GENDER AND INTERSECTIONALITIES IN INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING IN CHILE

The article explores the relationship between gender, intersectionality, and student enrolment in initial teacher education programs at Chilean universities. The methodology used was qualitative and descriptive, and involved the generation of a representative structural sampling and instrumental case study, comparing roles in the undergraduate teaching programs of three universities differentiated as mass state, mass private, and elite institutions. Between 2019 and 2021, we compiled data from 28 semi-structured interviews. The information was triangulated and analyzed following grounded theory principles on the basis of axial analysis, with intersectionality as a central category, constituted by students’ sex/gender representations, social origins, reproductive roles, productive roles, and the perspectives adopted towards their degree program. The results of our research show the influence of meanings that articulate the experiences of intersectionality in terms of access to teacher training programs and the training they provide. These meanings are shaped by unequal educational trajectories that create student representations associated with productive and caregiving roles, as well as an experience centered around the construction of differentiated discourses of vulnerability in relation to teacher training.