Produção científica sobre educação infantil nos mestrados e doutorados em educação física no Brasil

Abstract

The present work has as general objective to analyze the tendency of researches developed in Physical Education of Master and Doctorate degree Programs, which thematics had been aimed toward Childhood Education in the period of 1979 to 2000, in what refer to: frequency of Childhood Education subject; dominant thematics; objectives priorized by the authors and conceptions of Childhood and Childhood Education contained and in treatise texts and thesis. The study characterize itself as a bibliographical research, which main source of collection of data were the thesis and treatises. We initially analyze, based on the bibliographic research carried through about the subject, as they had been being built through out history as main conceptions of Childhood and Childhood Education. After that, we described with that frequency and from when appeared in the scientific production of Master and Doctorate degree in Physical Education in Brazil the Childhood Education subject. We could observe that in the period of 1979 to 2000, 1088 dissertations were defended and among them only 2,57% were related to Childhood Education subject. We also point out that from 1989 to 2000, 100 thesis were defended in Doctorate degree in this area and that only 3% of them were about the subject in discussion. We also identify which are the dominant thematics in the dissertations and thesis on Physical Education area, aimed towards Physical Education. We noticed that 39,3% of the thematics of the dissertations were aimed toward the pedagogical area, 32,1% to Psychological area, 14,3% to biological area and the same percentage to the social-historic philosophical area; Analyzing the thematics of the defended thesis in doctorate degrees, we noticed that 67% associate themselves to the psychological area and 33% to the social-historic philosophical area. Giving continuity, we investigated the objectives formulated in the dissertations and thesis, we came to a conclusion that the more critical perspective in relation to the social-economic-politic questions that affect the child during pre-school age, weren t put in evidence in dissertations aims and analyzed thesis, being that almost the totality of the displayed objectives express interest from the authors with prompt questions such as: the development of the child, the curriculum, the education of the movement or the body conscience, the fetching of the correlation between variables amongst others. In relation to the conceptions of Childhood and Childhood Education we verify that: 1) Predominates a vision of a restrict Childhood Education in the researches done and a preparatory period for a posterior stage of life of the children, which is; the appointed period to Basic Teaching. The Childhood Education seems, thus not to have an end in itself exactly. 2) This conception was intimately articulated with the conceptions of Childhood expressed in the majority of thesis and treatises. 3) In the majority of the studies there is a notion of Childhood as a stage that prepares for other life moments; as a stage in which the child should acquire abilities, values, ideas an competence that makes possible to face future life. 4) The majority of the researches discuss Childhood and Childhood Education without context, without reference to the social-economic-political-cultural factors that mark and determine Childhood such as Childhood Education.