REGISTRO DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8319725
Juliana Vieira Eneias Da Silva
ABSTRACT.
This final academic paper alludes to the importance of the existence of pedagogical stimuli in the first childhood, contextually comprising specific guidelines about educating and taking care of in the midst of symbolic and playful activities, thus helping the overall educational and learning process applicable to small-sized children. All pedagogical stimuli might get carried forward in different fashions and these are the outcomes of a composite of mobilizations and proposals based on quality indicators, estimation of childhood and genuine attempts towards improvement of educational standards regarding children undergoing the first childhood stage. The adopted methodology herein is a qualitative one based on bibliographical research, ultimately aiming the development of a theoretical study revolving about the importance of developmental stimuli in its multiple languages and potentialities concerning children and contextualized in the basic educational level. Be that as it may, it is fundamentally relevant the social use of educational praxis that ultimately might add up to the multiplicity of extant stimuli in the childhood universe.
Keywords: Pedagogical Stimuli; Child Education; Taking Care and Educating.
INTRODUCTION.
The first childhood years are remembered for sensations and stimuli stemming from pedagogical, social and cultural forces that, in most of the cases, are explored in and without school precincts. According to national curricular referential parameters geared towards childhood-related learning and education techniques (Brazil, 1998/page 15), “it is through the first educational cares that any child perceives his or her own body as distinct from one another, organizes his or her emotions and widens his or her knowledge base about the world”.
The proper understanding of all these functions and emotions is something that mainly happens through already performed stimuli in the first childhood, enabling a chain of positive events necessary to the development of skills and knowledge of small-sized children. Given this need, it is very important to get to know and think about the best strategies and tools to work upon these indicators in a way to take into regard the holistic features of childhood development in the midst of a proper estimation of childhood in general, general care practices and educational endeavours.
Taking into regard the quality of education and the favouring of stimulating practices in the school environment, it is relevant to rescue valuations and knowledge schemes through a symbolic and playful process imbued with a positive pedagogical influence towards the development of any small-sized child, thus promoting, from its social use, an articulation between knowledge and stages/phases of any child’s development. In this case, one must have clear intentions in mind pertaining to all utilized techniques during this educational process because the latter can not be taken out of context while ignoring specificities of small-sized children, but they must inform an educational praxis that eventually motivates children and make them understand that he or she has also the possibility of learning, experiencing and knowing.
Thinking about this educational need, this academic assignment will be structured and developed in sections and subsections, assuming as important the reflection upon the impasses about the importance of multiplicity in the proceedings subsumed onto childhood education with full relevancy bestowed upon education and care, learning how to look at any small-sized child so as to esteem his or her childhood and educational quality.
In this case, it will be necessary the performance of a bibliographical research based on qualitative and theoretical descriptive features revolving around the ideas of authors such as Angotti (2008), Cunha (2008), Kramer (2009), Libâneo (2007), Nunes (2011), Pieczkowski (2006), Sarmento (2007) and their theories about children’s stimuli and development in the midst of challenges pertaining to quality education of small-sized children in the school environment.
METHODOLOGY.
The developed methodology of this assignment will be a qualitative one, based on a bibliographical research bound to tackle the importance and need of stimuli prevalent in the first childhood as a precedent that, in this environment, might properly enable effective development, quality and valuation of childhood education during the first childhood.
Regarding data collection, it will be necessary the constituted study and reflection of reading materials taken out of academic articles, books, Master Degree dissertations, magazines, legal documents and available periodicals in research and Google databases.
The debates, discussions and results stemmed from the thoughts and analysis of thinkers such as Angotti (2008), Cunha (2008), Kramer (2009), Libâneo (2007), Nunes (2011), Pieczkowski (2006), Sarmento (2007) are to be taken into proper regard. They, through their reflections, gave the opportunity towards a bedrock of theoretical and practical study pertaining to this academic research.
THE IMPORTANCE OF STIMULI MULTIPLICITY DURING CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT.
Stimuli are a type of language out of which any subject makes use of in order to exploit, come to grips, getting to know and to react, ultimately aiming the taking of final decisions, maturation processes and the composition of a wholesome personality. In this multiplicity of educational mobilizations enabled by childhood stimuli, the social use of symbolic and playful practices has an important role because they enable that any small-sized child might learn how to better interact with the world around him or her, thus building, from spontaneous and self-geared activities, the enrichment of his or her vocabulary, the development of his or her cognitive apparatus and the balance between educational quality and estimation of rights.
About this definition, Pieczkowski (2006) adds up: “It is well-known, nowadays, that any stimuli taken by any child since the birth event and that lasts for the first months of life, is indispensable, because this time period is regarded as crucial to human development. However, Silva (1996) does say that all moments are conducive to stimuli and not only belated children in developmental terms do need these sorts of stimuli. Stimuli is a process that enables children to attain new developmental stages because it enables that he or she might experiment and get to know people surrounding him or her, generating enriching experiences (Pieczkowski, 2006, page 3)”.
