Entre permanecer en el jardín y el primerito: sentidos y prácticas de la educación infantil

Abstract

In this paper we present the advances of a collective research that is focused on the new “uses” of diversity, centrally in school spaces. The field work takes place in an institution of Initial Level of the south area of Buenos Aires City and is done from an socio-anthropological/ethnographic approach. We analyze the senses constructed by teachers and Head teachers that refer to the passage of the children of the Initial Level to Primary School, called by them “articulación”, “permanencia” y “primerito”. Along this line, we documented the practices trying to resolve tensions unfold that in certain cases and disposes the stay or the move to the next Level. Holding the hypothesis that the obligatoriness school, for five years old children, generated a strong movement that affects the structuring of the teaching work and has correlate in the daily life of kindergarten; we analyze how this obligatoriness and the resolution of the Consejo Federal de Educación are inserted into the particular institutional framework. According to this, we proposed that the practices deployed on everyday life are not mechanistic responses to senses built before, or necessarily in line with the intent of policies. They are situated, contextualized and defined by traces of the past, expressing, in addition, new “uses” of diversity.