Curricular production in Early Childhood Education post-BNCC: Are negotiations possible? The curricular reform movement in the Education Departments of Baixada Fluminense

Producción Curricular en Educación Infantil post-BNCC: ¿Negociaciones Posibles? El Movimiento de Reforma Curricular en las Secretarías de Educación de Baixada Fluminense

Produção curricular na Educação Infantil pós-BNCC: negociações possíveis? O movimento de reformulação curricular em Secretarias de Educação da Baixada Fluminense

Rita de Cassia Prazeres Frangella

State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.

rcfrangella@gmail.com

Thais Sacramento Mariano Teles da Silva

State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.

thais.sacramento@hotmail.com

Received on October 14, 2023

Approved on April 7, 2024

Published on July 12, 2024

ABSTRACT

This study stems from an investigation that aimed to analyze possible negotiations/articulations in Municipal Education Departments of Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, following the advent of the Brazilian Common Core State Standards (in Portuguese, Base Nacional Comum Curricular – BNCC), problematizing how curricular production for early childhood occurs in different municipal networks. The research had Baixada Fluminense as locus of investigation: four Education Departments of municipalities located in the northern region of the Metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. The questions raised are: Are negotiations possible? How will curricular production for early childhood be thought/articulated based on this political movement? In dialogue with Homi Bhabha’s (2013) studies, curriculum is discussed as a process of cultural enunciation. It is based on the understanding that curricular production for childhood is a field of dispute/slippages concerning the meanings of curriculum, childhood, knowledge, and teaching, in the tension between local demands and propositions around a universalizing common. It is inferred, from the analyses, that all curricular production is conflictual and contingent, a discursive process in a political game that is intended to be unfinished, therefore in the (im)possibility of such policies projecting a single meaning of childhood. It is argued that curricular productions for childhood are conceived in otherness, as an experience with and in difference.

Keywords: Curriculum; Childhood; Curricular policy (BNCC).

RESUMEN

Este estudio se deriva de una investigación cuyo objetivo fue analizar posibles negociaciones/articulaciones en las Secretarías Municipales de Educación de la Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, tras la aparición de la Base Nacional Común Curricular (BNCC), problematizando cómo se da la producción curricular para la primera infancia en diferentes redes municipales. La investigación se centró en la Baixada Fluminense: cuatro Secretarías de Educación de municipios ubicados en la región norte de la Región Metropolitana de Río de Janeiro. Se plantea la pregunta: ¿negociaciones posibles? ¿Cómo se pensará/articulará la producción curricular para la primera infancia dentro de este movimiento político? En diálogo con los estudios de Homi Bhabha (2013), se discute el currículo como un proceso de enunciación cultural. Se parte del entendimiento de que la producción curricular para la primera infancia es un campo de disputas/deslizamientos en relación a los significados de currículo, infancia, conocimiento y enseñanza, en la tensión entre demandas locales y proposiciones en torno a un común universalizado. Se infiere a partir de los análisis que toda producción curricular es un proceso conflictivo y contingente, un proceso discursivo en un juego político que se pretende inacabado, por lo tanto, en la (im)posibilidad de que tales políticas proyecten un único sentido de la infancia. Se argumenta que las producciones curriculares para la primera infancia deben concebirse en la alteridad, como una experiencia con y en la diferencia

Palabras clave: Currículo; Infancia; Política curricular (BNCC).

RESUMO

Este estudo desdobra-se de pesquisa que teve como objetivo analisar as possíveis negociações/articulações em Secretarias Municipais de Educação da Baixada Fluminense a partir do advento da Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), problematizando como se dá a produção curricular para a infância nas diferentes redes municipais. A pesquisa teve a Baixada Fluminense como lócus de investigação: quatro Secretarias de Educação de municípios que se localizam ao norte da Região Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro. Questiona-se: São negociações possíveis? Como a produção curricular para a infância será pensada/articulada a partir desse movimento político? Em diálogo com os estudos de Homi Bhabha (2013), discute-se o currículo como processo de enunciação cultural. Parte-se do entendimento de que a produção curricular para a infância é campo de disputas/deslizamentos sobre os sentidos de currículo, infância, conhecimento e docência, na tensão entre demandas locais e proposições em torno de um comum universalizado. Infere-se, a partir das análises, que toda produção curricular é conflituosa e contingente, um processo discursivo em um jogo político que se quer inacabado, portanto na (im)possibilidade de tais políticas projetarem um único sentido de infância. Defende-se que produções curriculares para a infância sejam concebidas na alteridade, como experiência com e na diferença.

