PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGIES DURING THE PANDEMIC: WHAT IS THE PLACE OF BOTH THE CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES IN THE ASSESSED PROPOSITIONS?

This item introduces the pedagogical strategies used by municipalities participating in the research during the pandemic, i.e., reflection about resources adopted to develop a pedagogical work with/to children while face-to-face activities are canceled in daycare units and in preschools. Uneasiness was quite common during this process, given the following questions: how can one set a relationship without the children’s presence in the institutional space? What would be the efficient technologies? How can one respect the rights of children in remote teaching? What is the place of children in propositions elaborated during the pandemic? Have they been heard? Have children been having opportunities to tell their experiences? How can one make sure about children’s participation and authorship in knowledge construction? These enquiries allow one to critically think about paths taken by these municipalities, listed in Graph 1.

SME: Secretaria Municipal de Educação. Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Graph 1 - Pedagogical strategies. 

As already mentioned, contact with students’ families was made through social networks and/or WhatsApp. After the communication channels were set between secretariats and institutions, and, afterwards, between these institutions and students’ families, it was possible going ahead with actions focused on the children. Thus, with respect to the pedagogical dimensions, the main strategy adopted by education secretariats lied on setting on-line activities on their educational platforms, web pages and electronic portals. Digital materials and suggestions for activities in assignment notebooks were made available in social networks, mainly on WhatsApp. These actions took into account the specificities of this stage; therefore, it counted on the voluntary actions taken by teachers to keep contact with the children. Another strategy, which differed from the other ones, concerned the option made by one of the secretariats to keep on using the didactic books adopted for child education before the pandemic. According to coordinators who had managed this proposition, teachers were supposed to recommend the book pages to be worked on by the families.

The CNE document suggests the child education must keep synchronous or asynchronous contact through digital means. Five municipalities declared to have adopted educational platforms that were mostly selected by education secretariats. According to data collected from the questionnaires, the five municipalities that have opted for using the platform listed the answers seen in Graph 2 when they were asked about criteria substantiating its use.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Graph 2 - Criteria for the adoption of the platform. 

With respect to teachers’ qualification to use the platform, only three municipalities have declared to have made qualification available for management teams and teachers during virtual meetings. Besides the particularities of child education’s main age group, teachers also faced a hard time accessing the internet, because they did not know how to use it and the potential of digital platforms, not mentioning the digital literacy level and the limitations to access the mandatory technological artifacts. These factors are known by child education coordinators, but they did not care much about it, given the choices they have made, as it was reported to us.

From the window sociology perspective (^{Lima, 2019}), a policy must be analyzed from its complexity, with emphasis on interaction between policy beneficiary and the agent implementing it; in other words, “[…] how can the actions by the agents implementing it produce, reduce or broaden social inequalities […]” (^{Lima, 2019}, p. 87, our translation). Accordingly, the study enquired: how do pedagogical strategies affect children’s lives? Can we say that these actions have allowed the approximation between children and their families, or have they denied social rights due to the privileged use of digital technologies? The Graph 2 also enables arguing whether the actions by middle echelon bureaucrats, child education managers in the assessed municipalities, are not in compliance with the propositions created by street-level bureaucrats; in other words, school professionals. At this point, lack of articulation refers to the likelihood of having propositions competing with each other - either when it comes to their format or content, a fact that can evidence the commitment to middle echelon bureaucrats’ function (who account for coordinating teachers’ qualification and activities).

Another point observed in the questionnaire aimed at getting to know the authorship of the produced materials sent by secretariats to the units or posted on social networks. In total, 60% of coordinators have declared not to have consulted teachers, or the accountable ones, or the children, for their elaboration. Three participants of the first virtual meeting have mentioned to have used their expertise as mothers with children at pre-school age as reference for the elaboration of propositions to add to the secretariat’s inventory available for the schools. Two coordinators who participated in the second virtual meeting have said to be getting the activities from the schools, and they select the one they see as more adequate - they are sent for publication on the platforms adopted by the secretariats.

Secretariat team centrality points towards a scenario of teachers’ distancing from their planning and mediation activities, a fact that reduces them to individuals accounting for forwarding the available materials and videos. CNE Opinion n. 5/2020 (^{Brasil, 2020c}) recommends teachers’ approximation to the children and to their guardians in virtual environment as the way to tie bonds and to guide the dispatch of activities. However, in face of so many barriers to communication and for choices that should be prioritized, it seems that such an action was much more complex to be put in place within the observed scenario than the expected. Thus, rather than a process to discuss and negotiate the propositions, it seems that an authoritarian logic has prevailed, and it had little or no interference from schools. The ones in charge of child education (middle echelon bureaucrats) did not embody a role of link, of mediating the contact between high-echelon (municipal education secretaries) and street-level bureaucrats (teachers). This process likely helps implementing policies that do not meet the demands of both the children and their families at times of great social vulnerability.