Some of the most recognized stimuli prevalent in children’s universe are the affective, physical, cognitive and sensorial ones amongst which any child establishes a connection with the main indicators of his or her interest, giving vent to the opportunity of attaining a better development, acting out and performing in a critical way, becoming self-conscious and autonomous when relating to the environs.
Be that as it may, it is very important that the exploitation of stimuli might not be carried forward in an isolated way: they must have, then, a common goal and endpoint once “man is not exclusively a motor being or to become a man is not exclusively a psychic being or a “wanna do” man. Man is a psychomotor entity, meaning, it is a sync of having, being, wanting, having the power to do it and ultimately being and doing it” (Fontaine, 1980 apud Bueno, 1998, pages 84 and 85).
In this environment riven with intentions, it is crucial to take into regard a child according to DCNEI (Brazil, 2010) as:
In the core of any curricular planning because he/she is a historical subject as well as one entitled to rights who, in their daily praxes, relations and interactions, build his or her collective and personal identities: playing, imagining, conceptualizing, wishing, learning, observing, experiencing, narrating, questioning and building senses and meanings and meanings upon nature and society, producing culture (Brazil, 2010, page 14).
In this sense, any work grounded upon the social utilization of stimuli during the first childhood must entail a moment of exchange, partnership and genuine interaction with the pedagogical, cultural and social environments. It is necessary that any child’s will to learn be exercised in its maximal potency, that it might be sensed and represented through a sensitizing and integrative work because the child, when properly stimulated, communicates better with other people, making his or her experience in the knowledgeable world an enriched and more pleasurable one.
It is necessary, then, to come to grips with these life experiences in order to further enrich any child’s cultural apparatus, providing him or her with the opportunity of feeling safe and confident in their actions and interactions.
Based on these assumptions, it is crucial to conceive, through multiplicities of available stimuli, carefully crafted instances so that any small-sized child might be able to learn, develop him or herself, advancing towards further developmental stages. About small-sized children’s developmental stages, Piaget states (2007, page 54) that they are comprised by four differential levels, meaning the “sensory/motor, the pre-operatory, concrete operations and formal operations. Each and every stage does comprise a given moment in the development stage wherein singular cognitive structures are to be built upon”.
These structures, when properly integrated onto compoundable knowledge materials based on different stimuli, make it easy for any child certain adequate mechanisms towards his or her developmental improvement. For this and other reasons, Cunha (2008, page 64) adds up that “the education model that truly worked is the one that begins by acknowledging the needs of those who learn and not based upon the concepts of those who teach”.
This way, to think upon the importance of multiplicity of stimuli during children’s education entails a properly focused analysis upon efficient methodologies and strategies as well upon necessary parameters that might help any child towards further advancement in the knowledge ladder, learning, then, how to read and come to grips with the world around through linguistic units.
From this reflective point of view, one must see how relevant it is to acknowledge and estimate all children’s developmental stages subsumed onto the school stimuli process, focusing on an enriching and complex analysis revolving about the demands and mobilizations pertaining to the buildup of children’s knowledge.
When one notices this placement, it becomes crucial to stimulate any child to the point that he or she might absorb culture, thus being able to utilize stimuli language to communicate in a clearer way his or her ideas, widening his or her knowledge scope as well as his or her experiences in the world.
All this work revolving about stimuli during the first childhood is not an easy task and it does encompass, above all, a highly warming environment, mainly because it encompasses family and acquired affective liaisons by little ones throughout their lives.
To take this responsibility for the educational endeavour is a constant challenge throughout an educator’s life: all the time, he or she is called upon to take decisions in the hope that any child might proper develop his or her cognitive or physical attributes, further safeguarding them the contemplation of living in an integrative and multiple space permeated by autonomic pedagogical proposals, fully attuned with the human development project.
TO TAKE CARE AND TO EDUCATE: A NEW APPROACH UPON CHILDREN’S EDUCATION.
Any child is a social and historical subject who, during all developmental stages, does need to be properly taken care of and educated. This process must be imbued with proper care and education practices, encompassing the promotion of teaching techniques fully attuned with childhood’s valuation, particularly regarding the child at hand. To place a value upon any child’s childhood in the midst of an educational process while taking care of him or her at the same time does mean to enable the creation of an opportunity for him or her to experience moments, thus giving him or her opportunities in which proper relationships might get established with other people as well as with his or her environs.
Be that as it may, it is an obligation of all committed people to children and youngster’s education (Brazil, 1988) to: “safeguard everybody, with absolute priority, the right to life, to healthcare, education, recreation, to professional training, culture, dignity, respect, freedom, family and communitarian living, notwithstanding placing them out of the way of negligence, discrimination, exploration, violence, cruelty and oppression (Brazilian Constitution, 1988, article 227)”.