Palavras- chave: Currículo; Infância; Política curricular (BNCC).

Introduction

This study unfolds from research that aimed to analyze possible negotiations/articulations in Municipal Education Departments of Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from the advent of the Brazilian Common Core State Standards (in Portuguese, Base Nacional Comum Curricular – BNCC), problematizing how curricular production for childhood takes place in different municipal networks.

The research had Baixada Fluminense as the locus of investigation and developed analyses of the curricular production process of four Education Departments of municipalities located in this area, on the north of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro: Duque de Caxias, Nova Iguaçu, Nilópolis and Belford Roxo. Studying this region as a space/place of culture is, above all, highlighting an analysis based on the production of cultural flows in peripheral areas that contribute to the understanding of the (re)significations arising from curricular production/articulation/negotiation in each municipality of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The questions are: Are negotiations possible? How will curricular production for childhood be designed/articulated based on this political movement?

The study in question is part of a research trajectory that has been observing how the meaning of childhood, curriculum, teaching, knowledge has been disputed in contemporary curricular policies, in a context of the resurgence of universalizing and homogenizing public education policies. Thus, we turn to the context of curricular production for childhood that was established by the promulgation of the BNCC, which we take as a homogenizing and imposing project that tries to establish meanings for the production of meanings with/in curricular policies for childhood.

We consider the Municipal Education Departments of Baixada Fluminense as producers of culture, producers of curricula for children, in the richness of translation flows through/in the negotiation in conjunction with their Education Networks, the movement that we call curricular reformulation.

The analyses undertaken in this study are developed from post-structural and post-colonial references, especially with Homi Bhabha’s (2013) work in his formulation on culture as enunciation, a hybrid production. In this way, when we take culture as an enunciation, it starts to be read as a symbolic production of the world; there is no pure culture, but rather cultural flows, so that there is no access to an essential truth, the process of meaning takes place as a movement in negotiations, articulations with/through difference.

Thus, we take from this author the notions of negotiation and translation as a movement that causes a shift in meaning given the impossible literality. Signification is a discursive process erased by difference, which does not produce a pacifying signification and established in an absolute manner; it is always contingent and contextual, negotiated in/with differences, which, when mobilized, move in an in-between place of hybrid productions and render any claim to origin ineffective. Hence, when dialoguing with such references, we assert that policies involve processes of negotiation and struggle in the different contexts in which they are established; in this sense, the BNCC, although normative, is a curricular policy that is in the midst of this negotiation process. We read policy as discursive production; therefore, we argue that the national guidelines for these policies do not underestimate the limits and possibilities of each municipality to (re)signify such guidelines, since conflicting meanings are (re)signified throughout the curricular political process itself, they are (re)signified as in a game, open to negotiation.

Discussing curricular production for childhood from the BNCC requires us to discuss the coercive mechanisms of a normative document that “attempts” to establish a fixed starting point for the elaboration of political guidelines with fixed curricular direction actions that determine what and how to do in working with young children. BNCC is a policy that disputes the meanings of childhood by establishing rhythms and forms for child development based on pedagogical/curricular actions. We understand the curricular propositions for childhood as traces of different forces to hegemonize such disputed meanings (of children and childhood). Therein lies the importance of translation, in the appropriation of Bhabha’s (2013) proposition: the reading of this complex political movement as a (re)writing that is woven through/in difference, in which there will always be a trace of the untranslatable. In this way, BNCC, from this perspective, will be read, questioned and translated not as a rewriting of an original text, but through a (re)reading full of crossings of a text that survives; as Bhabha (2013) says, a text that is, in turn, translatable and untranslatable.