As for the activities, themselves, seven municipalities have declared to have posted the activities on social networks; six municipalities have elaborated printed materials that were distributed among the schools or sent to the children in their homes - all these possibilities were suggested in CNE’s opinion that also recommends using MEC materials for their development. Regarding the evaluation of the produced material, six municipalities have created evaluation strategies, among them, one finds reports for school supervision, remote meetings to deal with evaluation, and evaluation forms. However, enquires about the prioritized criteria in this follow-up process remain, such as the case of the quality of children’s experience with remote teaching.

BONDS DURING THE PANDEMIC: WHAT IS THE QUALITY OF THE RELATIONSHIPS SET BASED ON THE ASSESSED PROPOSITIONS?

Field research in child education and legal documents stated to understand children as subjects of rights who experience the world, build knowledge and express themselves, who interact and express their desires in quite peculiar ways. The National Discipline Matrix Guidelines for Child Education (^{Brasil, 2009}) has presented the basic principles for the pedagogical work in daycare centers and pre-schools, with emphasis on discussing interactions and games as structuring elements of the child culture, which cannot be reduced to teaching and learning strategies. Interactions and games are the possibility of subjective constitution to produce feelings, to invent the world. Thus, it is understood as the function of child education, including the exceptional time experienced during the pandemic, which favors new ways of socialization and subjectivities committed to playfulness, to the other, to the planet, to democracy, to diversity. From this perspective, the research has reasoned about the quality of relationships with children and with their families, which were produced from propositions implemented by the herein assessed municipalities.

After being asked about the goal of strategies adopted for child education, most secretariats have stated to wish to keep the bonds with the children, as shown in Graph 3.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Graph 3 - Goals of the strategies. 

In total, 70% of coordinators from the participant municipalities have declared to aim strategies adopted to keep the bonds with the children and with their families. The word ‘bond’ was also used in CNE/CP Opinion n. 5/2020 (^{Brasil, 2020c}, p. 9, our translation). Child education was recommended to have daycare centers and preschools seeking “[…] a virtual bond between teachers and students’ families, in order to set close bonds and to make sugestions about activities to the children and to parents or guardians.”. Although we acknowledge that secretariats aimed at acting based on an unprecedented need, without having a federal standard to rely on, despite the peculiar difficulties to social distancing times, we cannot stop reasoning about the choices made for the pedagogical dimension during the pandemic, as well as about the concepts of child education observed in it. These concepts were available even before the pandemic and they triggered different outcomes during it. Thus, one can ask: is the dispatch of activities, itself, capable of keeping the bonds between the children and the schools? How is such bond understood?

It is important highlighting that, either CNE and secretariats - who have joined the research - understand the concept of maintenance or the process to get close bonds between school and children is linked to sending out pedagogical activities. CNE opinion justifies it by stating that the proposition focused on remote pedagogical activities aims at avoiding setbacks in learning and at not loosing bonds with the school “[…] in the sense of contributing to minimize eventual losses by children […]” (^{Brasil, 2020c}, 2020, p. 9, our translation). Therefore, one can observe a production logic subsidizing the pedagogical propositions, and it shines light over the strong preparatory-culture observed in child education. Each network reordered its own discipline matrix program and sought to provide educational activities that were organized as Graph 4.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Graph 4 - Approximation strategies. 

There is another issue that rises from the goal of maintaining the bonds with the children and with their families, and it is linked to approximation strategies and regards the possibility of achiving them, given the hard time faced by several families to access the virtual enviroment and to keep up with pedagogical affection and convenience relationships during the pandemic. This matter is brought up because CNE recommended virtual approximation to keep the bonds and, consequently, to contribute with suggestions and activities, so families could thrive along with the children. The strategy of sending out activities was a relevant bet in the maintenance of bonds; it was suggested in the national document. We herein point out that only one of the five platforms used by the municipalities had enough resources to achieve children/teachers interaction.

According to ^{Winnicott (2011}), bond is a fundamental category of human existence. ^{Guimarães (2011a}, p. 50, our translation) discussed the relevance of children’s manifestations to build pedagogical practices and associated bond to listening. According to her, bond with adults and with the space is reinforced, as long one listens to “[…] ideas that children bring up, by their own choice […]”. Based on this process, “[…] at the same time [the child is] heard, the child will embody the challenge of listening […]”. Thus, the concept of ‘bond’ is operated either by CNE or by secretariats, although it seems that the relational perspective has been disregarded.

