Percursos de uma investigação com crianças: o que as vozes infantis têm a nos ensinar?

Abstract

The present work investigates the meanings built by children in the context of a public school's classroom, considering their experiences of the world and understanding the children as subjects capable of communicating what they think, as investigation partners. The dissertation is designed in a way as to build understanding about how the infant and infancy were considered, especially in the academic field, and how contemporarily, the infants? experiences can and must be legitimized, as is the case with this research. In this effort is established a dialogue with the contributions of Sociology of Infancy (CORSARO, 2009; PINTO, 2007; SARMENTO, 2009) which, among other matters, attempts a rupture of the paradigm of the infant as object that undermines infancy; different approaches to the emplacement of infancy are also discussed, aiming possibilities to look at it as experience, as well as at the infants and adult-researchers as subjects of experiences (KOHAN, 2007; BENJAMIN, 2009; LARROSA 2002). Grounded on conceptions and ways of looking at infants as historical, social and, therefore, experience subjects, the research dedicates itself to problematize what would be the best ways to understand infants, legitimizing and valuing their voices and forms of being. In that direction, some interlocutors such as Graue and Walsh (2003), Campos (2008), Souza & Castro (2008), Ferreira (2009), Kramer (2002) and Barbier (1992, 2002) give us the opportunity to discuss some questions of theoretical-methodological nature regarding the research, with infants, in Unidade Municipal de Educação Infantil Rosalina de Araújo Costa. In one of the classes of that UMEI [Municipality?s Infants Education Unit], five-year old infants were took positions of partners, protagonists in the investigation, revealing different outlooks, filled with experiences and information, lived in a time that is not successive, but of pure intensity. In encounters called understanding , the infants were capable of communicating their knowledge conversations and the way they read and interacted with the researched universe, showing us ways to think an Early Childhood Education school in which adults and infants can share the education experience.