Transitions in the lives of babies and very young children in the daily life of a nursery school

Abstract

This article is based on research in the field of childhood studies and on contributions from transition studies. Its main objective is to map and discuss daily transitions that take place in modes of being and living of babies and very young children in nursery schools. Conceptually, daily transitions are understood as socio-cultural learnings that require and or generate changes in the lives of very young babies and children in institutional contexts. This means that they are learnings related to how children deal with time, inhabit space, relate with their peers and use socially shared artefacts during their time in nursery school. Methodologically, it is a study with children, with an ethnographic inspiration, which used observation, a field diary and photographic and film registration to generate data. The study was conducted with 10 children from 0 to 2 years old in a municipal school for early childhood education. With the data generated, the article focuses specifically on the transitions related to how the children inhabit spaces, relate with their peers and use utensils when eating. The analyses allow inferring that the daily transitions are linked to sociocultural learnings that occur by means of guided participation of children in daily events of the school, conviviality with children their age, the challenges faced, and the support and structuring received from teachers based on planning that combines foreseeability with flexibility.