The understanding of family relationships by children in play situations in the context of early childhood education

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-4512.2017v19n35p69

This paper discusses the understandings of family relationships that children express in play situations with peers of the same age in the context of early childhood education. This discussion takes place from the review of some episodes of play studied in Renata da Costa Maynart's masters research defended in 2010, which sought to understand the importance of the play to the constitution of the child's identity from Henri Wallon's perspective. The review of the research data, based on an extension of theoretical references, brings new elements that highlight the complex process of signification that occurs in the culture of pairs in the context of early childhood education. Considering play as a privileged space for the investigation of meaning-making processes, the selected episodes reveal that the process of understanding family relationships occurs in the interplay of individual ways of acting, thinking and feeling, and the system of beliefs and theories of the symbolic-cultural world, which necessarily occurs through social interactions with the other.