Educação e neurociências : contribuições para o desenvolvimento psicomotor na primeira infância numa escola municipal de Santos

Abstract

Introduction: The conception of childhood nowadays has been occupying space in different media outlets and fields of study. However, it was not always like this. Understood by researchers and historians as a modern invention, childhood has been crossed by countless discursive practices that have pointed out its advances and setbacks and how it has been configured to the present days thought the creation of legal instruments for children protection. Being a phase of intense changes in the brain structure that reflect on motor development, the objective of this research was to investigate and analyze the psychomotor performance of children aged between 2 and 3 years, enrolled in a kindergarten class at a public school in the municipal network of city of Santos, based on neuropsychomotor practices adapted to educational contexts. The chosen methodology was action research which involved the participation of 13 children of both sexes, 7 boys and 6 girls. As a proposed intervention, psychomotor activities were developed and applied over a period of eight weeks. The Motor Development Scale (EDM), proposed by Rosa Neto (2007), was the instrument used to evaluate the psychomotor profile of children. The tests were applied from September to December 2023. Results: the results showed that, of the 13 children who completed all stages of the research, 16% achieved the result Very Superior, 15% Superior, 23% High Normal, 23% Medium Normal, 8% Low Normal and 15% Inferior, of according to EDM parameters. As a final result, 77% of the children achieved satisfactory results with a motor profile appropriate to the age group studied and 23% presented below average performance. It is noteworthy that children who had presented a motor age lower than their chronological age were physically less active, had some degree of motor, cognitive or language impairment and were undergoing clinical investigation by a multidisciplinary team. Conclusion: The intervention proposal entitled Psychomotor Activities in an Educational Context, which gave rise to the Technical Product of this research, was responsible, to a large extent, for the qualitative leap in the motor skills and language of the children studied. Likewise, the Motor Development Scale, a multidisciplinary instrument, enabled a detailed analysis of motor age in relation to chronological age, pointing out advances and deficits in the group’s motor development. In this sense, the instruments used responded satisfactorily to the guiding question of this research, demonstrating that psychomotor activities adapted to the school environment promote the motor and language development of preschool children. Furthermore, they worked as assistants in identifying warning signs for motor delays, enabling the teacher to plan preventive actions.