Capoeira da educação infantil: relações étnico-raciais na formação de professores

Abstract

Capoeira is a modality of Brazilian art that has been marginalized during its historicsocial trajectory. Before the prejudice relating to this immaterial cultural manifestation, its practitioners faced many challenges, whether concerning to the pursuit for recognition and appreciation of capoeira as well as to its insertion as an educational practice into the realm of formal education, which importance in teaching practice may become a starting point for methodological approaches usable in the context of Child Education in order to experience the ethnical-racial thematic. Starting from this premise, this study had as a general objective to analyze in which measure Child Education teachers from the Nursery and Municipal Pre-School Professora Alcide Cartaxo Loureiro, localized at Campina Grande-PB (Brazil) develop pedagogical actions involving capoeira as a school activity related to AfroBrazilian culture. The investigation focused on pedagogical actions consisting on the exercise of capoeira in educational practices as an element of Afro-Brazilian culture. Our proposal aimed to discuss education for ethnical-racial relationships in the dominion of Child Education Teachers’ Training, considering capoeira within a so to speak “formal” educational context. As a theoretical support, we took the assumptions by Silva and Heine (2008), Nóvoa (2011), Colin Heywood (2004), Abramowicz & Oliveira (2006), Ibernón (2009), Silva (2007), Gomes (2005), Severino (2002) and Corsaro (2011), among others. Methodologically, the work was characterized as a qualitative action research, according to Severino’s (2002) concept, in articulation with Bardin’s (2011) content analysis. Research subjects consisted on ten teachers who participated of continuous training plus two capoeira teachers belonging to the Educational Unit under research. We utilized investigative instruments such as semi structured interview, participant observation, field log and questionnaires. The analysis contemplated the discussion about teaching practice and continuous teaching training. Our claim is that Educational Units acting in Child Education work as privileged spaces for teacher training by taking human necessities and experiences lived by these professionals as a start in order to reflect/discuss the way capoeira is inserted in basic education as an immaterial cultural manifestation. Similarly, we took into consideration how black subjects have been culturally represented in Educational Units in regard to the social reflects of prejudice and racial discrimination against black people and their cultural heritage. We also considered the difference between an epistemology of capoeira within and from Child Education. By analyzing teachers’ practices and their dialogue with education for ethnic-racial relations in childhood, as we conducted in this research, we verified that capoeira was a reality in the institution, but it happened inconstantly. It was experienced only by the teachers. Thus, it set up what we epistemologically call Capoeira in Early Childhood Education.