Children's narratives: a case study at an institution of early childhood education

Challenging traditional adult-centered pedagogy, an early childhood education teacher conducts projects with the participation of children in a classroom with diversified areas for free playing. By making use of a project-based approach integrated to the foundations of High/Scope, the teacher values the knowledges and narratives of the children during the construction of a cardboard witch. The case study focuses on narratives containing verbal expressions of a binary nature, typical of the child's process of categorization as researched by Bruner, and similar to those of the thinking of the savages as analyzed by Lévi-Strauss. The study was carried out within the physical space of a classroom refurbished in 2003 according to the precepts of the High/Scope curriculum model and enhanced by the Project-based Approach. The research, of a qualitative nature, configures an instrumental, collaborative case study in which a teacher from a municipal school for early childhood education in the city of São Paulo develops the practice of telling stories with 4-year-old children, within an environment that stimulates cooperation, ludic behavior and narratives. Results indicate that, according to Brunerian conceptions, the children's binary narratives, such as the good witch and bad witch, living near or living far, large box or small box, reveal structures typical of the infantile thinking that help in the process of categorizing the daily life situations. The practice of telling stories, of listening to the children, and making room for the re-creation of narratives is consistent with pedagogies that respect the children's forms of representation of the world, such as the project-based approach.

Children's narratives; Project-based approach; Binary thinking; Scaffolding