledge research it is necessary to understand it as a descriptive study that aims to systematize the production in a given area of knowledge in order to grasp the breadth of what has been produced. The studies carried out from a systematization of data, called State of the Art, receive this denomination when they cover an entire area of knowledge, in the different aspects that generated productions. Thus, it is not enough just to study the abstracts of dissertations and theses. Studies on the productions in congresses and on the publications in periodicals of the area are also necessary.

To present the Brazilian scientific production on gender, sexuality and teacher education, the article was structured to present and discuss the results of the surveys in each research base, starting with what we found from other surveys, especially the production of the National Association of Graduate Studies in Education (ANPEd, in Portuguese), which brings together researchers in the area in national and regional events, then the articles in journals and, finally, the theses and dissertations defended in the last ten years. Throughout the work, we detail the selection criteria used for each research, the general aspects in relation to theoretical and methodological perspectives, specific objects, and we describe the main results and considerations made by the researchers. Finally, a few more considerations were made in relation to the possibilities of research due to the deepening and silencing identified through this research.

General aspects of the research

To characterize general aspects of the research, we searched for studies that converged in some way with our objective and helped us understand the production in the area. We selected mainly those that address the ANPEd's production. Thus, a summary of these studies were presented in order to trace a general panorama of the production in the field disseminated in the association's events, especially after the creation of the Working Group 'Gender, Sexuality and Education' (GT-23) in late 2003, and to point out relations with the survey we did in journals, theses and dissertations in the following sections.

One of these surveys, conducted by Ferreira, Klumb, and Monteiro (2013), points to a growth in the field of gender studies given the number of papers received and the emergence of research groups with a more evident role in this area within the association. The authors highlighted the production between the years 2004 and 2010, pointing out among their results that: a) the production is primarily female, since the 193 authors reach the percentage of 76.3%, of the production presented; b) almost 50% of the studies on gender and sexuality (124 papers) had funding; c) the centrality of production is in the Southeast and South regions of the country, considering that of the 253 papers, 139 were produced in the Southeast region, 76 in the South, against 18 in the Northeast, 15 in the Midwest and only 03 in the North (02 papers are from authors from Portugal); d) most of the papers come from higher education institutions, with 184 papers presented by researchers associated with public institutions and 58 with private institutions, with 09 papers produced by people not linked to these institutions.

In the Ferreira and Coronel’s research (2017), it was possible to notice that, between the years 1990 and 1999, GT-2 (History of Education) strongly expressed the presence of gender studies in ANPEd around objects such as the constitution of teaching as feminine work, the school production of femininity and masculinity and the history of educators. In the same work, the authors reaffirm aspects such as the expansion of production on gender and sexuality since 2004. They also highlight how GT-23 documents describe a process of undeniable gain of space and acceptance of the relevance of the theme, with hegemony of the post-structuralist perspective. However, in the other fields in the area of education related to other working groups this expansion did not occur, for the discussions maintained their regularity or continued to be nonexistent.

Specifically on Gender and Teacher Education, Dal'Igna, Scherer, and Cruz (2017) analyzed the 25 papers published in ANPEd that sought to perform an articulation between the themes in the period from 2004 to 2014. The authors initially describe how the papers focused on the feminization of teaching and the constitution of the teaching identity. The emphasis then shifts to the differences of gender and sexuality, with the emergence of works about the importance of discussions on the subject in initial and continuing education courses for teachers, thus tensing the naturalization processes of gender and sexuality in action in school and university curricula and fostering significant changes in academic production on teacher education.

Other researches, such as that of Vianna (2012), which evaluated a set of 73 productions (theses, dissertations, articles and essays) that related gender, sexuality and formal education focused on educational policies, and indicated by the Win-isis database, present results that converge with those already presented, besides emphasizing other aspects. For this author, such productions emphasize the curriculum following the development of public education policies with the creation of many projects and programs focused on diversity. Thus, she points to a context in which the formulation of education policies and the academic production mutually influence each other in the construction of what could become a specific field of educational academic production.

