Abstract:
This article is part of a research developed at the public education network in the city of Joinville (in the state of Santa Catarina) and aims at discussing how children experience the transition from kindergarten to primary school. In order to achieve this goal, we developed an ethnographic research that began in 2013, with a group of children who attended the last year of early childhood education. The study was concluded in 2014, when this same group of children had been attending the first grade of primary school. The instruments for data collection counted on participant observation, records on a logbook, and photographic registers. The data were analyzed according to the dialogue based on contributions of different educational theorists, studies related to childhood sociology and to socio-historical psychology. The analyses showed that, despite many of the practices of early childhood education being incorporated in the school, the ways they are developed and how they are conceived by the school result in different interactions among the children. In that sense, the children indicate that being at school is a daily challenge, even when they are willing to enter elementary school.
Keywords:
public policies for education; early childhood education; elementary school; pedagogical practice