Brazilian research into children's perspectives on their educational experience: participation and play at risk

ABSTRACT

The article presents a review of research that has sought to capture the perspectives of poor children on their experience in Brazilian public childhood education institutions, emphasising two themes: interactions and play. The voices of the children heard in these studies indicate the predominance of the transmissive teaching model, centred on values and objectives defined only by adults, marked by discipline, authoritarian relations, and not particularly sensitive to the children’ interests and needs. In this scenario, boys and girls develop a hostile relationship with school, especially with the preschool teacher. This panorama indicates an urgent need for participatory professional development that will allow educators to reconstruct the child’ image, their own role and the educational environment so that they embrace and respond to the needs and rights of children and their competence.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s perspectives
• interactions
• play
• teacher professional development
• participatory pedagogies

Introduction

At least since Dewey, participatory pedagogies developed experiences that establish children's participation in classroom life (Formosinho and Oliveira-Formosinho 2016). Unfortunately, in many countries of the world, this is not what has prevailed in teaching practices with children. By the same token, there are still relatively few studies that seek to capture the child's perspective on the school experience.

The present article conducts a review of Brazilian research that, in different states, listened to children attending public daycare (zero to three years) or public preschool (four and five years). In the Brazilian case, public early-years centres generally involve only children belonging to the poorer layers of the population. These are children that face, besides the generational prejudice that results from the simple fact of being children, several other kinds of prejudice present in Brazilian society, all of which add up, affecting public policies and the relationships professionals establish with them and their families. (Abramowicz and de Oliveira 2012; Rosemberg 1996). These prejudices, especially in terms of social class and ethnic-racial belonging, hinder the children's participation and their right to be heard.

In order to identify the studies herein, two databases were surveyed: The Scientific Electronic Library Online – SciELO and the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations – BDTD. On both, the search was conducted using the keywords child's/children's perspective; research with children; participation/interaction and child education/daycare-preschool; play and child education/daycare-preschool. Despite the large number of studies found (99 on SciELO and 1631 on BDTD, with some repetition of studies when using different keywords), most were unrelated to childhood education and, of those related to the topic, few included capturing the perspective of children in their objectives and/or focused on other themes, such as issues of gender and family relationships. It is worth noting that, though they are large databases, SciELO indexes and publishes only a select collection of Brazilian scientific periodicals and the BDTD makes available dissertations and theses from 114 institutions. Therefore, no doubt some studies were left out, as a consequence of having been published in periodicals not included in the databases (e.g. Cruz 2002), or having used other keywords.

The advance represented by research that prioritises observing children and/or their depictions as a means of understanding their viewpoint is evident. However, this article opted to present studies that, not only observed children but invited them to express themselves on the aspects of their educational experience, utilising specific instruments that take into account and value children's peculiarities. Hence, in addition to contributing to the construction of a methodology that allows researchers to capture the children's perspective, including elements not readily accessible by observation alone, these studies strengthen their image as rich and competent.

In Brazil, researchers’ interest in hearing children is a relatively recent development; very few studies were developed prior to the 2000s. Nonetheless, despite still being limited, this production has helped expand adult insight into the daily school life of millions of Brazilian boys and girls.

The studies included in this review were carried out over a broad time frame (1990–2016) and based on different theoretical assumptions, which will not be analysed here. They will be briefly presented, emphasising the main conclusions and, particularly, children's perspectives. In the final section of this article, the most strongly shared aspects in this set of studies will be highlighted, with the reference of a pedagogical understanding that is sensitive to and respectful of children's rights: agency, participation, play, choice, quality interaction.

The children's perspective on their participation and play in Brazilian early childhood education institutions

In Brazil, preparation, planning, execution, and evaluation of teaching proposals for early education in daycare and preschool should be oriented by the National Curriculum Guidelines for Childhood Education – (Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação Infantil) – DCNEI (BRASIL 2009). According to this document, childhood education teaching practices should set interactions and play as their guiding principles. Consequently, this article focuses on studies that have addressed these themes and will highlight the children’s viewpoint on interactions they experience at childhood education institutions and on play in these contexts. All research studies followed the ethical procedures regarding participation of their subjects, such as consent and anonymity of the institutions and persons in them. It should also be clarified that the instruments were applied following the establishment of a relationship of trust between researchers and children.