This quite humanizing vision surrounding the precedents to proper children’s care and education is something that, in the contemporary world, became crystal-clear thanks to current legislations that, through properly enacted decrees, parameters and guidelines, have been significantly contributing to a new perspective upon children, especially those in the first childhood.
Such technical endeavours revolving about educational process and handling, after many unfortunate occurrences, enabled that children, families and lecturers might overcome prejudices, stereotypes and negative assumptions, once a properly geared educational praxis towards small-sized individuals was merely based on assistive parameters.
Alongside the implementation of the Brazilian Educational Guidelines and Aims Law (Brazil, 1996), the National Curricular Referential Parameters towards Children Education (Brazil, 1998) as well as the national curricular guidelines geared towards children’s education (Brazil, 1998), pedagogical practices were to be informed by all provided interactions enabled by educational care as well as by playful praxis serving as precedents in the enlargement of children’s potentialities, thus enabling, through this interactive socialization process, “care scenarios, playful practices and learning tasks” (Brazil, 1998)
Regarding this definition, Angontti adds up (2008):
Children’s education means the conviction that new times might be thought about by society at large; developing and acknowledging more complete human beings, more integral individuals fully aware as to how properly perform their roles while human beings: a social being, a historical being, a cultural being… new times in which the human being might fulsomely live out all stages of his or her life, fulfilling all his or her dreams, fully aware of having had completed all life cycles, having an intense life, a clear living experience about what to be a child truly means and how one must truly experience childhood (Angotti, 2008/page 26).
Practically, based on this context and informed by a more complete version of the child-being, any individual subjected to children’s education tasks must be perceived beyond the looking glasses of mere assistive features: he or she must be understood in its maximal totality, meaning, thought about based on a new educational proposal, thus doing away with an outmoded vision of children’s education so as to get a more comprehensive one wherein children might truly use his or her realities to learn.
This proposal’s valuation does require, out all committed parties to educational endeavours in the first childhood, proper respect for genuine education for everybody, as pursuant to Veiga (2008):
To indiscriminately educate all children, safeguarding them a quality-laden education that might fulfil his or her needs and specificities. This does entail certain modifications in the organizational structure as well as in institutional pedagogical proposals, furthermore requiring an investment upon human resources, with the ultimate aim of doing away with prejudices and barriers, informing parents, students and lecturers while investing in the educational and professional background of learners (Veiga, 2008/pages 178-179).
When one does overcome the educational fragmentation parameters prevalent throughout many years, it is possible to think beyond the classroom with full anticipation of how unfeasible it is to delink education and care, because the interaction and integration of both elements is what will really enable, within any educational realm, the emergence of motivation, connection and sensorial stimuli bound to positively contribute towards any child’s advance regarding his or her knowledge arsenal, skills and aptitudes.
To think about any child upon this viewpoint is to learn how to look at them beyond the aegis of assistive paternalism, but making use of cognitive, motor and affective aspects, spearheading the child to discover things in a way that children might be able to learn on their own as well as to subsequently teach them based on the pre-established relations and social exchanges with different people, contexts and objects.
According to Kramer (2009):
In the integrative movement between educate and taking care, children’s educational institutions adopt as their mission statements the taking in of children. It is to be highlighted the importance that this movement initial legging must be focused on the child per se and not upon any preexisting supposedly fundamental educational parameter. It is not about educating children merely in the sense of sending him or her to school (Kramer, 2009, page 84).
Nowadays, education, in Brazil, is a full component of people’s daily lives and must not be perceived as a care-laden option, but as a right pertaining to each and every child: the right to mingle and widen his or her socialization spaces. Any individual’s life history necessarily entails, moreover, education, its derived advancement possibilities and the eventual children’s insertion onto society at large, with the full outcome of widening the child’s knowledge.
Be that as it may, it is full referenced in the National Curricular Referential Parameter geared towards Children’s Education (Brazil, 1998, page 25) that “in order to take care, it is crucial, beforehand, to be fully committed with the other individual, its singular status, to be compassionate with his or her needs, ultimately relying on his or her skills. It is necessary that one must learn how to build connections with children in a way that they learn through the profusion of sensorial stimuli on a daily basis as well as upon any constituted sensibility brought about by school-enabled educational praxes”.
However, it is very crucial that one must have an all-encompassing view that showcases changes, conflicts and social inequalities. It is not, then, a stagnant vision because the latter is the cause of backtracking tendencies and the lack of motivation in any child during the so-called first childhood.
