A construción biográfica do labor de orientación en educación infantil e primaria en Galicia

Abstract

In this research we study the school counselling profession in early childhood and primary education within Galicia´s legal and socio-educational context. Using a biographic-narrative methodology, we research the trajectory of five school counsellors developed along their life and professional experiences beginning before the institutionalization of school counselling profession in Galicia. We present two kinds of findings: life stories of each counsellor and a comparative analysis contrasting the five narratives. The comparative analysis allows us to rebuild the meaning of the profession showing the relationships among the contexts, the experiences, and their representations. The findings illustrate that the school counsellors construct the professional representations focusing on addressing diversity understood as integration. Contextual conditions and demands from teachers, focusing in individual special needs, work together to limit the horizon of the profession. Nevertheless, the analysis reveals that there is a differential formulation of the school counselling praxis in relation to three specific styles: activist identity, proactive identity and pragmatic identity.