Cardoso, Guarany, Unger, and Pires (2019) call attention to the fragility in the inclusion of the discussion of gender and sexuality in public policies. The authors describe how there was, in Brazil, a first institutional effort since the end of the twentieth century for the construction of policies that promoted the insertion of minority groups in the educational field. After 2003, there was a second movement in public policies in education, promoted by social movements and the federal government, to minimize inequalities based on cultural markers, appreciation of diversity, and tolerance. However, little was problematized the discursive matrices of production of inequalities, which opened possibilities for attempts to deprive the discussions of gender and sexuality of their scientific and educational character, accusing them of ideology, producing a movement of setbacks and contestation in the most recent norms that silence this debate.

Santos (2020), in his dissertation, made a state of the art of theses and dissertations on education, gender and sexuality, in the period from 1994 to 2018, finding a total of 403 works, being 301 dissertations and 102 theses. Of these, 168 were produced in the Southeast region, followed by the South, with 99, Northeast, with 98, Midwest, with 29 and North, with 09. In the North and Northeast regions, which were the focus of this work, 43 researches had the curriculum as the main object, with main focuses on gender and sexuality in curriculum practices at school and in public policies, state and municipal curricula; 24 researches on teacher education, focused mainly on the analysis of the conception of gender and sexuality of teachers and on the curriculum of the initial training; 24 on teaching practices and 16 on the experiences of students and/or teachers, with a higher incidence of works on sexual and gender identities.

Among the works that were mapped by the researcher, the category involving the 24 researches on teacher education is of specific interest to the objectives of this article. Diversity is a concept that guides most of the works. There is a lower incidence of post-critical and queer theories, which propose questioning, denaturalization, and uncertainty to deconstruct normalization, logic, knowledge, and gender binarisms. Most of these researches deal with programs, specific projects and continued education focused on gender and sexuality themes based mainly on prevention strategies and sexual education with a medical, biological, essentialist, moralist, hygienist and pathologizing approach. Thus, there are few works that deal with the initial training curricula. Among these, most include gender and sexuality as specific themes to be identified in curriculum content and not as bases that underlie the production of curricula.

The production on gender and sexuality follows in the direction of a path that is not necessarily long, but that makes the discussions on gender and sexuality more complex and numerous, also articulated to the teacher training curricula, in the direction of questioning the place of gender and sexuality in these curricula, the naturalization processes from power relations and the discourses that pressure the normalization and production of subjects. In the following topics, we present the survey done in periodicals based on Scielo and theses and dissertations in order to relate it to what has already been described about the research area and trace a more complete panorama of the object.

Gender, sexuality, and teacher education in the journals

To trace a larger panorama of research involving the categories of gender and sexuality in the teacher education curriculum, the terms ‘gênero, currículo, formação’ (in English: gender, curriculum, training) were searched for in the Scielo platform. The term sexuality was almost always associated with gender, so using it did not contribute to the results with the descriptors. The search was made in all journals available in Brazil, without the use of filters with beginning and end of time interval, being the oldest production found in 1998 and the most recent in 2018. We considered all indexes in the search field (title words, keywords, subject, abstract), because in the search made only in abstracts, relevant papers were excluded.

The descriptor ‘formação’ (training) was used together with gender and curriculum, after testing with other terms, such as ‘licenciatura’, ‘formação inicial’ and ‘formação de professores’ (in English: 'licentiate courses, initial training and teacher training). However, the results were more relevant and included more results with the term training. We found 21 papers in total, however, 12 of them were not published in journals in the field of education or teaching, being linked to journals in the medical, psychology, history, or linguistics fields, when genre was associated with literary genre. In view of this data, we undertook a new filtering process, selecting journals in the field of education. Within this selection, we discarded two articles, one that referred to discursive genre and another that mentioned but did not discuss genre. Thus, 07 papers, published between 2006 and 2015, met the requirements and had their abstracts read. We emphasize that all of them belonged to journals with Qualis A1, according to CAPES's Sucupira Platform (Quadrennium 2013-2016), which denotes quality and recognition of a qualified and evaluated scientific committee.

