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Democracy and curriculum: the need to give a new meaning to children and childhood(s)
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Abstract(s)
Recalling one of Dewey thoughts there is a consensus among educators that we
should regard early childhood settings and schools as learning spaces for democracy
through real life experiences of democratic life. Conceptions of self-centred child, with
few realistic ideas about the world and about oneself, make democratic living at the
kindergarten impossible. Consequently, democracy learning expresses itself, often in
Portuguese early childhood curricula, in the learning of values and morals imposed by
the early childhood teacher. These practices are opposite to research results that point
to the advantage in children participating in competency development (Bennett, 2004)
which is essential to democracy learning.
Changing conceptions culturally rooted about the child /children and the
curriculum has been in our concern in the early childhood teachers’ initial training
(Aveiro University and Santarém Polytechnic Institute). Keeping that purpose in mind,
we developed a research project of investigation-action-training with some teacher
students and their supervisors. In this paper we present some results from the study
developed with 18 teacher-students and 5 supervisors. We present some conclusions
and reflection of this study based on content analysis of their learning portfolios and on
semi-structured interviews to teacher-students and their teacher supervisors. The
results point to the emergence of some ideas inherent to the conception of the child as
a social actor with the capacity and ability of participating in the social life. - Resgatando um dos pensamentos de Dewey é consensual entre os educadores
a ideia de que devemos encarar as instituições educativas como espaços de
aprendizagem da democracia através de experiências de vida democrática. As
concepções de criança auto-centrada, com ideias pouco realistas sobre o mundo e
sobre si própria, impossibilitam a vida democrática no Jardim de infância.
Consequentemente, a aprendizagem da democracia traduz-se, muitas vezes, nos
currículos em Portugal, numa aprendizagem de valores baseada numa moralização
imposta pelo educador. Estas práticas contrariam indicações oriundas da investigação
que apontam para vantagens da participação das crianças quanto ao desenvolvimento
de competências (Bennett, 2004) que consideramos essenciais à vida numa
sociedade democrática.
Com intuito de mudar concepções culturalmente enraizadas sobre criança e
currículo, desenvolvemos um projecto de investigação-acção-formação com alunos
estagiários e educadores supervisores. As reflexões que apresentamos resultam da
análise de conteúdo realizada aos portefólios de aprendizagem dos alunos e a
entrevistas semi-estruturadas realizadas a alunos e educadores. Os resultados
indicam alguma apropriação de ideias inerentes à concepção de criança actor social,
com capacidade de participação na vida social.
Description
Keywords
Early childhood curriculum Initial training
Citation
LIBÓRIO, Ofélia; LUÍS, Helena - Democracy and curriculum: the need to give a new meaning to children and childhood(s). Revista Interacções. Nº10 (2008), p.77-88
Publisher
Instituto Politécnico de Santarém, Escola Superior de Educação