Thinking post-structurally makes us repudiate any and all links of this study to a theoretical-methodological perspective that attempts to close meanings, disregarding that this movement is provisional and always contested. As Tedeschi and Pavan (2017a) suggest, it is a methodological understanding that seeks to contextualize, analyze, problematize, modify singular truths, so that what counts as truth becomes an object of dispute. Thus, from a post-structural theoretical-methodological framework, we embark on the movement of analyzing how negotiation between regulations created at the national level occurs in conjunction with the local production of curricular policies. The research, from its post-structural and discursive aspect, focuses on observing the discursive traces of this movement of curricular production, using different research strategies that, intertwined, allow us to analyze the disputes over the meaning of curriculum, a complex path, which involves different production contexts. In this paper, we present a section of the research focusing on translation flows in the actions of the Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s Offices of the Municipal Education Departments of the municipalities that make up the corpus of the research analysis.

We aim to understand how teams negotiate the revision of their curricular proposals at a local level from the BNCC in the midst of their daily work. We consider the Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s offices not as those who will guide/instruct the work with children in Early Childhood Education in their education networks, but as those who have action in democratic and agonistic negotiation processes, as “[…] a relational – dialogic – instance in which it is possible to institutionalize, produce, reproduce, modify a discursive position of the subject” (Mendes, 2016, p. 7).

Thus, we bring the answers to the online questionnaire that was sent to each coordinator’s office as an investigative strategy that allowed us to capture the discursive evidence of this curricular production process. As a discursive event, the questionnaire loses the “totalizing” meaning from the point of view of bringing a single and absolute truth in the context of analyzing this production of curricula in Early Childhood Education, as it also becomes a constitutive member of this political game in favor of significance of childhood in the context of curricular reformulation.

Finally, we argue about the need to (re)think the tensions experienced in the networks investigated, defending an agonistic relationship in which struggles are fought for political dispute in a democratic and pluralistic discursive space whose rules are shared, but subject to change in the process of signification, given the impossibility and incompleteness of the entire discursive chain.

After all, what curriculum are we talking about?

Based on the theoretical dialogues announced, we think of curricular policies as a space for creation, enunciation and difference. Thus, curricular policies are enunciations that move in the dispute for meaning. These are not productions for the school, from the school, but cultural conditions that blur the borders that try to delimit the inside/outside, what fits where. This terrain of production that is the curriculum is marked by the ambivalence between the iteration of traditional discourses and a performative dimension, which erases the attempt to maintain a meaning because it occurs as a deferral.

In this line of argument, we break with a fixed conception of curriculum, emphasizing the negotiations that tension and hybridize in the curriculum formulation, highlighting the condition of an unfinished political process, in its condition of cultural production.

We defend a curricular policy perspective not for but with childhood, that values otherness, hybrid relationships, ambivalence in articulation with difference, that brings the primacy of being a child through the double movement that, through pedagogical practices, enables the enunciation of children, their ideas, desires, narratives, imagination and play in social relationships.

We strongly criticize the curricular centralization in childhood curricular policies currently underway in Brazil. Bringing BNCC to the debate as a normative policy makes us emphasize that the discussion we propose does not occur in the denial of curricular productions for childhood, but what we refute is a curricular structure that erases childhood by delimiting its narratives, its actions, its readings of the world. Therefore, precisely actions such as essentializing, stereotyping, universalizing – as marks of a regulatory character and at the same time exclusionary by not allowing differences – become BNCC hallmarks for Early Childhood Education.

BNCC, in its production/promulgation trajectory, becomes an instituting curricular policy, a kind of “catalyst policy of curriculum” that, through a discursive political process, “tries” to make the idea of “salvation” viable in the fight against lack of quality in the Brazilian education, in a certain way providing a normative chain in the national context – as an attempt at regulation and curricular control (Lopes e Borges, 2017). To Macedo (2017, p. 514), BNCC constitutes itself as another search for hegemonic fixation, “[…] an aggressive way of deprivation to think about the need for normativity for education in the form of a curriculum”.

Normativity is, then, discursively mobilized by the focus given to the “national”. Therefore, it is the idea of a symbolic denominator, of “a “national subject” that makes policy seek to meet imposed needs in the process of seeking educational success” (Afonso; Rodrigues; Frangella, 2021, p. 11).

By bringing this conception of normativity, we problematize this political movement as an attempt at educational stabilization that, through the “quality” signifier, disseminates the homogenizing universalization of childhood events and experiences nationwide. We turn to Butler (2003, p. 12) in an attempt to understand the function and role of normativity in policies, which is fragilely composed as “[…] the fruit of fabrications supported by corporeal signs and other discursive means and which tends to obscure the regulatory ideal itself”. Therefore, from this perspective of analysis, we are interested in problematizing this intelligible character present in the curricular discourse that tries to establish meanings for childhood through a schooling perspective. In the proposed terms, it is important for us to investigate how the BNCC’s curricular policy seeks to determine the intelligibility of the social, trying to close the translational fissures in the Early Childhood Education movement as a proposal for curricular reformulation for childhood.

