Pensamento Algébrico na Educação Infantil: uma análise de documentos curriculares paulistanos publicados entre os anos de 2006 e 2023

Abstract

Early Childhood Education, one of the stages of Basic Education, serves children aged 0 to 5 years and 11 months. In December 2017, the Base Nacional Curricular Comum (BNCC) was approved. This normative document establishes the minimum essential learning to be built in Basic Education, including Early Childhood Education, and serves as a reference for Brazilian education systems to develop their curricula. These documents are prescriptive and include in their context the learning rights of Early Childhood Education, which are contemplated in two structuring axes: interactions and games. The proposal of this document differs from countries such as Portugal, Singapore, Australia, Spain, and Chile, which clearly and objectively contemplate literacy and numeracy, with content focused on mathematical knowledge being easily identified. Considering curricular documents as important references for the development of learning in Brazilian education systems and with the BNCC that includes the thematic unit Algebra in Elementary Education from the 1st year (children aged 6), we researched in search of characterizing elements, or strategies that could contribute to the development of algebraic thinking in the São Paulo curricular documents for Early Childhood Education published between 2006 and 2023. Thus, considering Early Algebra as a curricular proposal that advocates the development of algebraic thinking from the first schoolchildren, with the help of the Descriptive Textual Analysis - ATD methodology, in this qualitative and documentary research, we realized that, implicitly, the documents bring characterizing elements and strategies that can contribute, from the perspective of what we understand about algebraic thinking, starting from the development of an algebraic sense, initially. However, with each reformulation of the analyzed documents, more mathematical knowledge is required from the Early Childhood Education Teacher so that it is possible to identify, understand and employ strategies with the necessary intentionality to develop them in babies and children. The research presents its contribution by discussing this theme in Early Childhood Education and also by being focused on what we consider a better understanding of the content of the curricular documents, which can guide the continued training of teachers, analysis and construction of teaching materials that are produced for Early Childhood Education, with the perspective of developing algebraic thinking in babies and children. Research focused on this stage of Basic Education, focused on this theme, is recent and in much smaller volume than in other stages such as the Early Years, and is still scarce when we think of babies from 0 to 2 years old, which can be a field for future research. We analyzed three documents, which are the Currículo da Cidade – Educação Infantil, the Curriculo Integrador da Infância Paulistana and the Orientações Curriculares da Educação Infantil – Expectativas de Aprendizagem e Orientações Didáticas. In these documents we find elements such as repetition patterns, classifications, establishment of relationships, orders, transformations that are present as characteristics of Algebraic Thinking, and with them guidelines and indications of strategies that can favor its development, in a perspective that is not characterized as algebraization (contents of School Algebra), but that provides foundations for knowledge of an algebraic nature to be developed in future years of schooling