The circles of culture in child education: building dialogical pedagogical practices

Abstract

This article presents the results of a survey conducted with 5-year-old children in a municipal pre-school in Santo André/SP. It is a research of intervention, whose objective was to construct a pedagogical practice dialogic from the circles of culture proposed by Paulo Freire. It assumes that children read and communicate the world from the moment they are born through multiple languages. However, in an adultcentric and grafocentric society such as the Brazilian, their voices end up being silenced in the different instances of socialization, among them the educational ones. The research problematized the silencing imposed on the children and the urgency to listen to them, having as theoretical reference the studies of Paulo Freire in interlocution with researchers of the childhood. The intervention took place from the circles of culture, with the theme generator gender relations, since this theme was recurrent among children and given its relevance to the heteronormative society. The results show that children’s reading of the world is imbued with their everyday experiences, where in a dynamic movement they appropriate, confront and rename culture. In the collective, through the circles, they put in debate their worldview on the subject, which made it possible to rethink the binary opposition to the social roles attributed to men and women. This reveals the power of working with circles of culture with children, showing that an educational practice marked amorousness and dialogue opens the way to a critical-liberating education.