Libâneo explains (page 17): “each and every society must take care of the background of their individuals, helping them to develop their spiritual and physical skills, to prepare them towards active and transformative participation through several stages of their social life. To acknowledge the importance of acquiring a new perspective revolving about taking care and educating does entail actual participation of all committed parties alongside daily educational and teaching processes with children. To further this aim, it becomes necessary, then, wisdom showcased by lecturers, family members and society at large so that this social praxis correlation might get transmuted onto reality in a multicultural, diverse and comprehensive way”.
Based on these assumptions, it is possible to establish the fact that, in order that one might build a decent society upon which significant educational historical backgrounds are brought to the fore and permeated by educational care and teaching praxes. It becomes necessary, then, not to consign any child to the void: one must put into practice a coherent educational praxis attuned to the surrounding reality as well as attuned to the needs of any small-sized child. When that is done, it is raised in the child a knowledge of the world deemed necessary towards his or her development coupled to the establishment of his or her personality and autonomy.
CHILDREN AND EDUCATION VALUATION: QUALITY INDICATORS.
The construction of general solid pillars towards the proper conception of quality indicators within the children’s education context is something riven with many specificities towards the enabling and quality of said practices. This happens because to promote educational quality – no matter in which educational cycle/year – is not an easy task, but it does require a specific agenda based on good praxis, efficient managerial features, reliable evaluations and proper background info.
According to official children’s education quality indicators (Brazil, 2009):
Any quality definitions do hang upon many factors: the values onto which people are attached to; traditions stemming from any given culture; scientific knowledge as to how children should learn and develop themselves; the economic, social and historical contexts in which any given educational establishment is placed. In the specific scenario of children’s education, the way as to how society does define women’s rights and the collective responsibility for small-sized children’s education are also relevant factors (Brazil, 2009, page 11).
To properly evaluate indicators as safeguarding mechanisms means respect for the needs of any child during the childhood stage. It must be, then, a holistic approach around universal themes, granting access and permanence of any given educational subject to the educational realm at large, taking into full regard a properly conceived educational project geared for everybody, thus safeguarding a decent educational background to each and every citizen.
The precedents revolving around the construction of indicators regarding childhood’ and educational estimation quality parameters might be understood based on an opinion issued from Moran (2000), ultimately aiming, in its constructional endeavour, the proper solidification of an organizational structure: “innovative, open, dynamic, with a coherent pedagogical project, participative, with an adequate infrastructure, up-to-dated, comfortable, with accessible, quick and new technologies. An organization that amasses well-prepared ethical, communicational, emotional and intellectual lecturers who are well-paid, motivated and standing on solid professional grounds, wherein one might locate favourable circumstances to the establishment of an affective relationship in which students that might enable the lecturers, as well, to truly know, follow up and guide them (Moran, 2000, page 14).”
Any school social function while congregational space must, so, properly be regulated by an educational project that ultimately strives to make a difference in the lives around it, forming a groundwork of principles around which childhood’s estimates are to be brought to the fore. This is genuinely sought-for in the contemporary age.
When one does think about quality indicators of childhood’s valuations, it is possible to urgently notice, in real terms, how this issue is really about a proper educational curriculum format, a guiding light that might enable the establishment of a participative and democratic space, not in a stagnant or inflexible way, or even erasing locally based curricular structures, but serving as a lighthouse alongside institutional and educational policies towards the proper valuation and safeguarding of children’s rights. To allow that external assessment parameters might be the only way of evaluating small-sized children and the quality of their educational provision is not an option anymore.
About this definition, Sousa adds up (1998): “Quality parameters pertaining to children education is, above all, the conception of new necessary conditions enabling any child to effectively develop him or herself, learning and walk in the way towards autonomy and the full capacity towards citizenship, with joy and pleasure. Quality parameters are enabled throughout diverse opportunities in order that each and every child might grow, learn and develop out of properly conceived interference models that are to be permanently developed and assessed (Sousa, 1998, page 4).”
It is to be understood, based on this educational mobilization endeavour, that all indicators are pre-established tools and plans to properly uphold the relation between school and family, thus safeguarding any small-sized child’s well-being through a dialogic and solid articulation process. This way, to think upon any amplitude mechanism enveloped by this relation is to think about an educational praxis informed by its maximal capacity, thus promoting an interrelation between interaction spaces and diverse educational possibilities, evidencing the gradation as to when these spaces might and must be shared.
The whole issue, then, revolves around pedagogical, cultural and social standpoints shared by multiple platforms of seeing and interpreting the school routine: these are the initial parameters and indicators towards the proper understanding of quality education of small-sized children.
According to Zabalza (1998, page 53), the mere existence of these indicators within the children’s realm become, then, “the moment in which any personal language reconstructs actional procedures, guiding workforces and providing new clues, supporting the acquisition of new specific skills or conducts”. It is necessary, then, to learn how to make use of all these prerogatives as study materials during educational processes pertaining to children’s development because everybody, including the small ones, do belong to a social environment and one must learn how to make use of it to learn as well as to teach.
