Pedagogical practices in the school environment

João Pinheiro State Elementary School (1966 to 1988)

Abstract

This article historically analyzes the conceptions of childhood and pedagogical practices developed at the João Pinheiro State School, located in Ituiutaba, Minas Gerais, between 1966 and 1988, with an emphasis on the process of implementing and consolidating Early Childhood Education at the institution. Situated within the field of History of Education, especially in the context of schooling in Minas Gerais, the study investigates how different conceptions of childhood, education and moral formation materialized in daily school practices, articulating educational policies, school culture and social transformations that occurred during the period. Methodologically, the research is based on the analysis of institutional documentary sources, educational legislation, school records and oral history, through testimonies from former directors, teachers, former students and a local memorialist, enabling the articulation between memory, experience and historical documentation. Findings show that educational practices were strongly marked by discipline, centrality of memorization, civic and religious rituals, as well as the adoption of the global-analytical method, expressing remnants of traditional pedagogy and the impacts of the political context of the civil-military dictatorship on school culture. At the same time, gradual changes in conceptions of childhood are identified, with the progressive incorporation of perspectives that recognized the child as a developing subject, even if subordinated to institutional mechanisms of control, surveillance and normalization. The study concludes that the trajectory of Early Childhood Education at the João Pinheiro State School reveals tensions between disciplinary remnants and processes of pedagogical modernization, contributing to understanding of regional history of public education and transformations in the forms of childhood schooling in Minas Gerais.