"Inutensílios" da alma: travessias estéticas entre arte, infância e docência

Abstract

This Final Course Assignment investigated the articulations between art, aesthetic experience, and teaching practice in Early Childhood Education, seeking to understand how elements often considered “useless” sensations, gestures, imagination, and sensitive materialities contribute to teacher formation and pedagogical practice. The research adopted a qualitative, autobiographical approach grounded in narrative curriculum, using personal accounts, pedagogical memories, and everyday records as devices for analysis and knowledge production. The theoretical framework dialogues with Walter Benjamin, especially his critique of the poverty of experience and of productivist rationality; with Manoel de Barros,whose poetics inspire the concept of creative uselessness; with Adorno and his analysis of culture as commodity; and with Jan Masschelein, whose poor pedagogy emphasizes attention, presence, and openness to the world. As an empirical component, the study presents the aesthetic portfolio of the Mundos Invisíveis project, developed with children, in which investigative and sensitive practices reveal the emergence of different areas of knowledge from children's curiosities. The results indicate that a teaching practice sustained by aesthetic experience expands ways of knowing, fosters meaningful relationships, and resists the utilitarian and fragmented logics that permeate contemporary schooling. It is concluded that practices grounded in sensibility constitute ethical and formative pathways for Early Childhood Education.