The child body in the crossing from early childhood education to the early grades of elementary school

Abstract

With an interpretive and ethnographic basis, we carried out a research to understand what the experience of crossing from early childhood education to the early grades of elementary school is like, from the children’s point of view. And with this scenario, we bring in this text, reflections on the child body. For this, anchored in studies of the Sociology of Childhood, and motivated by the research problem-question (What is the experience of crossing from early childhood education to the early grades of elementary school like, from the children’s point of view?), the production of data considered the expressions of six children in two school contexts: a school of early childhood education and another of the early grades of elementary school, in the city of Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil, from August 2018 to July 2019. Through the insertion of the researchers in the group of children, with participant observations, interviews and monitored visits, we sought an adequate interlocution to their speeches, understanding that they go beyond the exclusive use of verbal or written language, covering the movements of their body and their gestures. The data, emerging from the children’s speech, generated two themes for analysis: differences and strategies. These unfolded in the following axes of analysis: a) routines and spaces; b) school practices; and c) rules. The analyzes allowed us to reflect on the child’s body, the power of its movements and gestures as a valid way for the child to be in the world and belong to it, producing culture, interpreting and relating, shaping and influencing the social constructs in which they are inserted.