Social mother: a way of educating between vulnerability and host

• Grant number: 16/08222-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2016
• End date: June 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Specific topics in Education
• Principal Investigator: Romualdo Dias
• Grantee: Bruno da Silva Souza
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research examines how is the social mother, educator located in the Casa Lar. It is a study about an educator that is part of the reception program for children and adolescents, configured in a vulnerable situation. They live in a house, with the presence of a mother and an auxiliary, organized by the international network "Children's Villages SOS Brazil ". This research aims to analyze the role of social mother as an educator. For this, we place this professional at Casa Lar and describe the pedagogical project and the educational process. These were established from the theoretical and methodological orientations of the network "SOS Children's Villages Brazil. We have analyzed this proposal supported by a theoretical framework constituted by the work of Donald W. Winnicott, with focus on the mother figure in their relationship with the children in the environment offered by "house and home". We use in our analysis the categories of "support", the "handle" and "show the world". This method is based on the formulation of Winnicott, to compose the educational approach built on the border between a condition of vulnerability and a possible host. Additionally, we add to this study the contributions of the biologist Humberto Maturana to examine ways to deal with affection and play in child development, attentive to the relationship between nature and culture. We analyze the role of social mother as an educator that provides the necessary environment for children and adolescents go through experiences where love can be experienced and the play can be exercised extensively. We consider the fact that the Casa Lar is connected to an host network of international character, as a political aspect directly related to the sustainability of the pedagogical project. We restrict our analysis to Brazil's experience, to study the host programs according to the model of the house and home. We want to understand how this educator, conceived in the figure of the social mother, constitutes the border territory that is established between a way of understanding the social production of the vulnerability of children, adolescents, and how is the host program organized in the Casa Lar. We analyze how this educator conceives his role "as if" it were the biological mother.