Secretariats mainly point out the Common National Discipline Matrix Basis, also known as BNCC (^{Brasil, 2017}), as well as the municipality’s discipline matrix proposition as reference source for the construction of materials and activities to be sent to children. At this point, it seems timely to reason about child education and childhood concepts emerging from discipline matrix propositions, and about what are the propositions and contradictions of official documents.

We have asked whether the provided activities were thought for all child education stages or whether differentiated strategies were developed for daycare centers and pre-schools; Graph 5 was developed from the collected answers.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Graph 5 - Activities based on groupings. 

As it was possible observing, the vast majority, or 60%, of secretariats, did not distinguish activities for daycare centers from those for pre-schools. If, on the one hand, there are elements of child-culture that cross the whole child education field, on the other hand, the reference document of most secretariats shines light over pedagogical work specificities for babies and early-age children, by taking into account age group differences forming this schooling stage. Previous research (^{Guimarães, 2011b}; ^{Mattos, 2018}) have pointed out the relevance of ensuring education-work specificities for daycare centers based on the visibility of babies’ potentials expressed by their non-verbal channels, their playfulness, mimicking, babbling, body moves, and that likely express their knowledge about the world and about cultures, as well as about relationships.

POST-PANDEMIC: WHAT IS THE PLACE OF CHILDREN AND OF THEIR FAMILIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF RETURN TO FACE-TO-FACE ACTIVITIES?

With respect to strategies developed to the return to face-to-face activities, coordinators have been anxious about dealing with the sanitary weaknesses of school facilities, such as lack of resources to buy hygiene supplies and the impossibility of defining a date for such a return due to the pandemic - which lasted longer than the expected. Based on CNE’s orientations, nine municipalities have declared to have a cross-sector committee to think about the return to these activities. These committees’ formation took into account the fact that more than one element may have been chosen to join them, as we can see in Graph 6.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Graph 6 - Cross-sector committees. 

When it comes to listening to the school community, half of municipalities have declared to have taken such an action based on sending the questionnaires to teachers and students’ families. However, we must highlight that there was no return to face-to-face activites in child education in any of the assessed municipalities that have joined the research in 2020.

The present article was written right when the vaccination program was starting to cover health professionals and the elderly population; although the vaccination cycle remains incomplete, the networks have announced their return to face-to-face activities. In our opinion, it is important introducing the concrete actions thought by the municipalities about returning to face-to-face activities. Each municipality could have given more than one answer, and the most often cited ones are in Graph 7.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Graph 7 - Return protocol. 

Given the herein introduced strategies, it is essential thinking about the different conditions experienced by institutions forming public networks in Baixada Fluminense. Some institutions were recently built and some others are much older. There are institutions that were built by taking into consideration child education assistance specificities and those that were adjusted for such an assistance; there are old houses that housed community institutions or buildings that were added to the network without any adjustments. Thus, there are institutions that lack windows, that do not have enough restrooms, that lack a larger number of sinks to support systematic ‘hand washing’, for example. There are several challenges to be overcome in order to fulfill all hygiene requirements and to make school environment feasible for the likely return to face-to-face activities before complete mass vaccination.

Finally, at the end of the questionnaire, there was a blank spot for comments; eight of the ten coordinators made some points. We disclosed one in this text, since it represents part of the anguish and uncertanty felt during the herein assessed period-of-time:

The watchword is “minimizing damages”. We are facing an unthinkable scenario in education. From this perspective, we always sought the best to our target public, the children. And it was by thinking about them and about their subjectivity that we also reasoned about these materials. Perhaps, it is not the best option for early-age children, and, maybe, many of them do not have access to them, but we cannot seat and wait […]. It would not be fair just to cross our arms and do nothing given the complexity of this moment. (Excerpt from an answer to the questionnaire elaborated by the authors)

“Given the complexity of this moment”, coordinators had to take social actions linked to schools, to articulate their teams and to deal with MEC’s ommission about how to guide the child education work. These aspects made them stressed in face of the possibility of crossing their arms or of doing something, even knowing that such “something” could lead to contradictory actions or yet to the possibility of not reaching their aim. It is also important thinking about what is the place professionals in charge of child education occupy in State bureaucracy. What are the limits of actions by these managers? Do middle echelon bureaucrats take part in the definition of guidelines for their action sector and of quality criteria applied to material provide to children? The history of child education shows how policies developed for early-age children are marked by dispute for different interests, since this field remains under construction and is marked by a weak identity.