Brincadilhar: vivências de crianças com autismo nas brincadeiras da educação infantil

Abstract

This research was delineated from problems experienced in the routine of Early Childhood Education, through observations and complaints from both professionals and children, that children with autism did not play (and/or did not like to play) or that, when they did, they did it alone and were always oblivious to what happened during the games and experiences at school. Given the problem presented, we hypothesized that the games played by children with autism, when not shared with other children or happened in a stereotyped way, would be related to the lack of partnerships, such as intentional interventions established with adults or sharing with more experienced partners. Thus, we delimited, as a general objective of the present investigation, to understand the creative processes, expressive resources and the elaboration of meanings and senses of children with autism according to the analysis of the possibilities of these children in the games. The theory underlying the research is the Historical-Cultural Psychology represented by Lev. S. Vigotski and collaborators, with an emphasis on the concepts of human development, playing as the main activity for the development of children in preschool age and the interpretation of the Autistic Spectrum Disorder in the light of the assumptions of Historical-Cultural Psychology. Our analysis option contemplates the Historical-Dialectical Materialism (HDM), which underlies the Historical-Cultural Psychology and refers to the qualitative research approach, considering the subjectivities, singularities and path taken as part of the investigation of reality. We carried out a survey of productions about children with autism playing on the platform of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES in Portuguese abbreviation) from 2013 to 2020 and we did not find studies that directly dialogued with children with autism about playing; therefore, we created “BRINCADILHAR”, with the aim of dialoguing and interacting with them through play. This proposal starts from the knowledge of singularities of each subject with whom we work within the scope of this investigation, considering them multiple and singular at the same time. The present research was carried out in a Municipal School of Early Childhood Education (EMEI, in Portuguese abbreviation) in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil, from the second half of 2019, and continued to two elementary schools, where the two research participants (five-year-old children) were enrolled in 2020 – it is worth to point out that they had a medical report or description that diagnosed ASD. Through “BRINCADILHAR”, it was possible to know them in their singularities and promote a dialogue that contemplated their perceptions about the game and ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world. We recognize that children with autism play, but despite the fact of this activity being cultural, it depends on the intentional mediations of others to teach and motivate them to play and interact with other children and people.