Apropriação de práticas de ensino da linguagem escrita por professoras dos anos finais da Educação Infantil

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between the established practices of teachers who work with children under 7 years of age and the curricular reforms proposed since the mid 1970s regarding the functions of pre-school education. The backdrop of the research is the 1999 approval of the National Curricular Standards for Early Childhood Education, a framework that intensified the production and dissemination of guidelines for schools to distance themselves from earlier policies designed with a compensatory purpose in mind, especially around literacy. In this context, it seeks to understand how the appropriation of “pedagogical and didactic innovations” aimed at teaching written language to preschool children materializes in educators’ day-to-day activities. Conceptualizing the “empirical culture of the school”, the adopted methodological procedures interpret teachers’ practices as “cultural practices”, captured using direct observation of classroom routines with 4- and 5-year-old children, and analyzing lesson plans, instructional materials and official documents. Data was collected at the municipal public schools where participants taught in the city of Guarulhos (São Paulo). The notions of “appropriation” and “experience” were crucial to examine sources without resorting to a verification of whether established teaching practices adhere to theoretical references or normative standards. A historical lens reveals that teachers attribute meaning to prescribed curricular guidelines based on factors such as their access to particular items of school material culture, professional trajectories, and the pragmatic realities of the institutions where they work. Therefore, findings expand on assessments that interpret what is observable in the classroom as an overlap of practices that are maintained in spite of recommendations from academia and current educational policies