As retóricas do brincar no cotidiano escolar : um estudo de caso

Abstract

This thesis deals with the rhetoric of playing identified in the conceptions and practices of teachers and the management team of a public institution of Childhood Education belonging to the municipal system of Cuiabá-MT. The objective was to identify the rhetoric of playing that emerge from official documents and from the concepts and practices of school agents. From a methodological point of view, a case study with a qualitative approach was adopted, making use of documentary analysis, individual interviews (with teachers, pedagogical coordinator and school principal) in addition to participant observation of the school routine of two classes of Childhood Education, during the second half of 2018, and the first semester of 2019. The observations were recorded in a field diary and, later, systematized in the form of expanded records, according to the guidelines of Bogdan and Biklen (1994). Anchored in the concepts and classifications of Sutton-Smith (2017) regarding the rhetoric of play, we found four rhetorics (progress, power, identity and absence), which supported the analysis categories. The analysis of the relationship between playing and Childhood Education carries with it the discussion of the historical trajectory of Childhood Education and its fight for universalization and access. The game as a civilizing process is discussed from Huizinga (2014), going through the rubles of Caillois (1990), without losing sight of the game as a characteristic of childhood defended by Château (1986), so that, then, it could be understood the relation of the game and education brought by Brougère (1997; 1998; 2011; 2019). Then, from the survey of the productions related to the conceptions of playing developed during the period from 2014 to 2019, a number of five surveys were found that point to the fragile understanding of the role of Childhood Education, sometimes as an assistance space, sometimes as an institution preparing for Elementary School. In the understanding that rhetoric is related to the influences of time and space, playing was identified in official documents, in the perspective of progress that are manifested in the school field, from the election of playing as an instrument of learning, in most of the letters and numbers. Within the power relations, reproduced and produced at school, both the control and permission of play, and the subversion of children who play with their daily lives are manifested as a rhetoric of power. Children’s organizations, through their hidden transcriptions, manifest the rhetoric of identity that characterizes the various micro-societies that exist in the school context. The gaps in the initial training of the participants reflect a weak understanding of the roles of Childhood Education, preventing reflection and criticism about the problems and current reality, which constitute the rhetoric of absences. In this way, it is considered that the context and the material conditions put in place, contribute to the creation and maintenance of the rhetoric of playing, focusing on the mistaken and weakened understanding of playing at school and, therefore, the objectives and specificities of Childhood Education.