In the sphere of childhood education, pioneer work in listening to children was conducted by Gonçalves (1990), in a municipal preschool¹ on the outskirts of Ribeirão Preto, a city in São Paulo State. The objective was to capture children's depictions of the setting they attended. Five boys and five girls, between five and six years of age, took part in the research. In addition to observations and interviews, other procedures were utilised to capture the depictions of children: drawing the school, interpreting three illustrations of school situations, commenting on a story whose central theme was the school, and what the children called ‘playing school'.

Already at the start of the year, children saw the teacher as ‘all-powerful, scary, threatening' and the predominant feeling in the relationship was of fear, likely influenced by the awareness that, if they did not obey, they would be punished (86–87). This perception grew over time and the teacher frequently used her authority to hinder activities that they liked, especially play, as punishment for ‘something wrong' that they did. Thus, tension was instilled in the relationship between teacher and the boys and girls, who began to admit they disliked her.

The reason for this appeared to lie in the coercion the teacher exercised, because the children seemed to perceive they could not take initiative in relation to school activities or interactions with classmates. The only alternative was to do the ‘assignment or what the teacher says' and ‘always obey' (Gonçalves 1990, 91).

At the end of the school year, the teacher was, in the child's perspective, the sole protagonist in relation to everything that had happened in their school life and, on some occasions, fear predominated, as a consequence of the control mechanisms she used. This becomes evident in the following conversation, about a child's drawing:

Interviewer –Is everyone playing, happily?

Child – No.

M – Why?

L – They are looking at the teacher.

M –Why are they looking at the teacher?

L – Because they are afraid.

M – And why?

L – Because she hits. Because … This one here?! Poor him!

M – Why ‘poor him'?

L – Because he already got beaten by her. Hés the one who most got hit.

(…)

M –And why are the others afraid?

L – Because … Just because she hit this one, now they’re afraid she will hit everyone. (97)

Because the teacher's control extended to the recess time and the playground area, their favourite, the children expressed the desire to play on the playground ‘without the teacher around’, as she limited their possibilities of games (Gonçalves 1990, 97). Thus, the researcher concludes that even play ‘seems to have been taken over and dominated by the teacher, hampering any manifestation of the child's own initiative’ (Idem, 102).

Souza (2006) sought to capture what five-year-old preschoolers in a municipality of Ceará considered good quality in this stage of early education. Three classes from the municipal schools were chosen, two urban and one rural. In each class, two boys and two girls were invited to participate in the study, after an initial period of observation. Each group was asked to present the school's spaces to the researcher, providing details about how and with whom they used them, what they thought of these activities, and so on. The groups were invited to complete a story about the quotidian of a preschool (Completion Stories²) and to comment on a video in which there were many possibilities of exploring objects and interactions between children and adults. They were also interviewed individually and made three drawings each: what they liked at school, what they did not like, and what they would like there to be.

In this study too, adults centralised power, subordinating the children to their decisions and will. The children clearly expressed their lack of participation in the school's quotidian. When presenting the school spaces that they used, for example, they stated that the teacher defined what to do and what to use. Even with regard to the patio toys the kids were only allowed to use after prior selection and authorisation by the adults: ‘we can only use the boomerang when she lets us, when she goes outside’ (Ney, 5 years old), ‘I am not allowed to touch anything, only if the teacher lets me’ (Paula, 5 years old). (Souza 2006, 67)

Jabur (2007) conducted a study at a philanthropic institution in Ribeirão Preto (São Paulo) with the objective of investigating which routines and spaces the children most and least liked, seeking to comprehend how these assessments could contribute to improving the quality of the work done there. The subjects were 22 six-year-old children. In addition to observations, interviews were conducted, as well as conversation circles and requests for the children to photograph what they most and least liked. Playtime and the space where they play is what they most like, while the activities that aim at control and disciplining and advancing education (‘homework’, for example) is what they least like. The author emphasises that the social phenomenon that emerges from the perspectives and the words of the children present in this study ‘were the relations of power present in the institution, where the adult wields the power and submits the children to it, but, and mainly, the children's capacity for resistance in the face of these attempts at control.’ (Jabur 2007, 85, emphasis of the author) She reports, for example, the following dialogue:

M – but why do you have to put your head down? Explain it to me. Like this?

K – Put it down like this.

K – To be able to go out to recess, or else the teacher … or else you don't stay quiet.

M – And is it awful to be quiet like this? Do you feel like speaking?

K – We talks like this. [] we talk like this (makes a movement of speaking in hiding)

M – Oh, you talk facing downwards? And laughing? Don't you feel like laughing?

K – Then we laugh like this (shows a hidden laugh, looking downwards).

