Sentidos da escola para crianças do 5º ano: narrativas, afetos e experiências no contexto pós-pandemia

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had significant impacts on Brazilian basic education, especially in public schools located in socially vulnerable territories. The suspension of in-person classes, the adoption of remote teaching, and the return to school activities revealed and intensified pre-existing inequalities, affecting not only learning processes but also the affective and relational dimensions of school experience. In this context, the present study aims to understand the meanings that 5th-grade elementary school children from a municipal public school in Fortaleza attribute to school in the post-pandemic period, based on their narratives, affects, and experiences. This is a qualitative study guided by the research-intervention methodology, linked to the umbrella project “School, Health Promotion, and Modes of Subjectivation in Times of Pandemic,” within the research line “Subjectivity and Critique of the Contemporary.” The study is part of an action developed under the Education Observatory Program, carried out through an agreement between the Municipal Department of Education of Fortaleza (SME) and the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). Data production took place through collective activities with 32 children aged 10 to 11, including conversation circles, the creation of an “emotions diary,” playful activities, and symbolic productions, conceived as devices for listening and expression. The empirical field is located in a school situated in a neighborhood marked by social inequalities and urban violence, but also by strong networks of sociability, care, and resistance. The results show that the school emerges simultaneously as a space for learning, protection, coexistence, and the expression of affects, but also as a place marked by silences, exhaustion, and strategies of self-protection, as well as limits of symbolization in the face of territorial violence. The pandemic experience was narrated as unequal and ambivalent, while the return to school proved to be a contradictory experience, marked by tension between the joy of reunion and fear. The importance of school practices that promote listening, welcoming, and the construction of bonds is highlighted, recognizing children as subjects of experience and voice. It is concluded that understanding the meanings of school through children’s narratives makes it possible to question naturalized conceptions of everyday school life and reaffirms the role of the public school as a fundamental space for the production of care, belonging, and meaningful experiences, requiring the institutionalization of listening spaces as a central dimension of educational practice in the post-pandemic context.