EDUCATIVE PRACTICES AMONG PEERS: A study of the daily work of teachers at a Day Care Center in the city of Sao Paulo This study had the purpose of investigating everyday practice of four teachers and a group of 24 children aged 2 through 3 years, in a public Day Care Center (CEI) in the city of de São Paulo. The research involved basically three dimensions, that is: How educational practices are organized when shared by pairs of teachers who alternate in the morning and afternoon shifts in the

more »

... ame group of children? Is there room for communication between them? To what extent the proposed practices make up a flexible routine oriented by some shared planning, in order to provide children with significant learning experiences based on continuity and interaction? This is, therefore, a qualitative pedagogical research that adopts the perspective of a single case study, as proposed by Yin. The following sources of data were included: the Political Pedagogical Project which the training plan for the teachers was a part of; the planning and records by the teachers; the researcher´s logbook, as well as the interviews with the teachers and managers at the school I have studied. The analysis and discussion of data were conducted in the light of the concept of experience defined by John Dewey. Other theoretical approaches were also utilized, found in the works of Oliveira-Formosinho, Barbosa, and Kishimoto. This study brought some important evidence concerning the formative process within a Day Care Center (CEI), especially in regard of structural and organizational circumstances. Restricted times and spaces of communication and reflection about the issues arising of the practice turned out to be determining of the fragmentation in the planning made by the teachers whose actions I have followed. Planning was poorly articulated and resulted in experiences that were not only discontinuous but they also scarcely interacted with everyday situations, which in the end put them close curriculum based on the "logic of disciplines". The study highlights the need to enhance the research on the city´s educational system, in order to give subsidies for the public policies aimed at children´s education and the ongoing formation that is conducted within the schools. Finally, I stand for the importance of legally guaranteeing institutional conditions so that the collective reflection to improve the pedagogical practices with children can be effected in the context of CEIs.