Thinking about this articulation between normativity and curricular production in/for childhood through BNCC as a normative curricular metric for the quality of Early Childhood Education leads us to highlight the importance of an analysis that focuses on the articulations of this general disposition with production in local contexts. Hence the question: Are negotiations possible?

Now, the voices of the Municipal Education Departments of Baixada Fluminense: for the right to narrate

In the emergency of capturing the traces that are woven from the discursive process provoked/imposed by the BNCC for the curricular production for children, we argue that giving voice to the Municipal Education Departments (known by the acronym SEMEDs, in Portuguese) of Baixada Fluminense is a defense of the “right to narrate” (Bhabha, 2014). The text entitled The right to narrate, by Homi Bhabha (2014), greatly helps us to reflect on the problematization regarding the imposing normativity that we observed in the analysis of the BNCC and encourages the right to be present and have voice of/in the periphery in this context of curricular production – not as a novelistic narration, “drama” in Bhabha’s words, but rather as an enunciative process that authorizes (re)telling, (re)signification – in the specific case of our research, the voices from the periphery (Bhabha, 2014).

It is, above all, opting for a strategy that deconstructs the concept of a peripheral place as something that is precarious, needy and underprivileged, which somehow destabilizes the consensus of the place as a homogeneous bloc.

When we bring to the scene the production of curricula in the periphery where the SEMEDs of Baixada Fluminense are located, we highlight the importance of observing this production as everyday processes of cultural production that involve power relations in which differences are negotiated, in which cultural subjects are there at all times with their multiple belongings. It is precisely through individual/collective engagements in these cultural flows that possibilities for our investigation emerged; it is what makes the “right to narrate” (Bhabha, 2014, p. 1) much more than a linguistic act, a metaphor; it is a communicative action, an enunciative and dialogical right, to direct and be directed, to signify and be interpreted respectfully.

When discussing the BNCC relationship with local contexts, we move away from the idea of “implementation”, as a verticalized political movement/process, in which curricular proposals are previously elaborated and structured by a guide. Thus, when forwarding our analytical propositions through a discursive perspective, we argue that policy needs to be thought of as contingently produced, not limited to the execution of previously developed official documents.

This is how the BNCC, as a standardizing document, tries to establish meanings for childhood, by directing processes of subjectivation through “predefined implementation” strategies, based on the idea of implementation.

The discursive traces of the political game of curriculum reformulation: translational flows in SEMEDs actions by Early Childhood Education coordinator’s offices

Thinking about curricular policies for childhood as an instance of the production of meanings involved in/by the negotiation and dispute over the meaning of children and childhoods in the curriculum allows us to affirm that it is through the struggle for power and hegemony that the proposals regarding curricular reformulation in/for Early Childhood Education with the arrival of a curricular base are substantiated.

Aiming to analyze the negotiation between regulations created at the national level with the local production of curricular policies, we chose as a focus the translation flows in the actions of SEMEDs through those of the Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s offices.

The role of the Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s offices within the Municipal Education Departments assumes the tension between universal/particular in early childhood curricular production and becomes, in this study, a trigger for discussion about the different contexts of curricular policy production. We emphasize our understanding of the function/role of Early Childhood Education Coordinators at the SEMEDs not as those who will guide/instruct work with children in Early Childhood Education in their education networks, but as those who take action in democratic and agonistic negotiation processes. As interlocutors of the research, the Coordinator’s offices and their technicians (subjects of research at SEMEDs) contribute with their different belongings, having in the narratives that constitute them the technical/teaching subject at SEMED; therefore, in this study as curriculum producing subjects.

To this end, the research used different investigative strategies. In this text, we emphasize the narratives of SEMEDs based on online questionnaires answered by technical teams, which allow us to observe the traces of curricular production movements developed in different municipal networks, seeking to understand how teams negotiate the review of their curricular proposals locally from the BNCC in the midst of their daily work, the articulations/negotiations that took place or those that did not, about what was being tensioned and left exposed in this movement of curricular reformulation for Early Childhood Education at the SEMEDs of Baixada Fluminense based on the BNCC.