This way, all indicators are to be collaborative endeavours not only fostering proper integration between families, schools, students and professors, but, under a more subjective and investigative point of view, they are change-enabling tools. It is crucial to know whether up to what point any performed work in the school environment is truly significant to all its members.
To enable this integration of values and connections with other people is a quality parameter that must be a fulsome component to any children’s education curriculum, encompassing not only official indicators, but discussions and analysis overstepping the school boundaries.
THE CHILDHOOD.
Since the establishment of the concept of childhood, there comes to the fore the need to think a child as a historical and social subject, creator of cultures, holder to singular attributes who, through different languages, does have the possibility, amongst other prerogatives, of enforcing citizenship parameters (Brazil, 1998).
Thanks to his or her background, any small-sized child, throughout the developmental years, are no longer seen as a miniatured adults, but they acquired different outlooks with full prioritization upon their learning skills and the establishment of objectives and mission statements that might provide any child with support so that they might properly evolve and advance throughout all developmental stages.
According to Kuhlmann (2010):
One must take into full regard childhood as a child’s condition. The sum of experienced events by children through different social, geographic and historical contexts is much more than a mere adult’s representation upon any specific life stage. One must get acquainted to all given childhood representations and to treat children as concrete human beings, placing them as producers of history (Kuhlmann, 2010, page 30).
Given the previously stated, it is important that any instructor might enable any child to explore the profusion of resources within the child’s reach, because children do have about “one hundred worlds” to discover and we cannot allow that they might be deprived of any of them, but that the multiplicities of voices and experiential parameters must be fully embraced as something truly subjective, fostering, between the child and the world, a proper adjustment of ideas and ideals and, furthermore, improving any child’s capacity to properly understand how significant social functions are derived from communication faculties with which they imbue their lives (Malaguzzi, 1999).
According to Malaguzzi’s through processes (1999, p. 59), “any child is made out of one-hundred. One-hundred worlds to discover. One-hundred worlds to invent. One-hundred world to dream. Any child has one-hundred languages (and after that, one-hundred, one-hundred, one-hundred more!) but ninety-and-nine worlds were stolen from them”.
When one holds onto this perspective, it becomes important to revisit concepts upon childhood through responsibilities and experiences that might properly conceive how children to children might come to grips with their legit reality, estimating its relation with the world around certain cultural thresholds: for this and other reasons, any child is very important in humanely contextualize because he or she is intimately connected to the evolution cycle of a society at large.
To acknowledge any child as an active subject is the first step in estimating its childhood experience: for this reason, it is truly relevant that all proper pedagogical, cultural and social interactions might not take place in an isolated manner, but that they might compound a moment of intersection in which different streams of knowledge add up to one another, given the fact that “the common childhood condition holds – as its symbolic dimension – any childhood’s cultural scope” (Sarmento, 2007, page 03).
Furthermore, the author states:
The debate is not about any properly acknowledged particular fact that children might produce autonomous signification parameters, but it is about coming to grips whether these valuations are properly structured and consolidated onto relatively standardized symbolic systems even if they are dynamic and heterogeneous in cultural terms (Sarmento, 2007, page 21).
This thought process comprises any child undergoing the experiences subjacent to the first childhood as rights holders: even small, he or she must learn to ascribe social values, to play with the imagination, to discover based on symbolic representations, at the same time transforming his or her reality while widening his or her knowledge base through playful and social integrations.
From this analysed conception, one might be able to notice that any quality-laden education ultimately aims childhood valuations and enabled conditionings through stimulation and experiential standards, based upon lecturers’ adjustment of children’s original ideas. This means conceiving educational strategies in order that these students might not go astray.
On these grounds, it is very important indeed any enabled stimuli through memory and based on the children’s previous knowledge arsenal, pursuant to Vygotsky (1998):
“Memory, during the early childhood stages, is one of the central psychological functions around which all other functions are properly built up. Our analyses do suggest that the faculty of thinking, regarding a small-sized child, is, in many respects, informed by his or her memory. This certainly is not the same as the performance ascribed to more developed children”. (Vygotsky, 1998, page 66).
However, it is necessary to acknowledge, when one faces all these educational perspectives, the importance of the social use of these stimulating environments as well as any practical development within the childhood realm. This way, it is not appropriate anymore any decontextualized pedagogical approach but the contemplation of educational proposals that might help the small ones to properly think and be active in the world, taking into full regard their particularities and needs.
Be that as it may, the buildup of any knowledge based on childhood stimulation and valuation simultaneously entails the experiential aspect of life, manipulation factors as well as endogenous functional aspects never really experienced in the same way by different individuals. On these grounds, Kramer (2007) states that: “the concrete insertion of children and their roles do vary according to any social organizational feature. So, any idea of childhood might not be encompassed by the first one. Quite the opposite: any notion of childhood might come to the fore alongside capitalist, urban and industrial societies in the way that any children’s social roles and insertions within the communitarian context were modified” (Kramer, 2007, page 14).
