O salto para a experiência simbólica: um estudo sobre a mediação do educador na comunicação com bebês na creche

Abstract

With the formalization of early childhood education as the first stage of basic education, an alert is raised for the preparation of educators who work in day care centers. We recognize this alert, and we intend this dissertation to discuss questions related to the characterization of the educational act carried out in day care centers. Our expectation was to change the predominance of welfarism historically observed in these spaces. This dissertation integrates three stages of investigation: we begin with an analysis of fundamental documents that regulate Early Childhood Education, with emphasis on the day care centers. The aim of this analysis was to discuss the attributions of the professional who works with Early Childhood Education. The second stage consisted of an analysis of articles it was founding in a virtual database that address the relationship between development and Early Childhood Education. The aim of this bibliographical study was to highlight how different epistemological positions on human development change the proposition of pedagogical practices in Early Childhood Education. In the third and final stage, we carried out field research with the aim of investigating conceptual and material resources used by educators to interpret communicative processes involving babies. Six teachers participated in this research. As a methodological procedure, we present two scenes: one on video, which focus on the interaction of a child with an adult. The other scene consisted of a fictitious description of the babies' sleep time in the day care center. The aims were a) to investigate resources that educators use to characterize communication and b) to analyze resources used to deal with communication in conflict situations, respectively. With this procedure, we encourage the production of written narratives by the participants. In the results, we highlight a contrast between two orientations of conceptual resources to explain communication involving babies: 1) observation/description of body actions; b) the jump to symbolization (interpretation of actions). In the discussion of these results, we relate the first guideline with care practices and the second to characterize the educational act in the day care center. We defend this position with the argument that symbolic operations, carrying out in communicative processes, presuppose opportunities to involve babies in diversified cultural experiences. We conclude by ratifying the alert for the preparation of educators, considering the ethical implications of their interpretations for the development of babies. We conclude with the argument about the possibility of preparing them for these interpretations and, in this way, instrumentalizing them for the educational intention, indicated in the BNCC pedagogical guidance for Early Childhood Education.