Disabled child or disabled child? play relationships between children produced in the early childhood education school

Abstract

The article we present aims to understand how games tension and configure the relationships between children with and without disabilities in the daily life of a municipal school of Early Childhood Education. The analysis articulates different theoretical perspectives on childhood, culture and disability, seeking to understand children as social subjects and producers of culture. It is based on the understanding that childhood constitutes a space of symbolic production in which children elaborate meanings about the world and about themselves in interactions with their peers. In this context, playing is taken as a central practice of children's culture, configuring itself as a space for creation, negotiation and resignification of experiences. From the notion of peer culture, it is understood that children produce and share meanings in their daily lives, reinterpreting elements of adult culture and attributing new meanings to them. Thus, the interactions established in the games reveal unique modes of participation, belonging and agency, evidencing daily tactics of construction of their own spaces within the school institution. The research was developed from an ethnographic approach, having as main instruments of information production the participant observation and the field diary. This perspective allowed us to follow the children's daily lives and understand how they perceive and relate to others, with or without disabilities, in the context of play. The results indicate that, through play and peer culture, children build their own forms of interaction, producing meanings about difference and elaborating unique ways of living in the school space.