The request for the participation of Coordinator’s offices of Early Childhood Education in the research was made following the guidelines available on the official channels of the city halls/education departments. They were all presented with the work project, the presentation letter of the Graduate Program in Education, and the Informed Consent Form (ICF).The challenge of an open questionnaire gave us the possibility of (re)reading this political game in which meanings are woven daily into the curricular production of each network. The questionnaire was composed of four thematic axes:

· Axis 1: focused on macro issues of the BNCC national curricular policy and its local developments, questions how SEMEDs (re)signify the meaning of work in articulation with their education networks after the arrival of the BNCC in Early Childhood Education.

· Axis 2: focused on questions of how Coordinator’s offices of Early Childhood Education develop/organize their curricular proposals for Early Childhood Education in light of the BNCC along with their Education Networks.

· Axis 3: how Coordinator’s offices of Early Childhood Education (re)signify the current curricular scenario for childhood in the post-BNCC period.

· Axis 4: general issues: observations that SEMEDs, from the perspective of their Coordinator’s offices of Early Childhood Education, share about the process of curricular reformulation in Early Childhood Education in the municipality.

In this section we intertwine the responses of each Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s office that make up the empirical corpus of this study based on the responses to the online questionnaire sent by the SEMEDs in the municipalities of Belford Roxo, Duque de Caxias, Nilópolis and Nova Iguaçu, all belonging to Baixada Fluminense, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Of the four municipalities involved in the research, Nilópolis did not respond to the questionnaire. We will use the letters A, B and C to represent each management body in SEMEDs, maintaining the anonymity agreed in the ICF.

Thus, we set out to search for discursive traces that lead us to an understanding of how Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s offices (re)signify their work through/in articulation with their education network and the BNCC.

About the pedagogical work that the Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s offices do and how this is resignified, they tell us:

Coordinator’s office A – It is a work in progress, as many schools in the network work in accordance with the Early Childhood Education benchmarks, but others still carry out pedagogical practices in Early Childhood Education (mainly preschool) as a preparation for Elementary Education, with traditional practices.

Coordinator’s office B – Pedagogical work in Early Childhood Education is focused on pedagogical practices that value children in their uniqueness, encouraging each one’s autonomy and identity, encouraging socialization among peers, and respecting the Basic Learning Rights.

Coordinator’s office C – The Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s office seeks to guarantee children the right to education by monitoring the teaching practices that take place in the daily life of daycare centers, of the CCAIC [Creche e Centro de Atendimento Integral à Infância Caxiense – pre-school and daycare center of Duque de Caxias] and municipal schools that attend children aged 1 to 5 in our Municipal Education Network. The team’s work aims to suggest, guide and encourage management teams and teachers, practices through which children live experiences in the historical, scientific, environmental and cultural dimensions, with the understanding that they are active subjects in the social environment of which they are part.

The team raises demands in school units to propose themes for continued training for professionals working in Early Childhood Education, promoted in partnership with the [SEMED structural body][1]; proposes public policies for Early Childhood Education; provides advice and monitoring of pedagogical practices that address the integral development of children in the cognitive, socio-affective, cultural and nutritional aspects.

The role performed by the Coordinator’s offices, in dialogue with their education networks, is marked by tension and exposes the incompleteness of the political process of (re)construction of this curricular policy, which makes an event narrated in Coordinator’s office A response about “work under construction” relevant: no matter how much BNCC “tries” to organize a common curriculum as an attempt to repress alternative possibilities, such a process will never be complete, since new (re)significations can be constituted in escape zones of what has been established. This situation leads, in a way, to the Coordinator’s office concern about such “escapes” bringing as a (re)signification for the work in Early Childhood Education of its network, by some schools, a proposal as preparatory for Elementary Education with “traditional practices”.

The meaning of work in the Coordinator’s office B is (re)signified based on the legal perspective of the pedagogical work (supported by laws and guidelines that direct work in Early Childhood Education), when it turns to institutionalized pedagogical practices that respect above all the Basic Rights to Learn. We inquire about the meanings of work that guarantees Basic Rights in Early Childhood Education: Is it a question of representation of official policy based on the normative ideals of the BNCC?

