A criança e o brincar como experiência de cultura

• Main Authors: Evelise Maria Labatut Portilho, Carla Cristina Tosatto
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editora Universitária Champagnat - PUCPRESS 2014-01-01
• Series: Revista Diálogo Educacional
• Online Access: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=189132834006

The purpose of this article is to shed light on children playtime as a cultural experience, based on a continuous education program held at a Childhood Education Center of the Municipal Schools of Curitiba, State of Parana – Brazil. The study involved 32 teachers and the dialectics with authors, namely: Sarmento (2004, 2005, 2011), Nascimento (2011) and Corsaro (2009). Research tools selected for this study were semi-structured analyses and the observation of the learning environment. Of all the signification units constructed for this study, the most important was the analysis of children as human beings that routinely incorporate playtime into their lives. One can infer that the concept by which children “learn from playing” is very much part of teachers’ discourse; however, the manner by which they perceive children’s games is a far cry from the idea of playtime as a social and cultural activity, as well as the image of children as generators of identity, knowledge and culture. Another notion that arose is that playtime in the school environment should be imbued with learning intentions, i.e. closely related to a classroom activity, lacking the children’s creative, inventive and transformative participation. This type of playtime is not conducive to bringing about cultures typical of childhood. The great challenge lies in changing the way teachers perceive both their own role and the children’s role. To this end, it is necessary to foster the notion that new venues for both the children and the teachers must be created.