As for the object of these researches, four of them analyzed Brazilian public policies. The work of Dinis and Asinelli-Luz (2007) investigated sexuality as a transversal theme in the National Curriculum Parameters (PCN, in Portuguese) from the analysis of local documents, programs and projects involving sex education in school. Vianna and Unbehaum (2006) discussed gender in early childhood education and elementary school in the legal documents from 1998 to 2002. Stromquist (2007) worked on the concept of quality of education, relating it to gender in global and regional policies, international agreements, and international agreements for Latin America. Dinis (2008) analyzed sexual diversity in basic education and higher education based on papers on the subject and on documents of Brazilian educational legislation, such as the PCN.

Three articles focused on higher education. In Dinis’ article (2008), mentioned above, discussed public policies for education and involved all levels of education, including higher education. The other two focused specifically on undergraduate courses. Dinis and Cavalcanti (2008) discussed Pedagogy students' conceptions of gender and homosexuality. Leite and Oliveira (2015) analyzed the gendered of the medical curriculum of a Higher Education Institution. The article by Furlani (2007) was different from the others when addressing sex education in Early Childhood Education based on a collection of paradidactic books.

As for the theoretical-methodological perspectives and the instruments for data production, most of the papers use document analysis, interviews and questionnaires, generally using content analysis. Only one uses a field diary. Three of them stand out for working with a post-structuralist perspective, a trend in the research field. Leite and Oliveira (2015) perform Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis. Furlani (2007) also does discourse analysis in a post-structuralist perspective from Cultural Studies, and Dinis (2008) is based on Cultural Studies.

The results of the studies showed that public policies regarding gender and sexuality refer to gender roles, identities and some to respect for gender and sexual diversity. The works show how, along the last two decades, there has been an increase in the reference of legal documents in the educational field regarding diversities but showing the difficulties to be put into practice (Dinis & Asinelli-Luz, 2007; Stromquist, 2007; Dinis, 2008; Vianna & Unbehaum, 2006).

As for the curricula of undergraduate courses, studies conclude that they propagate gender binarism, the strangeness as to what is outside the standard of gender and sexuality, and approach sex based on morality and the medicalization of bodies and standardization of subjects, presenting the body as a biological apparatus (Leite & Oliveira, 2015). Although politically correct terms and attitudes have been incorporated, such as the repudiation of discrimination and the practice of tolerance in coexistence with homosexuals, as Dinis and Cavalcanti's (2008) research with Pedagogy students points out, there are no significant changes in the binary, excluding and heteronormative conceptions. The article that analyzes the collection of paradidactic materials for Early Childhood Education corroborates the affirmation of the prevalence of hegemonic standards of normative culture but presents possibilities of resistance to any kind of finalization or identity plastering (Furlani, 2007).

As the descriptor training did not result in a difference of object regarding the training of teachers, we took the decision to remove training from the descriptors and use only ‘gênero’ and ‘currículo’ (in English: gender and curriculum) within the same filters used previously. We found 27 articles distributed in 11 journals, from which 05 were removed, because 04 dealt with literary gender and 01 mentioned gender in the abstract but did not use the concept in the development of the research. With these exclusions, two journals were eliminated from the selection for having only this type of article related. Thus, for the final selection, some remained 22 articles distributed in 09 journals, including the 07 already described above in the intersection with the descriptor training. Temporarily, the articles are distributed from 1998 to 2018, outlining two decades of production in Brazilian journals in education. In the authorship, the female authors stand out, since only three of the articles had as authors (exclusive) male researchers and two with shared authorship with women.

