A inserção e a participação de bebês em atos de cuidar na educação infantil

Abstract

This research, part of the Childhood and Schooling Program, aims to understand how a group of babies participate in and participate in acts of care in the nursery of a Municipal Early Childhood Education School in Belo Horizonte (EMEI Tupi). Care has been conceptualized from several perspectives: social and political (Tronto, 2007; Hirata, 2022); as a cultural practice (Maranhão, 2000); inherent to relationships between individuals (Noddings, 2013, Katz et al., 2020); and as essential to the experiences of babies in the formation of their subjectivities (Vygotsky, 1983). We understand care in its biological, cultural, cognitive, and affective dimensions. It constitutes a relationship with oneself, with others, or with the environment, involving attention and the ability to respond to a demand or need of the caregiver or the person being cared for. The theoretical-methodological approach is based on the principles of Ethnography in Education, in dialogue with Historical-Cultural Psychology. The production of empirical material is based on the database of the EnlaCEI/UFMG Study Group, produced by the team of researchers in 2017. This database is composed of field notes, video recordings, and photographs produced at EMEI Tupi. Using a microgenetic approach, through the unit of analysis [affection/situated social cognition/cultures/languages in use] (ACCL), we analyzed a set of events in which a baby, Maria, initiated acts of care. Acts of care were evident in the teachers' practices, which Maria imitated and reinterpreted through the process of cultural appropriation and the development of her own subjectivity. Maria tried to comfort the other children when they cried and feed them. We identified that the practices and interactions in the nursery context made it possible to experience acts of care. We noticed that the meanings that teachers attribute to the demands of babies and the way they meet them can be diverse, considering that care is a cultural construction. However, babies, as active and participatory subjects in the nursery, also respond to the forms of care directed at them, get involved in these acts, which leads them to recognize them and create an understanding of the meaning of interacting in a caring manner. We defend the thesis that babies are capable of initiating acts of care. These acts of care reflect a process of appropriation of the culture of care in the nursery constituted by the interaction between babies and adults. These acts demonstrate the imitation by babies of the behaviors of adults, which includes their active participation in a movement of creation that has repercussions on the transformation of the biological/cultural. Therefore, we consider the importance of teachers' practices in promoting a culture of care that allows babies to get involved, participate, interpret and initiate acts of care.