Work opens perspectives for interdisciplinary action that offers security for pedagogical teams and expands their fields of action
Faced with the imperatives of modern life, babies are increasingly sent by their parents to daycare centers and nurseries from the first months of life. There is a consensus among experts that early childhood education, which takes place from zero to five years old, is fundamental in the development of learning and the formation of personality that occurs with the child's interaction with the environment. Findings like these led the Department of Physical Education and Humanities, from the Faculty of Physical Education (FEF) at Unicamp, to create the Study Group on Physical Education in Child Development (GEEFIDI), which began in 2007, coordinated by professor Ademir De Marco, who maintains lines of research focused on early childhood education.
Its core includes the Sala Cri Cri project – Space for children to create, an acronym referring to children and creating and whose symbol is the cricket, aimed at children aged six months to five years. It investigates the possible actions of physical education teachers in early childhood education, from an interdisciplinary perspective, with a view to interventions in partnership with teachers in the area. Its aim is also to create complementary materials, introduce games and games and set up adapted environments for motor activities within the scope of this educational segment.
The studies guided by the teacher, a psychologist by training, responsible for the discipline Physical Education in Early Childhood Education of the FEF degree course, involve course completion work, scientific initiation research, master's dissertations and doctoral theses. In this context, the master's degree by physical educator Geovane Silva Ramirez is included, which, using the Cri Cri project, addresses the environment and materials as pedagogical resources for the development of babies from six to 24 months. The study investigated strategies for creating a more appropriate environment that offered materials for babies' sensory and motor exploration. There was also concern about the integration of the physical education teacher with the pedagogical teams that work in this area in which informal interdisciplinary experiences occur more commonly with music, dance, arts and even biology teachers, but rarely occur with educators. physicists.
The research involved planning, making and installing materials for the Cri Cri Room in an early childhood education institution; the analysis of babies' interactions with materials; verifying the possibilities of its uses; carrying out activities for material-baby interaction; the programming of interventions and interdisciplinary pedagogical interactions with all professionals involved in the care and development of these children.
Giovane says that he began working with babies from six months to two years of age as an undergraduate, when he joined Professor De Marco's research group, awarded the Training Study Assistance Grant (BAEF), offered by the Student Support Service ( SAE) from Unicamp and aimed at students at the end of their degree. By the way, he says: “That was when I realized that there were many questions regarding the teaching materials used, normally made available and marketed for this segment, regarding the best times and ways to use them and how they should be designed and made. . We then decided to analyze the most appropriate ways of proposing them, seeking to study the interactions of babies and teachers with them and also how the process of interaction between physical education professionals and teams of pedagogues could be established”.
Perceptions
The methodology used focused on descriptive qualitative analysis and action research in which 87 babies aged between six and 24 months and 20 daycare teachers from a state university in the interior of the State of São Paulo participated. 224 practical sessions were carried out with the children. The interaction between the physical educator and the pedagogical team contributed to the structuring of a physical space and the creation of materials that enabled babies to get to know the world through sensory, motor exploration and socialization. It was also concluded that the choice of materials must be based on at least three parameters: safety – to prevent accidents; hygiene – to avoid contamination; and functionality – to ensure sensory and motor development. To this end, they must be designed, made and organized in a way that attracts babies' attention with the use of a wide variety of colors, shapes, sizes, aromas, flavors and sounds, providing a warm, welcoming and challenging environment.
In this context, says the researcher, the perception was that the physical education teacher, in addition to guiding the scheduled tasks, must also contribute to planning the environment and choosing the materials and the most appropriate time for their use. During the activities, it can also help the baby in his handling and promote his communication and interaction with the environment, facilitating his exploration, experimentation, observation and reframing of the world through sensory experiences – vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste and kinesthesia and motor – support, support, balance, displacement and manipulation of objects. The development of this process was possible as a result of the practical and integrated intervention of the pedagogical team, the participation of the physical educator and other employees involved in caring for the babies.
Professor Ademir adds: “Interacting with pedagogy professionals, we realized that physical education has resources from circus, gymnastics, fights, perfectly adaptable to early childhood education, but pedagogues feel insecure in using them. To provide them with security, we thought about setting up the Cri Cri Room, which has tatami and foaming materials, assembled with resources obtained from Capes. Once the research is completed, the room and objects created are for the school to use.”
With the development of new pedagogical elements, the research group seeks to show that it is possible to create new objects, with the desired functionalities and with the resources already existing in the school itself, which is particularly significant in the public system where resources are scarcer. . Furthermore, the materials available on the market often end up limiting the action of teachers who, with the autonomy to create their own objects, expand the range of opportunities for use and, more importantly, realize that they have the conditions to create them. them.
As a result of the interactions consolidated during the work, the teacher considers the participation of the physical educator in the continued training of all professionals involved in early childhood education to be promising: “The teachers had experiences that they did not have in the pedagogy courses and this seems to me to be the crucial point of the partnerships we maintain with schools. Furthermore, the physical educator can guarantee the teacher's continued training, transferring security and opening the way for new experiences. In fact, it is a two-way path, because in the exchange of experiences everyone learns and wins, physical education teachers and pedagogues”.
Considerations
From the study, the author infers that, to attract babies' attention, spaces and materials must be designed, made and organized in different colors, shapes, textures and combined with different sounds. In its elaboration, functional aspects, linked to the desired stimuli, must be considered; hygienic, to avoid contamination by microorganisms and the spread of diseases; safety, with a view to preventing accidents, especially falls on hard surfaces and objects that could be swallowed; and creating a warm, welcoming and challenging environment.
This framework allows the physical education teacher, through interdisciplinary proposals, to provide experiences that allow babies to develop their own relationships with movement so that they experience its different senses and meanings, expanding their motor and sensory experiences.
It is true, recalls Geovane, that initially there was some strangeness from the teachers who probably did not understand the role of a physical education professional in that space, but little by little and in successive meetings the interaction took place and culminated in effectively interdisciplinary work in which, In some way, all the institution's employees participated, the nutritionist, the kitchen team, the nurse, the cleaning staff, each contributing so that everything could be developed according to the jointly prepared schedule.
Interdisciplinary actions made it possible to combine pedagogical theory with everyday practice, expanding the elaboration and implementation of proposals with sensory, motor and socialization content. In this context, the physical educator also acted as an agent in the search for new strategies for pedagogical planning, facilitated by the use of Sala Cri Cri. It was also found that the physical education teacher can mediate the scheduled tasks, guide the choice of locations and materials and equipment and their constructions.
Geovane concludes: “The study allowed us to verify that, even when the physical educator did not actively participate in activities with the babies, he acted as a provocative and challenging agent in the search for new strategies for pedagogical planning. The dialogue between the areas of physical education and pedagogy made it possible to expand the understanding of each topic covered, contributing to the integral development of babies and promoting their communication/integration with mediators and the environment”.