Among these fifteen works identified in the search only with the terms gender and curriculum, without the articulation with training, we present the main aspects and results that can contribute to the understanding of how research on gender and sexuality addresses teacher education. As for the research objects, 06 address school curricula (Delgado, 1998; Carvalho, 2004; Dinis, 2011; Reis & Paraíso, 2014; Caldeira & Paraíso 2016; Maciel & Garcia, 2018) and 03 address 'cultural' curricula beyond school curricula, such as media, advertising, and films (Sabat, 2001; Vasconcelos, Cardoso, & Félix, 2018; Cardoso, L. R., 2016). 02 articles articulate curriculum and social network (Sales & Paraíso, 2011, 2013), 02 deal with higher education in undergraduate courses that were not degrees (Ubach, 2008; Fiúza, Pinto, & Costa, 2016) and the other 02, with educational public policies (Vianna, 2012, 2015).

The two articles that deal with public policies allow us to think about teacher training, since the guidelines for teacher training are among the main public policies in education, besides the fact that the programs for basic education adress the needs that arise in initial training. Vianna (2012) analyzes the academic production on gender and sexuality in public education policies in Brazil between 1990 and 2009. According to her evaluation, the academic production on the theme is still shy, beginning to appear in 1995, but with a gradual increase until 2009, the year in which the analysis ends. He also notes the passage from sex to gender in the academic production examined, showing the influence of feminist studies that refer to the social construction of differences. It also identifies two main analytical trends, the use of the concept of gender, under the influence of Joan Scott, and, in more recent productions, the critique of normativities based on Judith Butler.

In the other article found, Vianna (2015) discusses the relationship between the State and social movements in the production of public education policies focused on gender and sexual diversity in the interlocution of the Lula government with the LGBT movement. The research points out that one of the obstacles is the very fragility of the use of the concept of diversity, another is that the very inclusion of the homosexuality theme was marked by disputes and resistance to the definition of agendas and priorities with the Ministry of Education (MEC). One of the main obstacles encountered for the consolidation of the inclusion of gender and sexuality issues in the curricula is that the actions of the State sought to value sexual diversity without considering the power relations that heteronormativity sanctions. Despite this, he recognizes that the visibility given to the issues in educational policies through teacher training has put issues on the agenda that were previously ignored, mainly because they were considered taboo at school.

As for the theoretical and methodological perspectives, the analyzed production works with assumptions predominantly of post-critical, postmodern research and Cultural Studies, as well as more traditional and positivist positions in relation to the object and the research. The data is produced through literature reviews, document analysis, interviews and ethnographies, sometimes articulating more than one technique, from content analysis, narratives and Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis.

Also, there is a tendency to use concepts and authors linked to post-critical and post-structuralist research, in which gender and sexuality are analytical categories capable of producing knowledge about the historically determined social process of control over the bodies. However, three of the researches depart from this pattern, as they assume gender as a marker of unequal social roles between men and women, based on sexual binarism (Delgado, 1998; Carvalho, 2004; Fiúza et al., 2016) and that of Dinis (2011) that relies on gender and sexual identities to promote diversity. The orientation of these works will be evident in the description of the main results they reached, since they are implicated in the concepts and discourses they assume.

Of the fifteen papers, two do not bring gender and sexuality as initial categories of analysis of the research, but as emerging during the course of the research. One of them is Delgado's (1998), which, when analyzing the construction of a political pedagogical project for preschool, observes the attempt to overcome the socially determined roles for the genders and the spaces of resistance that differentiated pedagogical proposals propitiate. The second one is by Carvalho (2004), who discusses the relations between school and family, concludes that the school curriculum and pedagogical practice are articulated according to a traditional model of family whose idealized parental role and based on the divisions of sex and gender overburden mothers and subordinate the school to the family.

In general, the works that discuss school curricula conclude that educational practices are based on generified and heteronormative standards. In this sense, Reis and Paraíso (2014) show how gender norms act to produce the dichotomy between bodies-boy-students and bodies-girl-students, but also to produce bodies that are considered boy-student-girls or boy-women, based on some medical and biological discourses. Also Caldeira and Paraíso (2016) perceive the action of distinction techniques that separate 'boys' things' from 'girls' things' when analyzing the production of generified bodies in the curriculum of the first year of elementary school.