At the intersection with its school units, Coordinator’s office C (re)signifies its work based on the demands arising from/in the daily life of Early Childhood Education, signaling the need for future continued training of its professionals, aiming above all at providing assistance that includes proposals for a work that promotes the qualitative development of children and thus guarantees the right to education through which “children live experiences in the historical, scientific, environmental and cultural dimensions, with the understanding that they are an active subject in the social environment of which they are part of”.

These tensions, which are the responsibility of the Coordinator’s offices, portray the meaning of the policy negotiated through pedagogical coordination as a provisional manifestation given to the transitory conditionality of these movements of meaning production in curricular construction.

Regarding the development/organization of the Coordinator’s offices to promote, based on the proposed curricular reformulation in Early Childhood Education demanded by the promulgation of the BNCC, their movement of local curricular production, the Coordinator’s offices report how the process unfolded:

Coordinator’s office A – In 2017, school units were involved in discussions and study groups regarding the BNCC and its implementation. In 2018, this movement expanded and schools made their contributions to the construction of the municipal curricular proposal. In 2019, the document was formulated and finalized, with its official release in 2020.

Coordinator’s office B – Curricular reformulation: presentation and construction of the curriculum and implementation of the BNCC was carried out through consultations with all managers, supervisors and three teachers per school in the units that offered Early Childhood Education in 2019.

Coordinator’s office C – The curricular restructuring in the municipality took place in a participatory process in the education network and brought contributions from studies and discussions by professionals who work in school units, in meetings organized by the Municipal Department of Education.

The Early Childhood Education curricular matrix was organized in a format that respects the specificities and documents of the guidelines of this stage. In it, we sought to ensure the rights to learning and integral development for all babies and children in our institutions, respecting their singularities, and the diversity of socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic-racial and geographic realities, in the territory of Duque de Caxias.

The document references the Curricular Proposal for Early Childhood Education of Duque de Caxias (2012) and is based on what is recommended by the Federal Constitution (1988), the Statute of Children and Adolescents (1990), the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (Law n. 9,394/1996), CNE/CEB[2] Opinion n. 20/2009, which establishes the National Curricular Guidelines for Early Childhood Education, in accordance with the BNCC.

The methodology of this proposal establishes that the child is the center of curricular planning and points out interactions and play as the structuring axes of pedagogical practices at this stage of Basic Education. The document also ensures the rights to coexist, play, participate, explore, express oneself and know oneself, as expressed in the BNCC as Learning and Development Rights in Early Childhood Education.

We observed that the Coordinator’s offices take on the leading role of coordinating the process of curricular reformulation through a dialogical process that expands, involving “[…] advice with all managers, supervisors and teachers in units that offered Early Childhood Education in 2019” (Coordinator’s office B); “[…] schools make their contributions to the construction of the municipal curriculum proposal” (Coordinator’s office A); “[…] the curricular restructuring in the municipality took place in a participatory process in the education network and brought contributions from studies and discussions by professionals who work in school units, in meetings organized by the Department of Education” (Coordinator’s office C). There is an emphasis on this dialogue with the networks, but it is crossed by the demand for alignment with the BNCC.

It is worth discussing the complexity of the political production of such a movement triggered by the BNCC and the way in which each Coordinator’s office assumes this movement of curricular restructuring, based on what would be called “management protagonism”, which slides towards the idea of “implementation” – a certain “control” over this political process in curricular production through the “implementation” movement – of coordinating, through administrative/pedagogical actions, the development of curricular production in schools.

When we draw attention to the idea of “implementation”, so present in the speeches/narratives of our interlocutors, we observe that this idea unfolds from the post-promulgation process of the BNCC and that it has repercussions at local levels such as at the SEMEDs. This inference arises from the analysis of the material that made up the empirical corpus of research analysis, in this case, documentary analysis that was dedicated to reading, among others, the BNCC Implementation Guide (2018), the Support Program for the Implementation of the BNCC/Pro-BNCC (Brasil, 2018) which allocated funds and created a work structure to support the implementation of the BNCC.

Seeking to understand this discursive formation, we asked: “How would the Early Childhood Education team describe the current curricular scenario for childhood after the BNCC?”.

