The passage from early childhood education to fundamental education: contemporary tensions

Abstract

In the context of the extension of fundamental education to nine years, the article describes how the transition from an early childhood education school to an elementary school was experienced by a group of children in Belo Horizonte. The process of construction and analysis of the research data was based on the interpretive approach of the sociology of childhood, and on interactional ethnography. It was observed that the educational practices that gained central role in early childhood education and in fundamental education were structured around play and literacy, but situated differently within the two segments. For early childhood education, the centrality of play has been present in the organization of institutional routines. However, due to their condition as subjects inserted in a graphocentric culture, children turned to the appropriation of written language, engaging individually and collectively in various literacy events. When coming into fundamental education, children faced the chasm between the experiences developed in early childhood education and the educational practices of their new school: playing was put in second place. We argue here that the lack of dialogue between the first two levels of basic education observed in the organization of the Brazilian education system is reflected in the troubled processes experienced by the children studied. In this sense, the investigation, by having its focus on the recording of children's experiences, revealed the need for better integration of playing and literacy in the pedagogical practices of early childhood education and of fundamental education, both of them central dimensions of contemporary child culture.