To notice the importance of this kind of development in any child’s universe does require, out of infant’s educators, a stimulating educational praxis coupled to the mobilization of space and time in which any child is to be fostered to think, play with the imagination, thus structuring the coordination of all their actions in a way that they might develop the habit and predilection for the praxis of multiple languages while enriching their vocabulary as well as their imaginative, creative and playful attributes.
When one does take into regard and properly estimate all interlinked precedents around childhood’s definitions and valuations, it is possible to conceive that all safeguards pertaining to any valuable entitlement are not only a school duty, but a role to be performed by several actors, amongst them the family and the State, pursuant to Nunes (2011):
The 1988 Federal Constitution redefined all republican principles while establishing the Lawful State. This new political scenario enabled any child to be inserted onto a citizenship context while establishing new relations between he or she and the State. The following constitutional guidelines engendered the new relational paradigm. 2.2.1. Rights. a) The child is subjected to several rights. Their rights are quoted in article 227 in the Brazilian Federal Constitution. He or she is perceived, then, as a full-fledged human being. b) His or her rights must be safeguarded with absolute priority by the family unit, society at large and the State; c) Scope: “…right to life, healthcare, food, education, recreation, professional training, culture, dignity, respect, freedom and communitarian/family life; saved from any kind or shape of negligence, discrimination, exploitation, violence, cruelty and oppression” (article 227, apud Nunes, 2011, page 30).
To safeguard the access and social participation of all committed individuals to the estimate children’s education is to look upon children as de facto citizens, “taking away from this practice any authoritarian, paternalist, assistive and repressive paradigm” (Nunes, 2011, page 32).
This worldview revolving about the importance of childhood and the safeguard of constitutional rights to small-sized children does encompass the discovery of new ways of seeing and perceiving this individual in the first developmental stage of childhood, safeguarding them the implementation of quality-laden educational praxes that might promote and wide all necessary conditions towards the proper exercise of citizenship attributes by Brazilian children (Brazil, RCNEI; 1998, page 13).
This multiplicity of developed emotions through symbolic arches is informed by ethical standards, professional skills and communitarian backgrounds, ultimately aiming to estimate the diverse aspects pertaining to childhood development.
According to the Children’s Education National Curricular Referential Parameter (1998):
“As long as more children might be able to talk in different situations, such as what took place at home, to narrate stories, to convey messages, to explain a game, to ask for info, the more they might be able to properly develop their communicative skills, the better the overall learning process” (Brazil, 1998, page 121).
When one does allow that any subject systematize its relation with the world through plural and multiple mobilizations, any lecturer will be further qualified to build upon these premises certain considerations, processes, functions and techniques that Piaget (1976) regards as interactive praxes useful to properly estimate childhood parameters.
This educational possibility engenders kids with certain essential features and aptitudes towards his or her future backgrounds, encompassing educational strategies taken as efficient, qualitative and formative, structured upon newly demanded exigencies by society at large and the supply of multiplicity of languages as well.
So, the main social function revolving about this act is the proper acknowledgment and appropriation of different languages and phantastic elements prevalent during internalization processes subsumed onto the imagination and cognition realms in order that they might become quite real. According to Vygotsky (2003, page 117-118) “emotion is not a lesser tool than the thought”.
Be that as it may, to think about this whole process does entail satisfactory insertion standards, new pedagogical praeis, with full emphasis upon a dynamic, creative and enticing psychological/pedagogical concept grounded upon the clarity of information and the relevancy of any small-sized child’s reflexive and critical performances in the wide knowledgeable world.
Furthermore, Wallon (1969) adds up:
“Any school must not be, only, the place in which any child is the recipient of certain rudimentary instructional knowledge materials: the school is any child’s whole life! All their interests are to be geared in the direction of the school, all his or her life belongs to the school. It is necessary to represent well what that might be, to a child’s soul, the fact of physically going to school. This comprises the whole of his or her thoughts, feelings: they are channelled onto the school. Consequently, there is…a considerable responsibility of school when dealing with children: any educator can not get disinterested about any child’s life circumstances in particular” (Wallon apud Tran-Thong, 1969, page 77).
The suggested proposal does reassert the importance of looking upon children in a way to contemplate multiple languages and representations because, according to Vygotsky (1998), “this communication feature between different subjects is what will eventually enable any child to properly develop within multiple potential parameters”.
QUALITY INDICATORS.
The Quality Indicators parameter was a duly launched educational document distributed by the Brazilian Education Ministry in partnership with several institutional entities. Its mission statement is to make out of this document a template onto which any self-assessment educational tool is to be enforced by schools, especially when children’s education is, nowadays, placed in a paramount position.
