Abstract
The link between science education and early childhood education is still blurred. This is so because many science education researchers apparently, but mistakenly, believe that the way young children interrogate and investigate the world around them is not appropriate for their understanding of scientific concepts. Although there is an effort among early childhood teachers to be aware of how young children explore the world around them, there still consists considerable uncertainty about how they learn and develop while immersed in classroom science activities. To understand learning processes in early childhood science, this study followed a group of five-year-old children enrolled in a public early childhood center in Belo Horizonte (Brazil) while they participated in a science unit jointly designed by teachers and the children. The study was designed to understand the world through the children’s eyes (i.e., their lifeworlds) and how this world expands while they engage in science. We use the theoretical category of experience to investigate how children, immersed in the social practices of inquiry, expand their lifeworld while engaging with each other, with the adults present and with the material world. Our findings show: (a) the importance of producing a common ground, that is, a sense-giving field contexture that allows actions and speeches to make sense; (b) how the movements of the participants through transactions allow the emergence of an experience that stands out and remains; and (c) how “an experience” might leads to learning and expansion of the participants’ lifeworlds.
Resumo
As relações entre a Educação em Ciências e a Educação Infantil ainda permanecem tênues. Percebemos que muitos pesquisadores, especialmente do campo da Educação em Ciências, aparentemente, mas equivocadamente, acreditam que a maneira como as crianças pequenas interrogam o mundo não é apropriada para que elas possam desenvolver uma investigação neste campo. Embora haja um esforço por parte dos professores e professoras da educação infantil para compreender a maneira pela qual as crianças pequenas exploram e investigam o mundo ao seu redor, essa ainda é uma tarefa incipiente nas escolas. Para compreender o processo de aprendizagem em ciências nesse segmento educativo, seguimos um grupo de crianças de cinco anos pertencentes a uma Escola Municipal de Educação Infantil em Belo Horizonte (Brasil) enquanto participam de um projeto de ciências que foi estruturado a partir do interesse das crianças e constituído conjuntamente com as professoras. Este estudo fez parte de um programa de pesquisa mais amplo que se desenvolveu entre os anos de 2013 a 2016. Tinha, por objetivo, ouvir e perceber as experiências das crianças na escola, captar suas demandas de conhecimento, para desenvolver junto com as professoras, metodologias e estratégias capazes de fomentar o ambiente criado pela escola, ampliando a participação das crianças nos processos formativos. Por meio de encontros semanais—organizados para otimizar o ambiente educativo—os pesquisadores e as professoras discutiam uma pedagogia inspirada pela curiosidade das crianças, que se manifestava quando elas investigavam os fenômenos naturais (p. ex. a refração). O projeto de pesquisa mais amplo seguiu os princípios da etnografia educacional. A pesquisa teve a duração de três anos, dos quais um ano e meio foi dedicado à coleta de dados em campo. Os dados consistem em registros de vídeo, anotações em cadernos de campo, fotos, desenhos produzidos pelas crianças e documentos fornecidos pela escola. Para este artigo, foram selecionados clips (fragmentos de vídeos) das crianças engajadas em atividades relacionadas às ciências. Os dados foram triangulados e as análises de interação realizadas por meio de sessões coletivas entre os pesquisadores. A unidade de análise utilizada foi a categoria teórica da experiência para examinar como as crianças, imersas em práticas sociais de investigação, expandem suas visões de mundo enquanto engajam umas com as outras, com os adultos e com o mundo material. Nossos resultados mostram: (a) o surgimento de uma base comum, ou seja, um campo de sentidos que permite que as ações e as falas de todos os participantes façam sentido; (b) os movimentos dos participantes por meio das transações, que permitem a emergência de uma experiência que se destaca e permanece; e (c) a maneira como “uma experiência” expande a visão de mundo dos participantes, que possa promover a aprendizagem. Esta investigação mostra a importância de se estabelecer um terreno comum onde todos os participantes produzam um trabalho conjunto, simultâneo, enquanto alguns aspectos do fenômeno se destacam, afetam e provocam mudanças que modificam a qualidade das próximas experiências.
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Notes
Pseudonyms are used for all participants.
“Luna´s Show” is a Brazilian cartoon series about a six-year-old little girl named Luna, who is passionate about science. She believes that Planet Earth is a great laboratory in which she can seek answers to her questions and curiosities. Each episode Luna, his brother Jupiter and his pet ferret, Claudius approach an issue raising hypotheses, experimenting, and making explanations.
In this article, we follow the transcript conventions outlined by Jefferson (2004) and adapted by Roth and Jornet (2017): ((shows)) – double parentheses encloses ethnographic descriptions in italic typeset; °°Look°° – words between double degree signs were spoken in much lower volume than surrounding words; (.) – period in parentheses marks hearable pause shorter than 0.1 s; °I do° – Degree signs enclose words spoken with less than normal intensity; NO – Capital letters were spoken with louder than normal intensity; ((she points the glass with her left finger)) grey highlighted texts within square brackets indicates the extent of the gesture seen in the offprint presented to the right; –,?;. punctuation is used to mark movement of pitch (intonation) toward end of utterance, flat, slightly and strongly upward, and slightly and strongly downward, respectively.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a grant from the CNPq Foundation (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and by the FAPEMIG Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais). Our thanks go to children and teachers (Unidade Municipal de Educação Infantil Silva Lobo- Belo Horizonte/Brazil), and especially to Alessandra Custódio, Márcia Cabral, Bárbara Machado, and Cristina Rosa for letting the first author participate as researcher in classroom activities. We also thank the Integrated Studies Group, led by Profs. Isabel de Oliveira e Silva and Iza Rodrigues da Luz, the group Processes and Relationships in the Production and Circulation of Knowledge, led by Prof. Francisco Ângelo Coutinho, and all the students belonging to the groups for the research partnership. We are grateful to the members of the Research Group on cultural-historical activity theory at University of Victoria (Canada) Luciana Audi and Hong-Nguyen Nguyen, for contributing to our collective analysis sessions.
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Goulart, M.I.M., Germanos, E. & Roth, WM. Expanding young children’s lifeworld. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 17, 251–276 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-021-10040-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-021-10040-0