Linguagem escrita na Educação Infantil: concepções de professoras

Abstract

In the context of a controversial field of teaching perspectives and practices involving the teaching of reading and writing with young children in the first stage of basic education, this research aimed to find out about teachers' conceptions regarding the approach to written language in Early Childhood Education in the municipal network of Feira de Santana. In methodological terms, taking into account the subjective nature of the conceptions developed by the teachers, we opted for a qualitative research approach. As for the technical research procedure, we used a field study, since it seeks to learn about new phenomena and their relationships. Similarly, bibliographical research was carried out in order to find the basis for the debate. In this sense, the first chapter begins by dealing with the meaning of the term conception, thematizing it in the field of teaching and then discussing the knowledge that teachers build up throughout their personal and professional careers. The second chapter discusses the conceptions of the child, childhood and early childhood education, highlighting how written language was considered in the constitution of the latter. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with seven teachers from the Feira de Santana Municipal Network, working in Group 5 of Early Childhood Education. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using the content analysis technique developed by Bardin (1977). Based on the analysis of the data, three groups of categories were drawn up which show the possible teaching conceptions regarding the approach to written language in Early Childhood Education. As a result of the organization and analysis of the data obtained, we concluded that the discourses of the teachers in the first group demonstrate an understanding of working with reading and writing in the first stage of basic education from the perspective of literacy, without association with the linguistic facet of the appropriation of written language. The second group includes teachers who conceive of the teaching of written language by highly valuing knowledge of how the writing system works, apart from the culture of writing. There was a possible link to the empiricist, associationist conceptions that underpin classic literacy methods. The third and final group included teachers' speeches that indicated an understanding of the approach to written language in Early Childhood Education that takes into account both sociocultural and linguistic aspects, although these facets do not appear to be integrated into the daily practices reported. Thus, it can be concluded that the research data confirms the complexity and diversity of conceptions in relation to knowledge about written culture and the functioning of the notation system that are pertinent to the Early Childhood Education stage.