(Jabur 2007, 89)

The author considers that the centrality of activities aimed at written achievement, in the molds of primary school and of traditional teaching points to ‘a total lack of consideration of the specificities of children age zero to six, mainly with respect to the experiences of play and the importance of also recognising the wishes, choices and preferences of the children (…).’ (115–116).

Cruz (2007), who focused on routines and interactions established daily within a municipal preschool of Fortaleza, found a similar reality. When studying 12 children between four and six years of age, observing them and using adaptations from Completion Stories and from Drawing-Storytelling³, she found that ‘elements comprising the routine, for example, organisation of the environment and materials, time use, selection and proposal of activities, are regulated by norms coming only from the teachers’ (9).

In this scenario, the children soon began to believe that all they could do was ‘respect what was established and show they were good at executing the instructions/tasks given’ (Cruz 2007, 190). To make them conform to the wishes and rules coming from the teacher, the children were submitted to a disciplining process, such as control of their movements, rhythms, and postures, to make them obey; they began to understand that ‘the children's job is to obey!’ (Idem, 191). In this regard, it is worth reproducing one of the researcher's talks with a child, Mateus, about a drawing he made:

C:So, he [the boy] did it, he read. He did it all.

E:Why?

C:Because he likes to.

E:Likes to what?

C:He likes to do it. He obeys.

E:Yeah? And what if he doesn't obey?

C:He gets hit.

E:Huh?

C:He will get hit.

E:Hit by whom?

C:By his mom.

E:Yeah? And at school, what if he doesn't obey?

C:He gets yelled at.

E:By whom?

C:By the teacher.

E:And then what?

C:And then, he never does it again.

(Idem)

The dialogue also demonstrates, as in other studies, that kids often perceive family members to be the school's allies. They press them to do assignments and to follow the rules dictated by the school and punish them when this does not happen, contributing to the process of disciplining the children.

In the study conducted by Almeida (2015) in a public childhood education institution in the city of Estância, Sergipe, the focus was on how 5-year-olds participate in school routines. Observations of daily life of the class of 5-year-olds were conducted. The 21 children were broken up into small groups and asked to make a school with playdough, explaining details about how it functions, and giving their opinions about two illustrations containing scenes of class activities and another of recess; individually, they drew and talked about something they felt was very important to have at school.

As in other studies, participation was practically nonexistent, and the objective of teaching practices was not the child's full development: according to the author, ‘the category of “imposing discipline” was the most predominant during the entire data analysis (…).’ (61).

Among the many rules decided without the children's participation was the need to always sit two boys and two girls at each table and that they must not speak to each other. Even in the so-called ‘conversation circle’, the teacher talked much more than the kids, exercised more power, interrupted them, and changed the subject, turning this moment of the routine into one more space for chastising the kids.

Thus, upon being queried about who decides what can be done at school, one child replied: ‘The teacher … we do our assignment at the table quietly, without playing’ and, according to another child, what they should do at school is ‘be quiet, to listen and learn’ (63). If they neglected to follow the rules, the punishments were known to everyone. One girl, for example, detailed the punishment resulting from some disobedience:

The punishment is very bad, when you are in timeout, you stay there a long time until, until the class is over and also, you don't, don't, don't, you don't play, you don't play, you don't play on the playground, you don't go to recess to eat and also, how is it, and you also have to study until your parents arrive, you don't go to the playground, you study, study, study when you get in trouble. (Almeida 2015, 89)

The lack of opportunities for children to participate and the control exerted by the teachers over their actions seem to be factors contributing heavily to the value they attribute to play; play generally takes place only among peers, without direct interference from the adults.

Indeed, the boys and girls heard in several studies asserted that the chance of playing with peers was the best part of the daycare or preschool they attended. Complementarily, recess or playground time (when such possibilities were available) is considered the best moment of the routine and the space where recess occurs is singled out as the favourite location at school.

In Consultation on the Quality of Childhood Education (Campos and Cruz 2006) 48 groups made up of five- or six-year-olds from different Brazilian States, were heard by means of the continuation of a story about building a good early education institution. Among them there is unanimity: a good daycare centre must have toys and games. They enumerate various kinds of toys that should be available to them, for example: ‘There must be dolls. There must be cars. It is very important to have toys at school’ (boy from Ceará). ‘There must be toys, racetracks, toy cars, dolls, action figures’ (child from Rio Grande do Sul).