Coordinator’s office A – It’s complex. Early Childhood Education is marked, pre-BNCC, by official documents that expanded the proposals and experiences for children, such as References and Guidelines, for example. With the arrival of the BNCC, many issues became the subject of reflection in this team: the issue of learning rights appeared in this document as a novelty, implying that the rights did not exist before that; the fields of experience are presented as stagnant, as if they were dissociated, when in fact the experiences connect, cross each other and constitute the subject, culminating in its integral development. The age limitation of learning objectives limits the possibility for teachers to adapt the curriculum and characteristics of the children, universalizing them as if they were homogeneous subjects. There are many issues related to the BNCC and especially the interpretation and implementation of this document still to be discussed.

Coordinator’s office B – We are moving towards a perspective of valuing childhood. Our professionals are guided by SEMED to work on pedagogical practices focused on interaction and play, always using playful proposals and providing a literacy environment. All work is based on the BNCC and its five fields of experience.

Coordinator’s office C - We understand that there is still a way to go so that work in Early Childhood Education is understood as an educational process that has the child at its center, that considers them an active subject in the construction of knowledge and that moves away from a guided practice in systematized knowledge. In this sense, we consider that the learning rights expressed in the BNCC are an important contribution of the document in organizing pedagogical work that respects young children in their specificities, guaranteeing their right to play, to express themselves through different languages, to establish interactions with other children and adults and thus experience, in the Early Childhood Education space, meaningful experiences that enable their full development.

However, failure to understand fields of experience as a way to expand the possibilities for children to interact with different types of knowledge, in an integrated manner, and the organization of specific learning objectives by age group, as presented in the BNCC, can lead to a fragmentation of work in this stage of Basic Education.

Coordinator’s office A response summarizes the issue: “It’s complex”. Discussing the complexity of curricular policy production in which Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s offices are immersed is challenging, to say the least, tension between the agreements and adjustments of a policy that aims to establish meanings and the search for a policy negotiated with and by the education networks in which it is inserted.

Such demands and tensions are conveyed by the aforementioned narrative, especially in a context in which documentary productions guide and link proposals for curricular production that allow us to glimpse, through the response, the division of a conception of children and childhood as a pre- and post-BNCC. This assertion is embodied in Coordinator’s office A response as if there was a sense of children and their childhoods before and after the BNCC.

Due to this prerogative, there are issues that bring to light the tension involved in this “new” curricular organization. “With the advent of the BNCC, many issues become the subject of reflection in this team” (Coordinator’s office A), in this case, the Fields of Experience and Learning Rights, are highlighted and problematized:

Coordinator’s office A – The fields of experience are presented as isolated, as if they were dissociated, when in fact the experiences connect, cross each other and constitute the subject, culminating in their integral development. The age limitation of learning objectives limits the possibility for teachers to adapt the curriculum and characteristics of the children, universalizing them as if they were homogeneous subjects. There are many issues related to the BNCC and especially the interpretation and implementation of this document still to be discussed.

Coordinator’s office C – In this sense, the learning rights expressed in the BNCC are an important contribution of the document in organizing pedagogical work that respects young children in their specificities [...]. However, failure to understand fields of experience as a way to expand the possibilities for children to interact with different types of knowledge in an integrated manner and the organization of specific learning objectives by age group, as presented in the BNCC, can lead to a fragmentation of work in this stage of Basic Education.

The questions asked allow us to observe that if the BNCC, understood here as a curriculum instituting policy, assumes in this curricular scenario “alleged control” and regulation of curricular productions in reformulation processes aligned with its determinations, in the work of the Coordinator’s offices, it was (re)signified based on the sense of pedagogical work of its subjects to articulate not only within the scope of the Coordinator’s office, but also with its networks, local demands, knowledge and curricular experiences in this political context.

A process marked by ambivalence. What each Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s office shares as an observation about the process of curricular reformulation is embodied in the conflicting meanings, which oscillate between institutionalization of the BNCC and resistance, often in the form of escapes from its teaching network to the current curricular policy.

Coordinator’s office B: Our professionals are guided by SEMED to work on pedagogical practices focused on interaction and play, always using playful proposals and providing a literacy environment. All work is based on BNCC and its five fields of experience

By reporting on the process of curricular reformulation in Early Childhood Education in their municipalities, the SEMED teams tell us:

Coordinator’s office A – Curriculum is a living thing, so it needs to be reformulated frequently. From this perspective, in our understanding, the network is in the process of building the identity of Early Childhood Education […], through continuing education projects that will culminate in a curricular reformulation thinking about the specificities of city children.

