Ecological Engagement in Institutional Care Context: An Experience Report with Adolescents in Pernambuco

Larissa Morélia Sá Vieira Macêdo, Kalina Vanderlei Silva, Débora Maria dos Santos Pinheiro de Lima, Lygia Maria Pereira da Silva - Ecological Engagement

Abstract

The Ecological Engagement method has been a valuable tool for the researching development in different knowledge areas. This chapter’s aim is to report the experience of using Ecological Engagement in a research of interdisciplinary character developed with teenage girls, aged 10–14, inserted in two care institutions for protection measures in Pernambuco state, entitled: autocuidado e apoio social na perspectiva de adolescentes acolhidas em medida de proteção. For the report building, the important steps for full execution of the suggested method were considered as follows: the establishment of proximal processes between the researchers and the different actors, the establishment of bonds between researchers and teenage girls participating in the research, the application of data collection instruments, and leaving the research field and data analysis. The Ecological Engagement enabled the researchers to manage the theoretical–methodological assumptions of the Bioecological Theory of Human Development for the expanded understanding of the people, processes, contexts, and time as elements that give meaning to the conceptions of self-care reported by the teenage girls and the social protection network for this self-care to happen, making a consistent analysis with the studied universe.