O Programa Proinfância e seus desdobramentos: o caso do município de Juiz de Fora/MG

Abstract

This research, anchored in the qualitative approach, aimed to understand the implementation process of the National Program for Restructuring and Acquisition of Equipment for the Public School Network of Early Childhood Education (Proinfancia) in the city of Juiz de Fora / MG. The Program was created in 2007 as the main action of the National Education Development Fund (FNDE) in the field of educational infrastructure, providing technical assistance and transfer of financial resources to municipalities, and the Federal District for the construction of Children’s Education Centers, acquisition of equipment and furniture. The theoretical-methodological basis adopted in this work is the perspective of the circle from Mikhail Bakhtin's whose conception of language, comprised of the relationship with the social structure, can only be understood as an ideological and dialogical event in the flow of history. Public policies in the field of Early Childhood Education and the authors who analyze them were also a significant theoretical parameter in the construction of this work pathway. To analyze how the Program implementation process occurred, we used the policy cycle approach by the English sociologist Stephen Ball and collaborators, for which there is a process of recontextualization of the policies, that are composed of arenas of meanings, and negotiations. The used methodological instruments were bibliographical research and documentary analysis, besides dialogical interviews with managers, representatives of the Teachers' Union, teachers, and coordinators of the daycare centers built by the Program. Data organization had as a basis the quality dimensions indicated by public policies in the area of Early Childhood Education: the right to education, expansion, financing, management form, teacher training, career and working conditions, pedagogical proposal and infrastructure. The meanings produced in the analyzes revealed the influence of these dimensions on the identity of politics in the local context. The analysis of the data also pointed out that the Proinfância Program brings along relevant elements to establish a strengthening of the education policy for children based on the fulfillment of the right to education. In the case of Juiz de Fora, the Program has put a "magnifying glass" on historical issues related to the way the city organizes the supply and management of daycare centers. The effects of the Program's implementation process indicate a weakening of the municipal policy of Early Childhood Education, through a dualism between daycare and preschool, by establishing an agreement policy for the management of the daycare centers through the third sector. Thereby, a deepening in the precariousness of the teaching work occurs, with detriment to the quality of infants and young children education in daycare centers. Although the Program has brought an expansion of openings in kindergartens and, to a certain extent, an improvement in infrastructure, based on a fragmented and focused policy conception, it has also entailed an extreme inequality in the conditions of provision of Early Childhood Education in the city.