Contextos investigativos: elementos naturais em vivências e experiências na educação infantil

Abstract

This research emphasizes the possibilities of lives and experiences covering epistemological, scientific and technological relationships, articulating childhood culture with society and the environment in the creation of toys that use natural elements available in different geographic spaces to be explored by children. This intentionality refers to the habit of observing, experimenting and raising hypotheses in the connections that involve Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE), in order to add reflection on the relationships of knowledge and transformations in the stimuli of inviting materials in the environment. To this end, we aim to answer the following research problem: What actions and expressions regarding childhood culture are evident when children in Early Childhood Education raise and explore their hypotheses about themselves, others and the world, when playing and interacting with the elements of nature in contexts conducive to research? Faced with this question, the study will be guided by the objective of Understand how children in Early Childhood Education raise their hypotheses about themselves, others and the world when playing and interacting with the elements of nature available in contexts suitable for investigation. To elucidate research integrated into actions, theoretical assumptions are sought, such as those presented by: Gandhy Piorski and Gaston Bachelard, that deal with natural elements and the relationship between children and nature, speaking in contexts that provide opportunities for daydreaming and poetic space; John Dewey, Walter Benjamin and Jorge Larrosa, that address children’s experiences in nature laboratories with imagination to create organic toys and artifacts; Bruno Latour, Lea Tiriba, Adriana Friedmann, that articulate propositions of the childhood culture through the triad “I – we – world” in an intrinsic relationship between human and non-human beings in the outline of STSE. The research methodology involves a qualitative approach, inspired by the ethnography approach, which leads to field immersion by the researcher, as well as the research participants, young children aged 4 to 5 years and 11 months of Pre II, at a Municipal Early Childhood Education Center (CMEI) in São José dos Pinhais, in 2023. The data constitution and analysis procedures alluded to ethnographic approach designs; the analytical incidence referred to the documentary process, consisting of logbooks, photographs, mini-stories, children’s productions and planning. The study focuses especially on teaching practice, the children involved, experiences with biotic and inanimate natural elements, in a dialogue of textures with theoretical assumptions that elucidate the praxis of inviting the process of understanding sustainable and planetary, to seek horizons in the relationship between children and nature. The investigative contexts considered the exchange of ideas in meeting circles and assemblies; reinvention and invention of spaces and times; partnerships with family, community and other instances; the quality of the relationships they establish with themselves, with others, with the spaces for vegetables, flowers and fruits, with non-human beings, with food and kitchens in CMEI’s backyards and other backyards.