Tessituras de narratividades: ato responsivo com bebês em uma creche de Juiz de Fora/MG

Abstract

This study aims to understand how the narrativities produced by infants in the daily life of a partner early childhood education center in the municipality of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil, are constituted, recognized, and legitimized through the relationships established among children, adults, books, and the institutional context. Grounded in the historical-cultural perspective and in the philosophy of language developed by the Bakhtin Circle, in dialogue with Lev Vigotski , Walter Benjamin, Lígia Cademartori, Sonia Kramer, and Cecilia Bajour, the study understands infants as subjects of language, culture, and meaning-making. This is a qualitative study developed through participant observation in an infant classroom, using field notes, photographic records, and the production of a verbo-visual magazine as procedures for data generation. Conceived as a methodological, analytical, and feedback device for the research field, the magazine became an integral part of the investigative process by bringing together scenes, photographs, narratives, and reflections produced during the encounters among the researcher, the infants, and the teachers, thus constituting a means of producing, organizing, and interpreting the research data. The analyses revealed that infants' narrativities are expressed through the multiple languages by which they participate in the daily life of the early childhood education center, including gestures, gazes, bodily movements, vocalizations, play, and interactions with literary books. One of the main findings of the study is that these narrativities are not merely spontaneous manifestations of childhood but depend on the responsive mediations constructed by adults and on the institutional conditions that foster—or limit—their recognition as legitimate forms of language and cultural participation. The study concludes that infants' narrative experiences are produced through dialogic relationships among children, adults, books, and the institutional context, reaffirming the importance of pedagogical practices that recognize infants as powerful subjects of narrativity from the earliest years of life while highlighting the potential of the verbo-visual magazine as a methodological device for research with infants.