PRACTICES AND REPRESENTATIONS OF WELCOMING AND CARE: MEMORY, BELONGING, AND RELIGIOSITY IN THE SCHOOL CULTURE OF ESCOLA ESTADUAL CÔNEGO MONTE

Abstract

The study analyzes practices and representations of welcoming and care at Escola Estadual Cônego Monte, in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, considering their connections with the institution’s religious trajectory and their role in shaping school culture, senses of belonging, and the memories produced by its subjects. This is a qualitative study situated in the field of History of Education and in dialogue with New Cultural History. The analysis focuses on semi-structured interviews conducted in 2024 with school administrators, teachers, and staff members, treated as documentary sources and subjected to historiographical criticism. The results show that welcoming and care are historically constructed practices, signified in the narratives through listening, support, proximity, and relationships of belonging. The school’s Catholic trajectory contributes to the historicity of these practices without constituting an exclusive explanation for their existence. The transition to fully public administration produced selective continuities, discontinuities, and resignifications, through which practices and meanings constituted at different moments are appropriated, negotiated, and reworked. The study concludes that historicizing welcoming makes it possible to understand its role in the production of school culture and to problematize its apparently consensual character.