The huge importance of play for boys and girls is also expressed when they refer to the school's spaces. In Araújo (2008), which investigated children's perspectives on the location of play in a municipal childhood education facility in Juiz de Fora (Minas Gerais), this became very evident. The class studied was composed of 20 boys and girls between four and five years of age, and the author, in addition to her observations, talked to the whole class about what they did at school and asked that they draw individually the school and what they most liked to play in this setting. She found that the children considered the patio, the playground, with the toys located there, very significant. This is reinforced by other data: 95% of boys and girls said play was the activity they most enjoyed at school, with make-believe being their favourite game. It is noteworthy that the activity room was very infrequently remembered as a place for play, reinforcing the notion that it does not embrace this childhood need.

In the study by Santos and dos (2015), which focused specifically on recess from the children's perspective – this moment in their routine was also, by far, the favourite activity of the children that attended a preschool in the Fortaleza municipal system. The eight children studied were five and six-year-olds and the procedures employed were individual and collective interviews, utilising adaptations of Drawing-Storytelling and Completion Stories.

It became clear that, for the children, it was recessed that justified attending the institution. Thus, this is how they react to the possibility, put forth by the researcher, of not having recess: ‘The kids would cry a lot!’, ‘The kids would change schools!’, ‘And if this school didn't have a playground, I would go to another, and if that one had one, I would study there.’ One girl, Maria, expresses forcefully the importance of recess by stating that, without it, ‘The children would have nothing!’

Despite this, the children called for improvements to recess, especially in relation to available toys: ‘I would like a slide, a scooter, swimming pool, a toy, a toy for the sand, a sand bucket … ’, ‘Ask God to pray, and ask for more toys for this place, newer ones, or that no one will break them  … ’

The research conducted by Evangelista (2016) in a childhood education institution in Presidente Prudente (SP) found similar results. The objective was to identify the conceptions and expectations of children and early education professionals in relation to the school space. To this end, the methods employed were observations, interviews with teachers, education coordinator, and principal, four drawings done by the 18 children between five and six years of age (about school, preferred space, the activity room, and their desires in relation to the school space) and choosing which environment they preferred, from eight images presented and, in that environment, which elements they most liked or disliked.

Upon investigating what these children's preferred setting was, more than 70% of them indicated the playground and the ball court, places where they could play freely. They also revealed that they greatly enjoyed playing in the activity room and that they valued most the toys that allowed for free play, such as balls, cars, and robots.

When asked to make drawings demonstrating what they would like the school to provide, aspects of play predominated, and the children drew several toys the school did not possess. When indicating what type of activity room that they preferred, the kids also expressed a desire for spaces where they could play.

It should be emphasised that many boys and girls expressed a contrast between play and the assignments done in the ‘classroom’. In the research by Sousa (2006, 54), previously mentioned, the kids explained that it is only possible to play ‘at recess time, because in the classroom we learn things … ’ (Rafael, 5 years).

In the research study developed by Silveira (2005) at a municipal institution in São Carlos (São Paulo), the author observed and interviewed individually and as a group the 26 children of the five-year-old class and requested that they take photographs. When invited to talk about what it means to play, they revealed that, to them, the activity is fun, can be linked to a transgression, occurs with their peers, and is associated with the end of a chore: ‘Playing is something that we finish our work and play’, as one boy states (84). Another finding of the research was that children value the opportunities to play with their classmates and is the main reason they gave to justify liking school. They play because they are small, because they do not have to work, and because it is good. One girl reinforces this idea when she states that children play ‘because it is good, because it is better to play than go to school …  At school there aren't many toys, you just have to do lessons’ (100)

In Martins (2009), which sought to capture the participation of five-year-old children and their teacher in the way they played in a municipal preschool class of Fortaleza, this dichotomy was even more clear. By means of observations and interviews, adaptation of the Drawing-Storytelling and Completion Stories, a symbolic game and conversations about it with six children from the class, the author concluded that ‘For most of the kids, play is very restricted in time and space in the school environment: you play during recess, on the playground’ (170). One boy stated that ‘school is the place to study’, but another explained how they try to get around this idea: ‘It's like this: when Nara [teacher] leaves the room, then we play, then when Nara comes back, then we sit down quick  … ’ (Martins 2009, 172).

In the research by Almeida (2015), cited previously, it is also evident that repression of the desire to play leads kids to break rules and disobey norms imposed by the teacher, even if it results in punishment. This daily imposition of tasks and rules they do not like leads to the development of a hostile attitude on the part of the children towards the teacher and the centre. This appears very strongly in several of the aforementioned studies.

