Children in early childhood education: School as a place of social experience

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the experience of children aged four to five years in an early childhood education institution. The category of experience was taken from the theories of François Dubet (1996), Walter Benjamin (1984 2011a 2011b), and early childhood social studies (SARMENTO (2002, 2008; CORSARO 2002, 2009, 2011, among others). The case study was conducted in a public early childhood education institution and involved 18 children and two teachers, used audiovisual recordings and notes records in a field diary to capture the children’s actions. The children in the institution articulated different logics of action in the relationships with each other and with adults, which were based on the integrative, strategic and subjective dimensions, which are essential to the concept of social experience. The article discusses the need to consider children in the context of relationships regulated by adults when one uses the categories of social action for the study of children’s experiences in early childhood education institutions. The analyses present an interpretation of such experiences, which are expressed through both the verbal and body languages of boys and girls. When experiencing the institution, children articulate such experience to their other life experiences, imprinting on them the character of continuity.