Rethinking School Violence: Narrative and Empathic Transformation among Educators in a Psychoanalytic Group Program

School violence in early childhood education poses complex challenges for educators, particularly in contexts of social vulnerability. This study presents findings from the implementation of Psychoanalytically Oriented Conversation Circles (RCOP, from the Portuguese Rodas de Conversa de Orientação Psicanalítica), a group-based continuing education method conducted through an interinstitutional partnership between the Municipal Secretariat of Education of Porto Alegre (SMED, from the Portuguese Secretaria Municipal de Educação) and the Porto Alegre Psychoanalytic Society (SPPA), in use since 2007. Adopting a naturalistic qualitative design, this study explored how a single group of early childhood educators, participating in eight weekly 90-min RCOP meetings, made sense of endemic school violence. All meetings were video-recorded with informed consent; the second through seventh meetings were transcribed verbatim and submitted to inductive thematic content analysis, following Bardin's methodological framework. Findings revealed a shift in educators' understanding of violence, from an initial, simplistic view attributing it exclusively to factors external to the classroom, toward a broader, more integrative comprehension of the phenomenon. This shift was accompanied by a progressive development of empathy toward the families, schools, and limited external resources involved, which was associated with increased self-esteem and pedagogical creativity among the educators. These findings are discussed in light of psychoanalytic and competency-based theoretical frameworks. Future research employing longitudinal designs is recommended to assess whether these narrative and empathic gains are sustained over time and translate into observable classroom practices.