05-09-2005
03-04-2009
This project consists of research into childhood and its education. It consists of three analytical dimensions:
1) The political orientations of international organisations;
2) The knowledge produced by academic research at public universities;
3) The initial training programmes for early childhood education and primary school teachers at public and private institutions.
It is assumed that:
Childhood is a social construction, constituting a universal generational structure;
How the adult world conceptualises childhood and children objectively interferes with the ways in which it relates to them.
Each dimension of the project aims to identify the basic parameters of this social construction and its social effects on the design of educational policies for childhood in Portugal, on the scientific areas that have favoured the study of childhood and on the initial training models for educators and teachers. The political guidelines of international organisations will be analysed through the documents that present the basic indicators of children's well-being and the standards for organising services for children, with a view to defining national policies. The analysis of recent scientific production at Portuguese public universities over the last ten years is justified by the need to systematise and disseminate the knowledge produced there about children and their education (0 - 10 years) according to the various disciplinary fields and areas of research focus, identifying the construction of scientific objects and their methodologies. The aim of analysing initial training curricula is to identify and problematise the place of the child and the conceptions of childhood present in different training institutions, both public and private. The conceptions of childhood, children and education identified in the discourses of international documents will be used:
An instrument capable of assessing the extent to which they interfere with or condition the local (re)formulation of educational policies underlying both academic research and the contents of teacher training;
A means of critically evaluating the levels of influence of these guidelines in the national reality. The bibliographical review of academic research will provide greater visibility:
Of the state of the art regarding research into childhood and its education in Portugal;
The conceptions of childhood, children and education that have been favoured in this field and will allow us, from an anticipatory perspective, to design new fields of research.
A critical review of the initial training plans for nursery school teachers and primary school teachers will help to indicate to what extent:
International guidelines are materialised in the training of these professionals;
Dominant academic knowledge about childhood and its education underpins the curricular guidelines of the training plans under analysis and a reconceptualisation of training models in relation to the education of children.
PIV – Inclusion Policies and Voices: Diversity, Gender and Intersectionality
FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
POCI/CED/61355/2004
CIIE / Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto (FPCEUP) – Portugal
Universidade do Minho (UM) – Portugal
Direcção Geral dos Assuntos Consulares e Comunidades Portuguesas (DGACCP) – Portugal
Universidade de Aveiro – Portugal