Educação infantil: desenvolvimento social na perspectiva de professoras / Early childhood education: social development from the perspective of teachers

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2007

RESUMO

Early childhood education is the first step of formal teaching aiming at promoting child development. According to a sociocultural constructivist approach, children and contexts develop through co-constructive processes. Therefore, teachers are intrinsically involved in promoting child development and socialization, canalizing specific forms of social interactions, as well as beliefs and values. Constructive social interactions, particularly cooperation, have the potential to foster effective abilitities and content learning, together with empathy and mutual respect among individuals. The present study aims at analyzing teachers conceptions, values and beliefs orientations concerning socialization at early childhood education, while investigating their difficulties and suggestions about how to promote social objectives in this context. Sixteen public school teachers in charge of early education were interviewed. From those, five were selected to participate of focal group sessions to discuss the topic under investigation. Results were analyzed in 15 categories, such as relationships with parents, early education objectives, cooperation, competition, individualism, autonomy and suggestions for a course on socialization at early education institutions. Individual interview results showed teachers huge difficulties in defining almost all socialization related concepts, and their definitions were incoherent with the activities that should be related to specific modes of interaction. During focal group sessions, teachers showed problems to identify the social nature of the activities developed in their classroom, and as they discussed about the subject, it was possible to identify many of their belief orientations. For instance, we noticed the absence of cooperation as a social objective, together with the predominance of individualism and competition. They also referred to many of their needs concerning specific training to perform a better work. In the discussion of the results, we conclude that psychology professionals should work together with educators at early childhood education contexts. Psychology can help promote discussions about current practices and values that impregnate socialization processes, and their impact over children development. In cooperation with school staff, psychologists can participate of programs to increase teachers awareness, motivation, and competences that will enable them to do a better socialization job, as a result of intentional, well-planned and efficient actions. After all, the daily co-construction between teachers and students should develop within a constructive social interactional context.

ASSUNTO(S)

valores desenvolvimento social cooperação educação infantil teacher training psicologia cooperation early education formação de professores social development values

Documentos Relacionados