In Cruz (2009), discussed earlier, the hostility toward the teacher and the school became evident in several of the children's productions. As summarised by the author, she

is the only person victimised by a fire that happens at school; she is the only person that will disappear with the school; she is with the kids at the beach but is the only one who is eaten by an enraged whale. (Cruz 2007, 210)

Final considerations

There are many institutions and professionals committed to the development of quality childhood education, both public and private. However, as shown in the study done by Campos, Füllgraf, and Wiggers (2006), the problems in this stage of Brazilian education affect especially poor children, as is the case of those heard in the studies summarised herein. The serious problems pinpointed by so many boys and girls from various Brazilian states infringe on their rights to participate and play, and impair their school experience. The point of identifying these problems from the children's perspective is not to blame their teachers, who often face adverse work conditions, including low pay, lack of adequate materials and facilities, precarious pedagogical support, and excessively large class sizes. The objective, rather, is to highlight the need to overcome this inequality in educational conditions, so present in Brazilian society, in order to make it more equitable. It is, therefore, an important step in bringing about a change in practices and ensuring the rights of the children to a quality education that is related with teachers’ rights to initial quality training and continuous professional development.

Listening to children has proven to be a fundamental strategy in expanding the repertoire related to the right to and the quality of childhood education. As stated by Rocha (2008), they bring us original and oftentimes unusual elements about their experiences in daycare and preschools, to which we would otherwise have difficulty gaining access.

The discontent these children feel in relation to their school experience and, particularly, to their teacher is unmistakable. In general, the children see this professional as authoritarian, controlling their actions and restricting what they most enjoy doing: interacting with classmates and playing. In the studies presented in the article, the children reveal the predominance of transmissive teaching in their classes, centred on values and objectives defined by adults, who are not particularly sensitive to their interests and needs. Thus, their calls for more democratic interactions and greater opportunities for play go unanswered.

The poor receptivity of what children have to say has different characteristics in various settings. However, it is possible to note some common elements among them, such as the conception of early childhood education as a preparation for primary school, whose main objective is the mastery of written language by children. Discipline is highly valued since it is seen as a condition for children to master the content and to become ‘good students’. Thus, control and imposition of rules relating to possibilities of speech and movement, to the use of time, spaces, materials, etc., become a necessary condition for this ‘good education’. The interactions between adults and children are very poor, revealing a withholding of autonomy, sensitivity, and democratic stimulation. The possibilities for play to occur in daycare centres and preschools are, to a large extent, harmed.

These children's voices indicate just how urgent it is to intervene at multiple levels, specifically in public policies and university policies for teacher education and professional development. Only in the last ten years preschool, teacher education courses added some subjects related to Childhood Pedagogy. So, these teachers’ initial training did not have access to this recent development.

Learning about participatory pedagogies is central because it helps professionals to develop a world vision centred on democracy, respect and participation for all children and for all contexts. This training needs immersion in participatory real-life situations allowing the experiential learning of participatory pedagogies. This experiential learning helps to develop professional practical knowledge of how to put into practice children's rights and competencies in everyday classroom life (Oliveira-Formosinho 1998; Pascal and Bertram 2009). Formosinho and Oliveira-Formosinho (2016), Oliveira-Formosinho (2016). All of this requires, in turn, rethinking university teacher education courses and culture, giving emphasis to supervised practicum in early childhood centres that develop participatory pedagogies (Formosinho 2002). As praxis is the locus of pedagogy, it should have an important space in teacher education (Oliveira-Formosinho and Formosinho 2012).

We conclude with a reminder that listening to children's voices is a premise of democracy. Children should participate actively in the decisions that affect them, something that is impossible in a daily routine marked by authoritarianism. Only a democratic environment supports and sustains the rights of speech, participation, learning, and development of all the children, regardless of their family income, sexual orientation, place of residence, ethnic-racial belonging, or their religion.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my special thanks to Professor Julia Oliveira-Formosinho for kindly providing a technical review of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. At the time, the term preschool referred to the education of children under 7 years of age. With the passage of the Law of Education Bases and Guidelines (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação – LDB) (BRASIL 1995), the term preschool was limited to the education of children four to six years of age (age range that was restricted, as of 2006, to four- and five-year-olds).

2. Completion Stories is an adaptation of Histoires à Completer, by Madeleine B. Thomas: the children were told short beginnings of stories addressing daily life at daycare and then asked to continue the stories

3. The Drawing-Storytelling (Trinca 1997) has been used in studies with children since Cruz (1987), functions as follows: the researcher asks the child to make a drawing on the theme in focus and then create a story about it, repeating this sequence five times.