A apropriação da psicologia histórico-cultural na educação infantil brasileira: análise de teses e documentos oficiais no período de 2000 a 2009

Abstract

The theoretical assumptions of Cultural-Historical Psychology started circulating in Brazilian academia, in the 1980s through works translated from English to Portuguese; among them is Vygotsky s book entitled Thought and Language. Faced with this observation, we sought to understand: How has Historical-Cultural Psychology been appropriated in the Brazilian educational field? Thus, the hypothesis that has guided us is that there is a mistaken appropriation of the precepts of Cultural-Historical Psychology, a fact not tied to individual questions but rather resulting from how these ideas were incorporated in Brazil with the aim to join the hegemonic discourse in the field of pedagogical ideas: neoproductivism and its variants. Thus, our general aimis to understand and analyze how the appropriation of Cultural-Historical Psychology s assumptions by the field of Early Childhood Education during the first decade of this century in Brazil has occurred. Therefore, we conducted a bibliographic study of Official Ministry of Education (MEC) documents, as well as academic production (theses) related to Early Childhood Education in this period. We used as categories of analysis the concepts of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and play/role play. The methodological procedures that guided us are the five categories proposed by Demerval Saviani, namely: the principle of the concrete nature of historical educational knowledge, the long-term perspective, the analytic-synthetic vision, the articulation of the singular and the universal and the relevance of historical research. With respect to the zone of proximal development, we find that the aspect most studied in theses and MEC documents was the definition of this concept. This was presented as the distance between what child is able to perform alone (actual development) and its performances with the help of an adult or in collaboration with other more experienced children (potential development). Regarding play/role play, several aspects were treated. In the Theses researchers studied the origin of play/role play, the definition of this concept, the toy, imagination and fantasy, among other topics. MEC documents mainly addressed imagination, child development, the toy and the role performed by children in play. After this analysis we infer that there is an eclectical appropriation with peculiarities that distances itself from discussions of the concepts presented in both: classics and by contemporary researchers who seek to continue research in this area. Thus, we sought to understand this eclecticism in the history of pedagogical and psychological ideas since the 1980s. We note that in this period with regard to pedagogical ideas we are in the midts of neoproductivis, and in relation to psychological ideas in the field of education we have experienced a period of criticism and reconstruction of School/Educational Psychology. However, in our analysis we found that this movement of criticism and reconstruction of School/Educational Psychology was not appropriate in the area of Early Childhood Education. We conclude with the statement that the eclecticism in theses and MEC documents is reflected in this historical period.