Currículo para a educação infantil: que território é esse?

Abstract

In this research, I analyze the articulations and productions of meaning present in political texts aimed at Early Childhood Education (EI) since the LDB 9394/96, through RCNEI (1998a), DCNEI (1999) to BNCC (2017a), among others. I problematize some aspects related to curriculum policies addressed to it, to identify and interpret how, discursively, the curriculum has been meaningful in EI. I analyze the texts in order to understand the meanings of the curriculum, which were hegemonized and fixed at a given contextual moment, and the political clashes and articulations that surround these meanings, in addition to the antagonisms they carry. The Discursion Theory (LACLAU; MOUFFE, 2015) guides the investigation from key concepts such as antagonism; articulation and demands; equivalence and difference, which allow the analysis of the curriculum policy for the EI in its relationship with other stages of Basic Education (EB) and the understanding of curriculum policies as a struggle for meaning (LOPES; MACEDO, 2011). I defend that the stage of EI and its curriculum (which unfolds from the conceptions and practices) is a territory without fixed demarcation, which is in constant dispute from the different meanings of its constituent elements: child, learning, development, objectives, social purposes, among others. I analyze recent research in the field of curriculum and is seeking to understand how (and if) they articulate the curriculum and EI. The legal frameworks that configure the curriculum policy for EI and its current development were visited, as well as the demands, articulations and disputes perceived in the epistemic communities of teachers and researchers, social movements and the 3rd sector around the meaning and practices they defend as desirable to EI. I focus on problematizations about the articulation (or impossibility of) between the demands of EI and the initial years of Elementary School (EF) in relation to current curriculum policies, located in the centralization of curriculum and evaluations. I argue that new texts and policies are proposed in an attempt to overcome conceptions, meanings and practices considered undesirable, but they stumble in the absence of an “identity” proper to the EI, given its history and its recent incorporation into the EB and carry a discursive construction that exalts the antagonisms between EI and EF.