Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: GIOVANNA FILGUEIRAS LIMA ANDRADE

CHILDHOOD AND FREEDOM: DIALOGUES FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF ECOLOGICAL THINKING IN EARLY EARLY EDUCATION

 Early Childhood Education; Free childhood; Freedom in childhood; Ecological thinking; Research with children.

The understanding of childhood as a place of freedom in dialogue with the construction of ecological thinking in early childhood education starts from the inquiry about the practices of walling that children experience in schools. Most of the time that children are in school, they continue to be deprived of living their childhood freely and spontaneously in natural outdoor environments. Thus, this research adopts the perspective of freedom for childhood by proposing dialogues between the experiences in school spaces of early childhood education and the construction of ecological thinking for children in order to answer the question: "How can the school environment influence the consolidation of the principle of freedom for young children in line with the commitment to contribute to the development of the bond between the child and nature?". Thus, the research sought to describe the school routine, with regard to the arrangement of spaces for children's experiences; understand the political, pedagogical, teaching and directive vision with regard to the free coexistence between children and nature in external natural spaces; and to investigate the challenges in consolidating the principles that involve the perspective of freedom and ecological thinking in childhood and the possibilities to face these challenges. This work relies on a qualitative approach in order to achieve the objectives set for the research, the methodology used includes semi-structured interviews with the school's pedagogical team, observation and documentary record of the routine and spaces intended for children, under description, analysis and interpretation of the data collected. As a theoretical contribution, this work has the contribution of authors who defend free play, the unwalling of educational practices in early childhood education and the training of educators engaged in the defense of an early childhood education free of walls and, consequently, more ecological and committed to the world. To discuss the influence of sociocultural contexts and the differentiations pertaining to the construction of children and childhoods, we will use the dialogue between the works of ARIÉS (1981) and ABRAMOWICZ (2010), together with CORSARO (2011) and their contributions to the understanding of the child as a social actor in field studies; KRAMER (2015, 2020) and FRIEDMAN (2020) are invited to discuss issues involving research with children; TIRIBA (2010, 2015, 2018), HORN (2009, 2017, 2021), PIORSKI (2016), LOUV (2018) and FREIRE (1983) stand out in their contributions to the perspective of freedom in relation to the experiences, exchanges, knowledge and bonds that are constituted in the in the daily lives of children in Early Childhood Education, walking along ecological paths, which have the contributions of ACOSTA (2019), GUATTARI (1990), KRENAK (2020) and MORTON (2023); FOUCAULT (1987) and ARROYO (2011) provide a basis for discussions about school spaces and the conceptions of discipline and freedom. Based on the results found, a set of guidelines aimed at the promotion of natural experiences in educational institutions is elaborated, in accordance with the principles of freedom and ecological thinking in childhood.