The central characteristic features of all these indicators do anticipate, in their particular contexts, the debate and discussion about parameters that might entail educational praxes, their implementations, democratic and participative managerial features, amongst other factors as crucial as these ones.
The formulation of each and every proposal was thought-out when taken into regard the proper valuation and estimation of children, their stimuli and the safeguard and effective mechanism of their rights’ enforcement. This proposal, then, comes out of a genuine wish to enhance and circumscribe possible faults that might have happened within the educational realm. However, words tossed to the wind are vain indeed: it is necessary the urgent application of all these indicators in order that they might be properly regarded, particularly concerning small-sized children.
The participation of the population in this assignment was permeated by a series of diversity features: not only specifications, but singularities pertaining to subjectivities, because, as Sousa states (1997):
“The emergence of proper evaluation criteria is not delinked of standings, creeds, viewpoints and social practices of those who conceive them. It is a concept that emerges out of philosophical, political and social perspectives, judgment values and expressive features. It is closely attached to all these traits. Be that as it may, all assumed criteria and emphases subsumed onto any given evaluation process do disclose axiological options pertaining to those who participate in it” (Sousa, 1997, page 267).
The construct of these consensual parameters as well as the establishment of performed roles by each and every constituent member must be monitored in its most profoundly ethical dimension, thus breaking away with a “mere formal logic of evaluations while stimulating its usage to spearhead initiatives, to redirect trajectories, to foster decisions and to formulate policies and plans” (Brazilian Education Ministry, 2012, page 12).
Based on these assumptions and taking into full regard how important all this info really is towards the proper reach and scope of such quality standardization parameters, it becomes crucial, then, that all pre-established criteria informed by these indicators be really qualitative and employable towards the improvement of children’s educational thresholds in a way to really open up, in school spaces, a differentiated outlook pertaining to childhood, taking into full regard not only the garnering of information, but safeguarding conditions towards due access and permanence in the school environment once it is stated in the Brazilian Educational Groundworks Aims Law (Brazil, 1996): “the educational system will eventually define all democratic management guidelines pertaining to public education in the basic educational realm according to its peculiarities and pursuant to the following principles: I – participation of education professionals in the conception of school-based pedagogical projects; II – participation in locally based and school-based entities as well as in school councils or similarly liked (Brazil, 1996, article 14).”
Be that as it may, any consensus amongst educational practitioners must be, above all, genuine, as an organization comprised by the sum of all its parts and working towards the community in which the improvement of educational standards be real indeed and not only on paper. As one might notice, all decisions informed from certain quality indicators are to compound a collective construct mechanism informing any academic study based on background information in which it is anticipated the attainment of autonomy by everyone: children, schools, families and politicians.
However, it is crucial to pay attention to all demands brought forward by social influences geared towards the leadership establishment closely attached to these mobilizations that, in their majority, significantly contribute towards the construction of qualitative indicators. About this thematic feature, Lück (2010 apud Drabach (2011, page 74)) asserts that “any leadership concept is to be understood as a compound of actions, attitudes and undertaken behaviours by any individual to properly influence the achievements and progressions of someone else, ultimately aiming the attainment of organizational aims”.
When this leadership is not properly constituted, there is lack of respect to children’s constitutional rights and responsible educational authorities because this act must be a shared, collective one in way that people might articulate these relations as a mobilizing feature when enforcing quality standards parameters that, as well, have a social dimension.
Given the enforcement of quality indicators in the school environment, it becomes essential, according to Libâneo (2007):
That directors, pedagogical coordinators and instructors might learn how to manage, conciliate social and individual needs, cultural peculiarities and universal exigencies pertaining to human sharing, busying themselves with human relations as well as with achievable social and pedagogical goals, establishing efficiency-laden and participative ways subsumed onto administrative procedures (Libâneo 2007).
These are actions and postures duly quoted by the author really do make a difference while such indicators are implemented: challenges and shortcomings are bound to emerge, but it is crucial proper skills and commitment to overcome any adversity within the educational realm.
All intentional parameters behind this mobilization anticipates that “as long as more people are enmeshed in actions that ultimately strive to achieve more quality parameters in childhood education, the bigger the gains towards children, to society at large and Brazilian education” (Brazil, 2009, page 19).
Quality definitions do hang upon several factors: the values upon which people believe; traditions of any given culture; scientific knowledge about how children do learn and develop; the economic, social and historical contexts in which any school is inserted (Brazil, 2009).
It is to be noticed, based on this context, that pre-established quality standards subsumed onto this whole process is not an individual feature, but it encompasses more pervasive mobilizations in political, social and historical terms.