Coordinator’s office B – We are investing in pedagogical training, monthly guides with themes and exchange of experiences during visits, as we understand that there is great cultural resistance in relation to the new curriculum.

Coordinator’s office C – We now have the great challenge of implementing the curricular proposal in our municipal education network, considering that through dialogue with professionals who work in the units, it will be possible to study and deepen the concepts that govern the document, as well as the implementation of the curricular matrix in the pedagogical work developed in the daily lives of schools, daycare centers and CCAIC, enabling boys and girls in Early Childhood Education to experience, through work projects built with them and for them, experiences that cross them and are remarkable in their lives.

We believe that this challenge will be possible through the involvement of professionals who work in Early Childhood Education in training and advisory cycles proposed by the Municipal Department of Education and the teaching units.

It is precisely this question that allows us to problematize how the curricular production process is unique, marked by difference. One way of talking about the difference is the concern of the Coordinator’s offices to signal not only the actions orchestrated by them in this scenario with the BNCC, but also to point out how they (re)signify the curriculum through continuing education projects and even to signal the resistance by a large part of its network to the new curriculum.

Thus, the very understanding of curriculum and the role of the Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s office undergoes constant translations and interpretations, specifically in the tension between what needs to be done as an articulation action in this given post-BNCC production and the need to negotiate this curricular production through resistance, local demands, curricular trajectories of the municipalities themselves. To Derrida (2001), there is no original text or discourse, but rather constant meanings through translations. Therefore, when we read the responses from this perspective, we think of the Coordinator’s offices experiences as translation practices.

Considerations, albeit contingent

In this trajectory of curricular production based on SEMEDs as local contexts of production, we understand the reading/signification of policy as impossible to access a given original meaning; the policy itself is understood here as translation. What is presented here are results (always partial and contingent) of a study that, guided by a perspective that articulates policy, culture and curriculum, seeks to problematize the idea of standardization of curricular policies and the closure of meanings in clashes, as a threat to child production, signified not as underage, but as otherness and difference. We resume the question that drove this study: Discussing curricular policies in early childhood: What is negotiable with the arrival of the BNCC at the SEMEDs in Baixada Fluminense?.

When focusing on the analysis of the processes triggered by the promulgation of the BNCC of producing curricular proposals aligned by it, we investigated the Early Childhood Education Coordinator’s offices in the SEMEDs of four municipalities in Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro. In this encounter, we observed how these bodies assume a mediating role in the reformulation process of curricular proposals, in a political scenario that invests in a centralization perspective, through control of the curricular organization process operated by the BNCC. The attempt to centralize curriculum and “common” productions operates as a coercive force in local contexts and an attempt to block the production of curricular alternatives created in local contexts. This does not mean, in our argument, the investment in binaries and polarizations, but it emphasizes the defense we make regarding the understanding that curricular production takes place through negotiations. The answers given by the Early Childhood Education teams to the proposed questionnaire show how these negotiations are constant, even though there are strategies to contain them. SEMED teams are urged to (re)signify their work based on struggles and resistance; some, more evident than others, use the possibilities of the paths and (re)signify them through escape routes as a get away in this curricular production.

There is, however, an important aspect to be considered and which is perhaps being subsumed in this debate: we need to understand the importance of curricula, of curricular production that invests in childhood as a social fact. We need curricula for/in childhood as a way of expressing differences, which displace binaries between children and adults, teaching and learning, which pay attention to social roles that go far beyond specifying, with prior determinations that clearly and precisely stipulate what is essential for everyone. We defend curricular productions with childhoods – plural in their singularities.

Having this understanding of curricular production with/in/for childhood as a space of enunciation is to legitimize that this production is not predetermined, but that it is (re)constructed based on the multiple routes/paths of both Early Childhood Education teachers and other professionals from their knowledge constantly woven by/in everyday praxis, in the most varied forms and situations (contingent), with children in their otherness condition. Therefore, there is an urgent need for curricular production based on a conception that does not subjugate teachers/schools/education networks as just “implementers” and children as a becoming that deprives them of their authority.

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Notes