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Early childhood institutions in Brazil used to be related to social care services, their main task being to care for and feed young children. In 1996 early childhood became part of the educational system and this required teachers to work more interactively with children. Thus early childhood education is recent in Brazilian legislation, and teachers still lack pedagogical competency to transform children’s learning experiences in early learning institutions. In this study, we use Critical Narrative Analysis (Souto-Manning, 2014) to examine how teachers’ collective dialogues increased their consciousness and agency to envision ways to refute historical discourses about the role of early childhood teachers. Findings indicate that while teachers remain rooted in traditional discourses, they are also seeking to make change.

In this interview, Erikson Institute of Chicago President, Mariana Souto-Manning, responds to questions about how her experiences across two decades of teacher education and innovation in "languaging education" informed her transition her current leadership role in and beyond multiple global crises. A Recife, Brazil native, Souto-Manning is grounded in Freirean values and principles, and she honors these in her commitment to reinvent rather than to reproduce his work. The Covid-19 pandemic raised new questions among educators, and Souto-Manning describes how critical approaches to language can support educational work spanning basic and advanced education, teacher formation, and professional growth across multiple locales and differences. Souto-Manning is particularly concerned with we position traditionally and intersectionality marginalized families and children to show their brilliance rather than pathologizing them and treating them as problems to be solved.