A brincadeira na instituição de educação infantil em tempo integral: o que dizem as crianças?

Abstract

The importance of practices which insert play in the educational curriculum and in the pedagogical proposals of children education institutions is one way to consider children culture and understand children as historical individuals, who participate and change the reality they live in. The aim of this research was to investigate the place of play in a full-time children education institution from the children's perspective. The theoretical-methodological approach adopted considered children as individuals of right, producers and consumers of culture. The research had as its empirical universe a full-time public school of children education in the city of Juiz de Fora. The subjects of the investigation were 20 children, aged from 4 to 5 years, enrolled in this school. The methodological procedures adopted were the observation of situations in which children played and the use of drawings made by them that, together with speech, have became a methodological procedure able to promote children’s talk about the subject. This discussion was based on the theoretical concepts approached by authors of the historical cultural perspective, as Vigotsky, Leontiev and Elkonin, who put the make-believe play as the main activity of preschool age children. A dialogue has been made with authors of children sociology, since these two approaches move to the end of comprehending children’s play as a historical and cultural activity and children as subjects of their history. In making a dislocation of a research about children and looking for a research with them, we started from the premise that they are qualified informants in the investigation. Through children’s perspective, the results indicate that the place of play is very important and meaningful to the investigated group and the make-believe play is the main activity made by them in the context of the children education institution they attend. However, discussions made in this research point out how much the subject related to play still needs to be discussed in the educational field, mainly in the places of teacher formation.