Inhabiting the teaching profession in the countryside

Abstract

With this study, we sought to understand how teachers who work in schools in the countryside constitute the “presentification” of being-in-the-countryside to signify their existence, as well as, produce experiences of being-teacher in a perspective of affirming an authentic life that is manifested in the entity that inhabits rural spaces. The study uses as a method the Narrative Research associated with the qualitative approach to make it possible to think about the construction of a conception of rurality of the presence that institutes the being-in-the-countryside from the studies of Heidegger (1991, 2012, 2015) and the poetry by Manoel de Barros (2009, 2015, 2018). This study is based on the foundations of phenomenology and hermeneutics as it seeks to understand the being in its life context and the meanings attributed to its condition of existing in rural contexts. The research was developed in rural schools in the municipality of Várzea do Poço, BA, Brazil, using narrative interviews and ethnographies of the countryside as devices, constituted by records made during the research with narratives about the experience. This research had three collaborating teachers, who were Elementary School teachers from rural schools and residents of rural communities. It was concluded that the experiences of being-teachers are produced according to the ways that each teacher mobilizes and translates the meanings of the events that involve them in this process of inhabiting the countryside, enabling conditions to trans-see the inhabited rural area and the teaching profession in the countryside.