Relação criança e natureza: representações sociais presentes nas políticas públicas para a Educação Infantil

Abstract

This article presents the results of an investigation developed within the period from 2016 to 2018 after a Scientific Initiation project, culminating in a Course Finale Paper, which aimed at not only understanding, through analysis, which are the representations of the relationship between children and nature present in the public policies for Children’s Education, but also at identifying if these policies regarding Children’s Education behold issues concerning the need of a child of establishing a relationship with nature, and if so, how should this relationship occur. The leading questions for the research were: ‘How have the public policies, which are supposed to guide the Children’s Education work, been contemplating the relationship between children and nature?’; ‘Which are the representations of such theme in the current legislation?’; ‘Do the Children’s Education policies behold issues related to the need of the child to establish a relationship with nature? How so?’. The research is of a qualitative aspect and was developed through bibliographical research and documents analysis, in light of the Social Representations Theory. The documents analysed for this paper were: National Curriculum Reference for Children’s Education; National Curriculum Guidelines for Children’s Education and National Curriculum Common Basis. In general terms, through this research one can identify that the documents which look broadly into education do not make major indications towards Children’s Education being far too simplistic in its approaches. If there is no deepening into childhood, neither there is on the need for the child-nature relationship, as it the notion of the significance of this relationship for a free autonomous learning which is able to relate to the environment and people in their surrounds has yet to be formed. One expects that this paper would contribute to raising debates in the aforementioned topic.