Banca de DEFESA: ELTON BERNARDO SANTOS DA SILVA

Crossroads Identities: the intersection between racial and teaching identities of chemistry professors in the city of Salvador-Bahia.

Racial Identities. Teaching Identities. Chemistry Teachers. Life Stories.
Chemistry Teaching.

The educational space, specifically, the school environment(s), present multiple fertile
contexts for understanding some of the social problems present and (re)produced in these
places. Racial issues are good illustrative examples of this context, which when crossed
with the dynamics of the teaching profession, also endowed with numerous problems,
questions and discontent, produce affectations, violence and profound implications in the
professional practice of teachers. This research, committed to the lives, in particular, of
professors of chemistry, understands the importance of recording, listening and the
multiplicity of sensations and knowledge that can emerge from the life stories of
professors. The inspirations for the development of this research arise from my own
professional experiences as a (black) chemistry teacher marked by (non) recognition and
by numerous processes of professional (dis)identification. In this way, the objective of
the research is to understand the intersections between racial identities and the teaching

identities of teachers of chemistry working in basic education in the city of Salvador-
Bahia. This investigation falls within the field of qualitative research, using the

biographical-narrative method, particularly the Life Stories methodology. Considering
the latest census data from the IBGE, according to the race/color criterion, the population
of Salvador self-classifies itself in about 82% as black and 17% as white. Thus, we invited
four chemistry professors, two of them self-declared as black, one male and one female,
and two self-declared white, each male and female. Data were produced from sharing and
listening to the life stories of these professionals, through semi-structured interviews
carried out virtually. After these meetings, transcriptions were made and, later, with the
aid of the thematic analysis method, the biographical data were interpreted. The results
demonstrate that racialized bodies underlie black and white racial identities. There are
relationships of abebelity in the ways in which black professors signify their racial
identities and among white professors there is a reproduction of aspects of critical
whiteness. The characteristics of teachers' identities are identified in the continuous
process that demarcates the work and performance of teachers, which is to become a
teacher, within biographical conjunctures and contexts of social transformations,
educational reforms and influences of multiple processes involving teacher training. In
addition, the dimensions of racial identities are present in professional practices, inside
and outside chemistry classes, promoting intersections and influences on teaching
identities.