O sentido espacial em livros didáticos para professores de educação infantil

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to move between early childhood education and mathematics education, presenting an overview of activities that are in textbooks recommended for early childhood education teachers. The study was guided by the question: what possibilities do textbook activities offer to explore ideas of orientation and spatial visualization in early childhood education with children from 0 to 3 years old and from 4 to 5 years old? The objective was to analyze textbook activities for early childhood teachers that enable intentional work with spatial orientation and spatial visualization – spatial sense skills. This objective was divided into three specific objectives. First, identify clues that some textbook activities present about orientation and spatial visualization. Second, to discuss the possibilities of intentional work on these skills from what the textbooks, which are part of the National Textbook Program (PNLD) (BRASIL, 2019), present as a pedagogical proposal. Third, to relate evidence found on orientation and spatial visualization in textbook activities with the fields of experience proposed by the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) (BRASIL, 2017) for Early Childhood Education. Through qualitative documentary research, we investigated the possibilities that three textbooks offer to explore spatial sense skills with children from 0 to 3 years old and 4 and 5 years old. We analyzed some activities in light of the ideas of geometry, children's spatial sense focusing on orientation skills and spatial visualization. We used the works of Panizza et al (2006), Mendes and Delgado (2008), Smole, Diniz and Cândido (2003), Monteiro (2010), Lorenzato (2019/2006) and Zogaib (2019) to support us in these aspects. Chopin's Works (2004); Marco Silva (2012) and Bittencourt (2008) served to support the discussions on textbooks. We are based on Mendes and Delgado (2008) to build possibilities for dialogues that early childhood education teachers can establish with children after carrying out the activities. We thought of these dialogues to arouse and provoke the curiosity of children to observe objects, locating their position and direction. The research pointed as main result the possibilities of articulation between the proposals of activities of the didactic books and the abilities of the children's spatial sense. It also makes an important contribution to the initial and continuing education of teachers. In addition to imagining, through interactions and games, possibilities for teaching work that can contribute to childhood, mathematics education and geometry, and which were identified implicitly and/or explicitly in the three textbooks.