Espaço vivido: experiências e descobertas do espaço nas práticas cotidianas da educação infantil

Abstract

This study addresses lived space in Early Childhood Education, understood as a constitutive dimension of children's experiences in institutional everyday life. It aims to analyze how experiences and discoveries of space take place in the daily practices of an early childhood education institution, considering children's interactions with environments, objects, and people. The research is grounded in studies on childhood, lived space, play, and the Sociology of Childhood, understanding institutional space as a social, relational, and symbolically constructed reality. Methodologically, it adopts a qualitative approach, based on institutional visits, initial participant observation, and a semi-structured questionnaire administered to the institution's professionals. The findings indicate that, in daily routines, children explore, interpret, and resignify spaces through play, movement, and interaction, revealing multiple ways of perceiving, occupying, and producing meanings about space. It is concluded that pedagogical practices that value such experiences contribute to the development of autonomy, identity, belonging, and children's participation, reinforcing the importance of understanding the early childhood education institution as a lived and pedagogically meaningful space.