The presented context points out to the fact that it is not only upon human resources that identification parameters of children education’s quality standards must be placed, but it must be encompassed, as stated by Zabalza (1998), by spatial organizations, the harmonization of performed assignments coupled to the planning of dimensional proposals in way that all noticed aspects might be properly regarded. In this case, language becomes a very crucial tool towards the development and execution of presented aspects.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.
Towards proper discussions and outcomes analysis, the researcher utilized theoretical assumptions based on a research arsenal in which books, articles, magazines and the like were properly utilized. This eventually allowed, throughout the advancement of this research, proper reflection about all allocated discussions through presented indicators in order that one might systematize and amass the info during the academic assignment’s qualitative stage.
The researcher made use, in this final academic paper, of about twenty publications towards research purposes. Each and every bibliographical category showcased issues closely attached to the importance of pedagogical stimuli during the first childhood, coupled to meanings, strategies and procedures that might better favour the establishment of effective parameters regarding the previously asserted stimulation.
According to the pre-established organizational features by Moura (2009), any quality-laden effective mechanism related to stimuli within any school context is a relation encompassing several aspects of different orders, presented in the below specified organizational structure:
Figure I: environmental organizational indicators as quality factors in children’s education (adapted from Moura, 2009). Environmental organization is eventually informed by the fostering of autonomy, by the construction and utilization of spaces/environments, by favourable interactions and by physical conditions.
In order that one might arrive to the final outcome, it was necessary to list and collect data about the importance of stimuli, thus representing, in pedagogical terms, children subjected to educational procedures during the childhood stage. On these grounds, this is also a qualitative research endeavour.
Researches generally agree to the fact that, in order to safeguard efficiency mechanisms regarding pedagogical stimuli during the first childhood, it is necessary that, in the performance of educational praxes, quality and commitment towards educational standards to children be in an indissoluble relation one to the other.
According to Antunes (2012, page 35), in order that these outcomes might reach the desired amplitude of its original proposal, it is necessary the establishment, in this environment, “of a thought-out planning endeavour by a skilled teamwork. This planning must be supervised by an attentive coordinating board able to properly understand the essence pertaining to each and every stage subsumed onto the overall developmental process”. Such analysis, when regarded by all herein quoted theoreticians, entail the enforcement of pedagogical practices based on a multiplicity of symbolic and playful mobilizations with the ultimate aim towards a subjective outlook to the surrounding needs, the education praxis per se and the proper valuation of childhoods since the latter is one of the more urgent needs within any school environment.
When one does discuss an educational proposal under this viewpoint, it is evident how necessary it is to promote self-awareness in people because education quality, stimuli and pedagogical practices will only be truly effective from the moment everybody get together, thus favouring truly crucial indicators pertaining to children’s school environments.
It is to be noticed that any integrative and interactive quality parameter between different agents as well as any proposed mobilization of quality indicators are to be presented herein as a safeguard principle and valuation mechanism applicable upon all educational stages.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Any school is an institution built and constituted through social practices and experiences. It is through it that very necessary stimuli articulations regarding children’s development, even in the first childhood, be brought to the fore.
In this sense, it is possible to regard any education based on stimuli entailing a passport to children’s freedom in the social sphere, meaning the authorization that any subject might exercise his or her citizenship with dignity, beyond mere social rights, while “making use of an inherent human right, full element to one’s life and unbreakable from it” (Muniz, 2002, page 160).
Under this perspective, it is very important that the safeguard and quality of these basic rights might not get belittled to mere intentions because any child does need to partake of the same opportunities and rights as all citizens, regardless of social class, race, ethnicity or religion.
To understand the relevancy of this educational mobilization based on these precedents, one must hold as its core mission statement the raising of awareness in the representational sense of the word, because the right to education, equity and universalization is already entrenched in official Brazilian legal statutes (Brazil, 1998).
So, it is crucial, in the midst of so many queries, that the safeguard of these rights might really be put into practice in the school environment while properly estimated by society and encouraged by social policies because, as added by Marshall (1967, page 73), “this issue must be taken into regard not as any child’s entitlement regarding attendance at school, but as a citizenship right to education”, in order that child might fully exercise his or her citizenship prerogatives in the midst of pre-established social relations.
In order that one might better grasp the importance of quality education within the context of all these particular set of features, it is necessary to think about a desirable school environment and the needs of any small-sized child informed by his or her valuation formation, his or her personality and his or her identity.
It is to be concluded, based on these considerations, that, in order to be created certain opportunities during the first childhood coupled to certain events out of which children might be able to adjust their ideas and to properly communicate in different languages, it is crucial the respect to singularities and subjectivities. This is only possible when all those truly responsible for the success of its development join in a qualitative mobilization endeavour. Any stimulating practice under this perspective must be, then, the search towards self-knowledge that does away with traditional methods and prejudices: the whole endeavour is bound to become a participative, collective and shared practice.
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