This work consists of an investigation into teaching work in the context of early childhood education. The study was guided by the cultural-historical perspective and its general objective was to identify and analyse the relationship between meaning and the senses of being a teacher in early childhood education.

The study was carried out using a historical-dialectical materialist approach, in which the procedure used to produce the data was semi-structured interviews, in which four teachers from a CMEI Municipal Education Centre in Itumbiara-GO took part. The theoretical discussion sought to recover the category of work as a constituent of the human subject, and also addressed the paths surrounding the production of scientific knowledge and its relationship with the human constitution based on vital activity - in other words, work.

The general categories proposed by Gyorgy Markús (1974): universality, sociality, freedom, nature and the category of man's consciousness, were fundamental to analysing teaching work, while the concept of alienation discussed by István Mészaros helped us to understand this activity in the context of early childhood education. .