Resumo

NUNES, Terezinha. The environment of the child. Cad. Pesqui. [online]. 1994, n.89, pp.5-23. ISSN 0100-1574.

The goal of this paper is to discuss useful models for the description of children's sociocultural environments and the design and evaluation of programmes that aim at improving children's welfare. In the first section of the paper the complexity of defining suitable child development outcomes for intervention programmes is discussed. The concept of childhood is seen to vary across classes and cultures resulting in different expectations and demands for children's development. Consistently with these demands, children's developmental trajectories also differ thereby creating gaps between children when cross-group comparisons are carried out. Thus the choice of child development outcomes for intervention programmes needs to carefully consider strenghts and weaknesses of the group which is expected it benefit from the programme. In the second section two environment conditions that thereaten children's development were chosen as examples for close scrutiny: poverty and prejudice. Growing up with poverty and prejudice are characterized unfavourable circumstances which in isolation might not threaten children's development. However both situations involve systems of such adverse circumstances, which are chronic and interact in a multiplicative fashion with respect to negative effects on children's development. Several aspects of each of these inauspicious environments are discussed. Finally, the third section summarizes the characteristics of a general model for planning and analysing the results of interventions on children's behalf.

Palavras-chave : Desenvolvimento Infantil; Ambiente Sociocultural; Programas de Intervenção.

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