A arte e jogos de papéis sociais na educação infantil por meio de experimento pedagógico de intervenção

Abstract

Art, as a human creation, is fundamental to human development, as it enables individuals to appropriate the meanings produced socially within a given culture, situated within a specific spatial and temporal context. This dissertation was grounded in the theoretical framework of Cultural-Historical Theory, drawing on the works of Vygotsky, Leontiev, Elkonin, and Mukhina, whose contributions were essential to the concepts addressed in this research, both theoretically and practically. The research was conducted in a public early childhood education school in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, with five-year-old children, and addressed the following research question: To what extent can art-pedagogical activities and social role-play contribute to the development of Special Higher Psychological Functions in early childhood education? The project proposed incorporating Art as a fundamental element in human cultural development, given that this field is often relegated to a secondary role or even treated merely as a recreational activity within the school environment. The research objectives were: (a) to implement intentional art-based mediating activities through a pedagogical intervention experiment, centered on the leading activity of social role-play; and (b) to analyze and discuss the development of the Special Higher Psychological Functions of Voluntary Attention and Creative Imagination in five-year-old children. Grounded in historical-dialectical materialism and Vygotsky's genetic method, the methodology involved the development of a pedagogical intervention experiment encompassing the following objectives: (1) to identify the children's cultural learning needs through participant observations of classroom activities and observations of the children in open spaces without adult direction; (2) to develop intentional activities based on the children's needs in order to conduct individual diagnostic assessments; (3) to foster the development of Creative Imagination and Voluntary Attention, focusing on the children's learning needs, through art-pedagogical activities and Social Role-Play (the intervention phase of the pedagogical experiment itself); and (4) to conduct the final diagnostic assessment. The research employed the following methodological instruments and procedures: participant observation; discussion circles; reading circles; drawing; social role-play; and systematic mediation. The study was based on the hypothesis that Art-Pedagogical Activities and Social Role-Play, when organized according to children's cultural learning needs, promote the development of Creative Imagination and Voluntary Attention. The data from the Pedagogical Intervention Experiment indicate that these procedures have strong pedagogical potential by integrating initial scientific knowledge, bodily experiences, mathematics, artistic practices, and Social Role-Play, thereby constituting a rich context of mediation that supports children's holistic development, expands their learning, and strengthens their social participation. In particular, art-pedagogical activities functioned as cultural instruments that reorganized children's experiences, fostering, through social relations, the expansion of meanings, the development of consciousness, and the construction of new ways of relating to the world, to themselves, and to others.