Entrelaçamentos: o choro dos bebês e a docência na educação infantil

Abstract

The research aimed to understand how babies' crying interferes in the educational-pedagogical relationships developed in an EMEI in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Although the literature on Early Childhood Education, especially the one on the care and education of babies, emphasizes the importance of thinking about the place that babies occupy in interactions with others in this context, and even the specificities that make up teaching with babies, there are still few studies that address the theme of the cry, and even less frequent those that analyze it in an articulated way with teaching actions. Based on this context, we propose a theoretical dialogue between Sociology and Childhood Pedagogy, Child Anthropology, Child Education and Historical-Cultural Psychology studies, in order to analyze the relationship between the cry and the organization of times, spaces, materials in which the babies, teachers and auxiliary are inserted; to analyze how the babies' crying interferes in their interactions with the teachers and how it permeates the babies' interactions with their peers. From footage taken in a nursery class at an EMEI in Belo Horizonte in 2017, we focused on analyzing the moments of directed activities, once we identified that there was a greater interference of babies' crying at these moments. The results indicated that there was a prevalence of an institutionalized routine to the detriment of space-time for the babies' interactions moments in a more autonomous way. With this, we found that the babies' actions and expressions signaled excessive control and a process of disciplining their bodies by the teachers, as well as the babies' lack of interest in these activities. We also observed that at times when these activities did not take place, the teachers demonstrated greater physical and affective availability in the face of the babies' signals and summons, with, therefore, a lower incidence of the cry. Regarding the interference of the cry in teaching actions, we found that there is an interdependence between babies' crying and teaching permeated by a relationship of power and dependence. The cry expresses a necessity and fragility of babies who depend on another adult – in this case, the teachers – to constitute themselves as a person, but on the other hand, exercise power over the other, in this case, their teachers, inciting in them unexpected actions and practices and reflections that feed back into teaching itself as well. We also identified how the cry appears as a triggering element of simultaneous encounters and disencounters between babies and their peers. We were able to verify that there are many encounters, even if brief, that took place between them, mostly during times when there was no activity directed by the teachers. Thus, we affirm that babies, with their actions, modify their own environment and transform it in a way that allows encounters, disencounters and games. Based on these findings, we support the thesis that babies' crying is a legitimate and important element to be considered in the pedagogical practices to be developed with babies in daycare, contributing to the recognition of the active role of these subjects and to the construction of teaching exercised with them. We still reiterate the necessity for public policies for Early Childhood Education that aim better working conditions and training spaces/times that allow reflections on the specificities of teaching with babies, as well as on their development process at the beginning of life and the construction of practices that focus on the baby itself and its forms of communication.