Produções cartográficas presentes em revistas voltadas ao público infantil: as potencialidades para o processo de ensino e aprendizagem da cartografia

Abstract

Cartographic productions are present in childhood in the most diversified spaces and by means of several resources. Currently, the consolidation of a market of cultural products aimed at children is evident. Magazines are some of these resources in which one can find cartographic productions. The main objective of this research consisted in analyzing the potentialities of the cartographic productions presented in magazines conveyed to children audiences for the teaching and learning process of cartography. The methodology consisted of bibliographical and documentary researches, as well as the so-called ‘state of art’. Firstly, we studied the development of cartography over time, and its insertion in the teaching and learning process, as well as in academic research on the subject. It was verified that cartography is a knowledge arising from a human need to express and communicate. It also has a participation in the construction of the world as it is conceived. Thus, its teaching and learning have been documented, to guide school’s curriculums with academic researches being developed on the subject. We, then, investigated the relationships that are established among cartography, childhood, and the media. It was found that nowadays children constitute a consumer market, so innumerable are the media products that enter this universe. Magazines are some of these products that bring cartographic productions in which the informative-communicative and expressive dimensions are at work. It is in the constant confluence of texts, productions and audiences that meanings are constructed. This way, we analyzed the potential of cartographic productions presented in magazines aimed at children, for the teaching and learning of cartography in the initial years of elementary school. Two magazines were selected for the present study as analysis material, namely ‘Ciência Hoje das Crianças’ and ‘Recreio’. The analysis, centered on the issues published from July-December 2015, was justified by the proximity to the moment of the research and was conducted under the documentary methodology. We then believe that this research contributes with potential elements for the pedagogical development in the classroom regarding reading of representations of the space in the initial years of the elementary school. The teacher’s approach to explore the communicative-informative and expressive dimensions, as well as the reading of the cartographic productions enable new ways of looking and understanding the space we inhabit, not as absolute truths, but as questionable human creations that keep their histories. Concomitantly, the students’ awareness at these productions present in their daily life.