BUCCI, L. “A escola é da diretora”: a gestão de uma pré-escola municipal sob o olhar das crianças [The school belongs to the principal: The management of a municipal preschool under the gaze of children]. Master’s Dissertation – USP de Ribeirão Preto, Ribeirão Preto (SP), 2016.
Available on: doi: <10.11606/D.59.2016.tde-18082016-163550>
What do the children think about school management? What do they understand about the principal’s role? These questions guided this study and the construction of the data from the children’s speeches. As a theoretical contribution, we sought in Victor Paro concepts to discuss democratic management and, in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, the understanding of the specificities of preschool age children. This research was carried out in a second stage class – five-year-old children – of a Municipal School of Early Childhood Education, in a city in the microregion of Ribeirão Preto. To listen to the children, we were inspired by the methods of Drawing with History and Story to Complete, in addition to following the class for three months, on alternate days, to experience their experiences and strengthen bonds. In view of what the children said and the moments spent at school, the construction of the data led to discussions about the relationships established, especially between the principal and the children, and how this relationship and the organization of the school promote, or not, learning and development situations for the children. Such school organization, with practices that anticipate the reality found in Elementary School and that plaster the performance of both teachers and children, has so much influence in the formation of subjects that marked the children’s experience and speech, besides being an environment marked by domination, that didn’t provide the children with the feeling of belonging, so that they considered the school of the principal. The organization of the school and the practices found did not favor listening to the children, much less their participation in decisions that concerned them. Although the school wasn’t organized for listening and the subjects who interacted daily with the children didn’t consider them competent to take a position, the children showed discernment and capacity to interpret their reality and to propose changes, even if in the level of imagination, as to aspects that displeased them, the children showed knowledge about their experience, besides having opinions about the daily life and competence to suggest improvements to the physical and educational organization of the school. But, in summary, we infer that there was democratic management in the institution studied, since this implies participation. The management, in this case, did not provide the conditions for a quality work, considering the specificities of Early Childhood Education. It is worth mentioning that in this institution, the principal did her job individually, without support, backing or training from the Municipal Secretariat of Education.