O brincar do ponto de vista das crianças: uma análise das dissertações e teses do Portal Capes (2007 a 2012)

Abstract

The present research aimed to analyze dissertations and thesis on Child Education, published from 2007 to 2012, whose focus were the children?s point of view related with the act of playing. The answers to the following questions were attempted: Who are the children that talk about playing (age, gender, social class, ethnic group)? What do children say about playing? Which theories /authors/conceptions of playing dominate in dissertations and thesis? Under which circumstances were the children submitted to the researches (schools, houses, streets…)? How were the children listened, consulted, inserted on the researches (methodologies, tools)? What are the times and spaces destined to play? To achieve this, the abstracts of the researches were collected from Banco de Teses e Dissertações da CAPES, using the following key words to search: play, children, childhood, and education. Afterwards, a cut was performed considering those that mentioned children education and worked on the perspective of childhood studies, that perceived children as social actors, as well as the playing act as a component of their culture. The approach of this research is qualitative and the analysis of the data obtained was performed through the method of content analysis (BARDIN,1997; VALA, 1999). The results showed that researched with children have used a number of methodological tools that aim to capture the children?s voices with ethic commitment. The researches are still turned to the school environment and, on such context, one can notice the limitations about times and spaces to play, mainly in public schools. Characteristics of the children, like race, economic class and ethnic group are still poorly approached on researches. The act of playing appears on dissertations and thesis as a component of children culture, as well as a way of transgressing rules.