O campo científico de Educação Infantil no Brasil (1981/2010)

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze the Work Group on Education of Children from 0 to 6 years (GT07, acronym in Portuguese), of the National Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Education (ANPEd, acronym in Portuguese), over a period of twenty-nine years (1981-2010), identifying its practice, conflicts, struggle for hegemony, and academic research in the scientific field of early childhood education in Brazil. The relationship structure dynamics between group subjects was analyzed through Academic Genealogy, an auxiliary science of History that studies the origin, evolution, and dissemination of interrelated groups. Our theoretical reference was based on the contributions of Pierre Bourdieu on the notion of academic field, political field and field of power, as well as on other authors who contribute to the understanding of the scientific space and its product, science (PRICE, 1976; VOSLENSKY, 1980; LATOUR, 1994). It was a qualitative research, characterized as documentary and bibliographical, involving the collection of a series of data, such as: official documents; newspaper clippings; ANPEd bulletins; ANPEd notebooks and annals; curricula that make up the Lattes Platform of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development; journals; meetings, events and field-specific research networks; as well as works in the field of early childhood education. We argue that a dispute over the scientific monopoly in the field of early childhood education in Brazil ended up creating and extending hegemonic positions within this space, turning certain discourses into working mechanisms, and suppressing or neglecting opposing ways of thinking. Since early childhood education is still a field under construction in our country, the discussion and contribution of different types of knowledge is deemed indispensable to foster new debates, providing greater visibility and thus greater legitimacy to this field.