Dinis (2011) points out the violence against LGBT students and the omission of the topic of sexual diversity as a way to hide homophobia and the complicity of educators with this violence. Also focusing on school curricula, Maciel and Garcia (2018) analyze how lesbian teachers' experiences in schools not only produce a pedagogy that questions heteronormative standards but construct their own knowledge from which they reinvent their teaching identities.

Beyond school curricula, Sales and Paraíso (2011) show, at the intersection between school curricula and a social network called Orkut, the constitution of cyborg and generified juvenile subjectivities, which reaffirm postures and behaviors and, at other times, question behaviors and ways of being and living commonly accepted in our society. Sexuality, articulated to gender, is triggered in the process of construction of juvenile subjectivities in the interface with these curricula, but operates in different ways on youth, demanding the production of subjects that the authors call the 'young male' and the 'difficult young woman' (Sales & Paraíso, 2013).

In the cultural curriculum of advertising, Sabat (2001) presents how the advertising discourse operates with the aim of re/affirming values and habits, teaching ways of being a woman and ways of being a man, forms of femininity and masculinity. Cardoso, L. R. (2016) discusses gender relations in the film curriculum in the production of generified subjects in science, since some subjects are proper of the scientific making, the rational, the technological inventiveness and others have a secondary, supporting and assisting role. Analyzing the cultural curriculum of the film 'Itão Kuêgü: as hiper mulheres’, Vasconcelos, Cardoso, and Félix (2018) problematize some ways in which gender learnings occur and operate in favor of the obscenity of education recomposing in them other bodies in unlearning to experience so many other subjectivities.

Regarding college’s education curricula, the work of Ubach (2008) discusses the importance that feminist critique in psychology has to deconstruct naturalizations and incorporate a gender analysis that breaks dualisms. The research by Fiúza et al. (2016) analyzes gender inequalities among professors in the agrarian field at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV, in Portuguese) to point out the reproduction of prevailing sex stereotypes and sexism in the typification of the profession.

In general, the works published in the journals reveal how incipient are the researches that analyze the curricula of the teacher education courses, since among the 22 works, only Dinis and Cavalcante (2008) discussed this type of curriculum. When teacher training is mentioned in these articles, it is related to public educational policies, in which training policies are included, but they are not the main focus or do not analyze the training curriculum itself, but its guidelines.

What do theses and dissertations reveal?

For this survey, the search for academic works in theses and dissertations is pertinent, since higher education institutions are the major locus of research in Brazil. We searched the BDTD using the terms ‘gênero’, ‘sexualidade’, ‘currículo’ e ‘formação de professores’ '(in English: gender, 'sexuality, curriculum, and teacher education) in all fields. The term sexuality was included here because, without it, much research related to linguistics and literary gender was selected. The other terms allowed a greater focus to the object, because, unlike what happened in the journals, the search results were numerous, so we could use specific terms.

Based on these filters, 68 works were found, being 50 dissertations and 18 theses. To read the abstracts, we selected the works published in the last decade (2010-2020). This decision was supported by the work of Vianna (2012), which traces a panorama until 2009, and by the fact of being able to identify the most recent perspectives of the field. There were 55 results, 41 dissertations and 14 theses. After reading the abstracts, 7 dissertations were discarded for citing gender and/or sexuality, but not having them as a basis for their research. Thus, a total of 48 works were found, 34 dissertations and 14 theses, among 24 private and public institutions.

In most of the papers, 32 of them, gender and sexuality appeared simultaneously or associated. In 05 dissertations, only gender is used as a category, generally associated with gender roles and feminization of teachers. In another 08 papers, the focus is on sexuality, mainly related to sex education or to homophobia. In 03 works, gender and sexuality are in the abstracts, but are not priority categories, being only mentioned as markers of differences or identities that appear or influence the analysis of other issues. Despite the use of the descriptor "teacher training", the theses and dissertations were not always associated with teacher education processes but cited them because they appeared as categories in their surveys or, more predominantly, by citing the need to include aspects related to the themes/issues in teacher education.

