Pedagogical practice in the integrated management of prevalent childhood illness from the perspective of Basil Bernstein

The strategy "Integrated Management of Childhood Illness" (IMCI) is recognized by international and national health bodies as a strategy that affects the health of the child population and whose clinical and community components develop health education. Objective: To understand how pedagogical practice develops in medical consultation attended under the IMCI strategy, in a first level care institution in 2015. Methodology: Qualitative research, with a hermeneutic perspective. To understand the social construction of pedagogic practice an ethnographic stance and the system of rules (hierarchy, sequence and criterion) proposed by Bernstein were adopted. The ethnographic techniques used were qualitative interview, participant observation and group interview. Eleven caregivers and three doctors were interviewed. Results: For the doctors, many of the diseases are "self-limiting", i.e. they resolve on their own. The purpose of education is to convince the caregivers that the information provided by the doctors is true. The education topics are determined by the doctors and focused on the disease. For the caregivers, the doctor is a reference of knowledge. The doctors recognize that there is popular knowledge that is studied and accepted by scientific knowledge; however, only scientific knowledge is valid. Conclusion: Pedagogical practice is visible in IMCI care because it focuses on the performance of the caregiver and the amount of text that he learns through repetition, and the doctors exert power over caregivers, as they possess hegemonic (valid and true) knowledge that reinforces the biomedical model in pedagogical practice.