Preparing preschool children for elementary school: a contribution to the debate in brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Pasqualini, Juliana Campregher
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Teoria e Prática da Educação (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/TeorPratEduc/article/view/28211
• topic: early childhood education; school education; cultural-historical psychology; readiness for school; educação infantil; educação escolar; psicologia histórico-cultural; preparação para a escola

The history of preschool education in Brazil is strongly marked by compensatory and preparatory traits, which became object of criticism from 1990’s decade on, when researchers and practitioners pooled efforts in the quest for the identity and specificity of early years education, against a pedagogical work guided by extrinsic aims. Within this debate, a trend advocated the deviation of early years education from a schooling framework, questioning the appropriateness of the act of teaching and curricula as key-elements of the pedagogical work with small children. In this context, the objective of preparing children for a future stage of schooling, previously assumed as the chief reason for the existence of preschool institutions, gains a depreciative meaning and fades out. This theoretical essay aims at retrieving the discussion on the problem of preparing the child for elementary school grounded on the cultural-historical analysis of the relations between teaching and psychic development at preschool age. Based on the propositions of Vigotskian theory, we will analyze the problem of preparation of children for school from the standpoint of the capabilities acquired during the preschool period of psychic development in the course of transition to the next age period.