The reading of the 48 abstracts were considered for the mapping, emphasizing that we found similar results and in the same sense as those already mentioned, both in relation to the references and the perspectives and results obtained. Thus, we prefer to concentrate on 15 studies that deal with undergraduate courses. They can show us a panorama of research on gender and sexuality applied to the curriculum of the level of education and specific training we focused on, which was not possible in the other general surveys already described because we did not obtain expressive numerical results when the restriction was directed to initial training.

Among the theoretical and methodological bases, many surveys describe themselves as qualitative only. Míguez (2014) used methods from applied linguistics and Alvaro (2018) used primarily quantitative methods. Another seven papers anchored themselves in the post-critical or post-structuralist perspective and Cultural Studies (Rios, 2019; Zanella, 2018; Santos, 2016; Cardoso, H. M., 2016; Santos, 2014; Hampel, 2013; Silva, 2011). The most commonly used tools for data production were mainly interviews, as a main or auxiliary strategy, and the document analysis of public policies and curricula of undergraduate courses. The researchers also used focus groups, field research, participant observation, questionnaires, biographical narratives and autobiographies. For data analysis, we highlight content analysis and discourse analysis, as well as cartography and hermeneutics.

As in the survey by Santos (2020), we observe that female authorship and post-critical perspectives gain prominence, which was not seen in the first years of production on gender and sexuality, possibly because the post-critical theories, that have been consolidating in educational research, expand the analysis of power to include processes centered not only in capitalist economic relations, as we learned from critical theories, but move to relations based on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, as noted by Silva (2010). Thus, gender and sexuality become bases that underlie the production of subjects and curricula in their desires and pretensions, in research that uses various tools and already consolidated in other perspectives.

Regarding the analyses of pedagogical projects of courses and curricular components on gender and sexuality, we found in the work of Zanella (2018) the indication of the hygienist character present in pedagogical documents of the Undergraduate Degree in Biological Sciences at UFSC, in addition to heteronormative and with discourses that are close to an essentialist conception of gender and sexuality, as observed in national normative documents, such as the PCN and DCN for Undergraduate Degrees for teacher training . Santos (2014) discusses how there are, at the same time, discourses that produce silencing about the multiple possibilities of experiencing sexualities and gender in the curriculum, as well as discourses articulated to the notions of respect, which constitute the public policies of inclusion and diversity.

Martins' dissertation (2020), while investigating issues of gender and sexuality in the Mathematics undergraduate course of the Virtual University of the State of São Paulo (UNIVESP, in Portuguese), perceives a predominant absence of gender relations and sexual diversity in the curriculum documents. When there are, they are isolated actions and without conceptual basis. This punctuality in discussions is also observed by Souza (2018) in five undergraduate courses at a university in Paraná. In them, the themes are present in the pedagogical projects of the five courses - in three of them only included after the DCN of 2015 -, but the discussions in the classroom occur in a punctual way, by a certain teacher or only in events.

Cardoso H. M. (2016) analyzed how the themes of body, gender and sexualities are being introduced in the formative practices of the undergraduate courses of Chemistry and Mathematics for teacher training of the Federal Institute of Sergipe (IFS, in Portuguese). The researcher concludes that, even without the theme being officially included in the undergraduate course, these curricula are not exempt, because they are crossed, in a naturalized and silent way, by normatizing discourses of gender and sexuality, binary, homophobic discourses, which bring in their core a dichotomous logic of the genders.

Santos (2018) identified in the curriculum of twelve Biology undergraduate courses in the city of Rio de Janeiro some of the ways of mobilizing sexuality and gender: as theoretical operators, as operators of social life, and as expressions of identity. The disciplines that deal specifically with gender issues were strongly linked to some female professors as space-time for thinking about what constitutes them. This dependence is also pointed out by Silva (2011) when analyzing projects and/or discourses on teacher education in Pedagogy courses of three federal institutions in Minas Gerais. The researcher notices that there are no discussions about gender and sexuality in the disciplines, menus and formalized contents. Thus, the possibility of dealing with these issues in the curricula depends on specific people willing to act in this field, limiting the debate to optional courses or events for students, from whom comes the demand for these discussions.

Differing from the other curricula brought in the already mentioned researches, the research of Santos (2016) states that gender and sexuality are categories present in some subjects of the curriculum of the Pedagogy course of UFPE, although they do not transversalize the course. The programs show that the themes related to gender and sexuality dialogue with other differences, from themes and bibliographies that indicate references linked to critical and post-critical perspectives. The curriculum provides gender and sexuality as training contents, beyond the specific spaces of thematic seminars, contributing to the teachers' practice with gender and sexuality differences in Basic Education, once it provides theoretical, conceptual and reflective references for their conceptions and practices. Even so, some student practices signal resistance to the denaturalization of gender and sexuality patterns, often resorting to religious and biological arguments to support their positions.

Also, in Pedagogy courses present in the Campanha region of Rio Grande do Sul, Hampel (2013) there is some confusion and lack of information among teachers in formation when talking about sexuality, gender and sexuality education, since the courses do not discuss and do not guide. Thus, the researcher proposes an education that thematizes, exposes and discusses sexuality in its complexity, as a social, cultural and historical construction, going beyond the merely biological dimension, as it is usually treated in teacher training courses and basic education.

Many reseachers expose the difficulty of undergraduate students in discussing gender and sexuality. Alvaro (2018) makes a survey of the acquisition of knowledge and perception that undergraduate students in Psychology and Pedagogy of Unilago in São José do Rio Preto (SP) have about sexuality and sex education. Of the 378 students, 213 participants agreed that sexual education should be worked on in schools and be a shared responsibility with parents, and 161 answered that it should start in Elementary II. The topics that students think should be part of the curriculum in sex education were Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI), sexual abuse, contraception, gender and diversity, family configurations and reproduction. Less than half of the students intend to develop sex education activities and all of them base their model of sex education on the biological and hygienist approach, as other works have pointed out in relation to pedagogical projects.

Carvalho Filho (2018) analyzes the images of future science teachers in Natal/RN regarding bodies, genders and sexualities from their life stories and concludes that, beyond the flagrant normalizations in the voices of some of these subjects, there are possibilities of escaping. In research with graduates of undergraduate courses, Rios (2019), through autobiographical narratives, reports on the discourse of gay teachers in the semi-arid region of Bahia about the production of the self as a queer body and the strategies to deconstruct/do/negotiate gender and sexuality throughout their school/academic trajectories. It discusses how the confrontation with heterosexist norms commonly has been constituted in the only way to live the different subjectivations of sexualities and gender. Thus, teacher education must effectively ensure the problematization of issues related to gender and sexualities.

As proposals to insert discussions of gender and sexuality in the curricula, we also have the work of Míguez (2014). The initiative is to queerize the teaching of foreign languages in the school context and in the training of language teachers, which would occur from a theoretical and methodological discussion/proposal built for new approaches in working with gender and sexuality, among them the incorporation of queer cinema, which the author defines as the productions that have the queer look of distrust, estrangement and deconstruction of identity categories. In this process, discourses and perceptions revealed shifts and changes in perspective, for the participants realized the fragility, instability, and transitoriness of the identity categories and the need to problematize/deconstruct the binarisms and essentialisms in force. Another research that makes and analyzes a pedagogical proposal is that of Malta (2016), which applies a game situation with undergraduate students in the Pedagogy course. The author noticed the contribution of the game to raise awareness about gender diversity and the future theoretical and practical confrontations that this discussion raises in their practice.

As general aspects of the results of the productions surveyed, we can see that gender and sexuality are still presented as themes or contents that are little or not worked on in teacher education, being associated with occasional initiatives or the need for the presence of people and/or specific groups that wish to have research in the area and develop some curricular component, event or project that discusses these issues. Despite the difficulties expressed by students in training and teachers already working in the field regarding the need to question, problematize and deal with situations that arise in schools, including in the internships, including this debate in the curriculum of training courses has not yet been designed as urgent in the discourses for curriculum production.

The production focused on the curricula for teacher education shows us how discussing and confronting the forms of prejudice and normalization that separate, exclude, and cause invisibility is an urgent task for this stage of training. Even so, the discourses of teacher trainers, students in training and practicing teachers are still based on conceptions of gender that assume binarism and heteronormativity and cisnormativity not in line with the discussions in the field of gender studies. Despite this, some works point to possibilities, suggestions and strategies that already occur or can be adopted to potentiate discussions and allow the training curriculum to get rid of generified and heteronormative learning.

Final considerations

This research can contribute with other researchers in the area of teacher training, gender and sexuality, in the search for objects of interest or new possibilities. It presents the gaps, potentialities and trends of the research, in the search for delineating a panorama that can help give visibility and strength to a field of study that is currently so contested. The survey of productions converges in many aspects, mainly in the increase of production, in the initiation, expansion, and contestation movements in public policies, in the recent hegemony of post-critical research, and in the shift to a concept of gender and sexuality no longer anchored in gender roles based on sexual binarism.

Almost all research points to the curriculum as an artifact involved in the production of generified bodies and subjects based on the heteronormativity of ways of being. They point to the need to discuss how gender and sexuality issues are placed in the curricula, producing normalization, exclusion, prejudice, and inequality, which indicates the need to promote teacher training programs that discuss and allow pedagogical practices that consider gender and sexuality in a more inclusive, comprehensive or less normative way. There are also, in some researches, proposals and possibilities for working with pedagogical tools and strategies that can foster or enhance the discussion of these issues in training courses.

Public policies and teacher training curricula, despite being related in the academic production, are not commonly addressed in this interaction, since research on gender and sexuality in initial teacher training are few if compared to the works that focus on basic education, even though these almost always point to teacher training as the necessary training instance to promote and base the discussions at school. In this sense, discussing the relationship between specific public policies and curricula of undergraduate courses, in order to understand the production of a curriculum in which gender and sexuality are placed in the midst of power networks, may delineate the teaching subject that is intended to be produced and that is constantly interpellated by the situations that difference produces in basic education, besides encouraging new researches that discuss this instance of training that is placed as necessary.

Thus, the recent removal of difference and diversity aspects associated with gender and sexuality from the teacher training guidelines, as well as from the BNCC, is a setback in the still fragile policies that were seeking to insert these discussions in teacher training curricula. However, as some studies point out, there are always possibilities for resistance practices in schools and higher education that can question the standard that is imposed. Thus, a counter-movement can arise propelling forces that seek to make a stand against these conservative attempts. Only future research can answer this question until this point.

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6Note: The authors declare that they are responsible for the design, analysis and interpretation of the data; writing and critical revision of the manuscript content and also, approval of the final version to be published.

Received: August 15, 2020; Accepted: February 22, 2021

Ann Letícia Aragão Guarany: PhD from the Graduate Program in Education (PPGED) at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS). Master in Education and Bachelor in Biological Sciences - Federal University of Sergipe. Technician in educational matters at UFS. Research in the area of teacher education and curriculum. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1504-8026 E-mail: annguarany@gmail.com

Lívia de Rezende Cardoso: Professor of the Graduate Program in Education (PPGED) and the Department of Biology (DBI) at the Federal University of Sergipe. PhD from the Graduate Program in Education, Knowledge and Social Inclusion at the School of Education, Federal University of Minas Gerais. She has experience in Education and has investigated genders, sexualities, bodies and devices in curricula. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4091-9110 E-mail: livinha.bio@gmail.com

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